The Rev. Margaret Watson

Proverbs 9:1-6 | Psalm 34:9-14 | Ephesians 5:15-20 | John 6:53-59

Before I begin I want to share with you something that we that attend Kid's Word know all about. Does anybody recognize who is in this picture? (holds up a picture and everyone answers, Jesus Christ) How do you know that? The halo? There are a lot of pictures of people with halos. How else do you know it? I will give you a secret. Do you see his hand? It is sign language. He is spelling out with his fingers what is across the top of the image here. I C X C. Jesus Christ, Jesus the Anointed. Right here on this line is another word. Sophia Theos. Sophia, isn't that a girl's name? Sophia Theos, the Wisdom of God.

The early church had no problem looking at this picture of Jesus and calling him Sophia, Wisdom. We heard the story from the Old Testament today about wisdom. But in today's church, Sophia & Jesus, oh my gosh, gender issues! We do not want to go there! But we should learn from our ancestors. What we all need is wisdom. Especially now. Because where have we been the last couple of weeks? For any of you, has the world changed in any way? For any of you, has the church changed in any way? Take heart, because during the last three weeks, the Church in her wisdom has been preaching the same thing over and over again. Do you remember a few weeks ago, the feeding of the five thousand, probably more because the only the men were counted? Jesus fed them all with a few loaves of bread. That story is from Mark. And now for the last three weeks it has been John, John and John. More bread, more bread and more bread. Are we catching on yet? The Church in her wisdom has been talking about bread. So what are we supposed to be thinking about? BREAD.

Well, I thought about dinner. Two particular dinners. One was in my grandmother's house. She set the table and she was going to teach me about my culture. And it was pink and fancy with place cards, and yes, she described how I should sit my friends around the table boy, girl, boy, girl, and arrange conversation groups! You know every good hostess should be concerned with conversation groups. And of course, the place settings…three forks this way, two knives, three spoons on this side, more forks and spoons this way; the plates were piled high and in different orders and cups over here and another plate over here. Oh, Lord have mercy! Multiples of everything. She taught me how to use them all and in which order, and with which foods. And then we started all over again, except this time she taught me using them all European style. Especially in Germany, the fork and the knife were reversed and forks were upside down. Fortunately, we practiced with cookies and milk. So I did not mind, really. This was very important information for an eleven year old girl, wasn't it?

Second dinner. I had applied for graduate school. A Wintethur Fellowship. A scholarship for Museum Studies at the University of Delaware. There are four hundred applicants every year and only ten scholarships. No way did I think this little public school graduate would make it. All I had to do was open my mouth and I knew I would be in trouble. Surprise to me, I got an invitation to the final interview. Twenty of us. Suddenly I had a fifty-fifty chance. The interview was three days long. I swear anyone can fake anything for a couple of hours but you can't fake anything for three days. It was exhausting. We were judged every minute of every day. At the end of the second day was an elaborate, eight course dinner. The dinner was held in a two hundred and eighteen room Dupont mansion. Eighteenth century of course. We sat on eighteenth century chairs at an eighteenth century table. It was museum studies after all! There were place cards and arranged conversation groups and the table set with three forks this way, two knives, and three spoons on the side……you get it right? What was my prayer? GRANDMA!!!! She did me good. It was a wonderful course of study for two years.

But how do these dinners relate to today's Gospel? The center of this reading and what the readings have been about for the past month keep pointing to our Christian culture of food: We are what we eat.

The center of nearly every culture on earth is food. How and what we grow, how we grow it and how we pick it and prepare it. How we serve it, the cups and plates; how we eat it, whether with our bare hands or use utensils; and those with whom we choose to eat — this is all culture. And everything Jesus did around food was absolutely unacceptable, shocking in his culture and in his time. To use his own words; scandalous! Eat flesh. Drink blood. Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you. Say that to a five year old and you will hear, yuck! And those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life. A graphic connection between the flesh and blood of Jesus, and bread and wine. What in the world is going on here? What culture are we in? Shocking! Scandalous!

How dare the son of Joseph and Mary think and talk of himself, Moses and the bread which saved our ancestors in the same breath. Shocking! Scandalous! It makes a mockery of the Holy Scriptures. So, how many of you when you heard these words, eat flesh, drink blood thought about Holy Communion? Have you ever really tried to listen to those words as the people outside the doors of the Church might listen to them? Eat flesh, drink blood. What are we, a bunch of cannibals? And indeed that was an accusation made against the early church by the religious authorities. Shocking! Scandalous!

Add this to it. As I was studying this scripture, I discovered the word Jesus used for "eat," it is really closer to the meaning of the word munch. Munch?! Shocking! Scandalous! I think that is hilarious. It is funny! Can you imagine here at the altar, munch on my flesh? We should laugh. How must this have sounded to the first generation of disciples? Well, this disciple's mind went to cookies. I don't munch on meat or bread. I munch on popcorn and candy and cookies and other things not so good for me to eat; I take wicked delight in eating them. That is what I munch on.

So, is it all right to laugh in church? All right, I will risk it. On this munch thing. I got a bad little vision in this bad little brain: Of someone standing with a cookie and glass of milk, with one of those milk mustaches. Except it wasn't a cookie or milk. This bad little brain saw a communion chalice and a wafer. Munching. If I upset you, believe me, I upset myself with that vision. Shocking! Scandalous! But take heart. Everything in our Christian food culture should shock us. Because we share a cup in a land where individual cups are the norm. Here in this church we are encouraged to chew on our food. It hasn't always been like that, stuck to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter. Shocking!

But everything Jesus did around food was scandalous. First, he picked food on the Sabbath. Broke the law, scandal. Then he didn't even wash his hands properly. He did not set the table properly. And as we recently heard, he did not even bring enough food for everyone to eat. What kind of host was he anyway? And he always ate with anybody. Anybody. He ate with outlaws, the unclean, tax collectors, the sick and even women. Hey, you fill in the blank. He even ate with _________. Whatever you thought, God heard it. Shocking! Scandalous!

And we do this every week. We share bread and wine, the Body and Blood. We share it for as many reasons are there are people in this room, each of us a child of God, each of us made in the image of God, called in and through an unconditional baptism to be the Body of Christ, to be the flesh and blood of Christ in the world. Us! Now and forever. We are what we eat. St. Augustine, a scandalous Bishop in the church, in Africa, said as he raised the bread and cup at communion, "See who you are. Become who you are meant to be."

Have we forgotten something? Perhaps, yes. The ability to laugh at ourselves. We have forgotten Jesus' call to munch, our cultural food calling-card is hilarity, is joy! It is good to laugh! Be of good cheer! Set aside your troubles. Cast away your fears. Do not get drunk on wine. Try something even better, the Holy Spirit. Sing and make melody and give thanks. Come! Wisdom has built her a house. She has set her table from the highest places in town she calls, "Hey, you simple ones, come in here." And to those without sense she says, "Come, ya'll. Come. Come and eat." (paraphrase of Proverbs 9:1-6) Amen