Sermon: Take, Bless, Break, Give
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Sermon: Take, Bless, Break, Give Text: Luke 24:13-35 Date: April 6, 2008 Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church If you’ve ever looked at Mapquest on a computer you know that once you have located the place you are looking for, you are given an option to zoom in or zoom out. You can zoom in and focus on a smaller area or zoom out and look at the bigger picture. I want to focus our reflection on today’s scripture by zooming in. The lectionary has already led us to zoom in on the story of how the risen Christ met a couple of disheartened disciples on the road to Emmaus. We’ve heard how Cleopas and his companion were walking along and met a stranger, and how the stranger ended up reminding them of many scriptures, the great story of how God has been engaged with humans since the beginning. It’s a beautiful story of how God can be discovered in the ancient words of wisdom. Zoom in to the second part of the story. It’s getting late, and the travelers invite the stranger to stay with them. They urge him to come to their home and share a meal with them—a beautiful story of hospitality. Zoom in again to the table. The stranger sits down with them. He takes bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. A beautiful story of revelation. Zoom in again to four verbs: Take, Bless, Break, Give. Did you know that this series of four words appears in two other stories in Luke, and several other New Testament stories? They are at the heart of the story of the feeding of the five thousand—that day that Jesus was teaching thousands of people and they stayed until dinner time and out of five loaves and two fishes everyone was fed. Everyone was fed after Jesus took the bread and fish, blessed them, broke them into pieces, and gave them to the people. You probably know the other story in which those four words appear again like a string of jewels: the story of the Last Supper. He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying “This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” It’s no accident that these four words show up in these three very important stories in Luke’s gospel. I believe we’re meant to see that they are they are all connected, and that there is something of the essence of Christianity boiled down in these words: take, bless, break, give. There’s some wisdom for us here in a very compact form; it’s possible that each one of them contains as much intelligence as an Intel microchip. So I want to zoom in on them, one at a time. I’m not going at this from a scholarly angle; I’m not going to give you the Greek lexicon and all that. Just some musings on these words from the viewpoint of a pilgrim on the Christian road. Take. Take is kind of a sharp word, isn’t it? Kind of pointy, kind of pointed. A little aggressive. I remember one of my teachers saying that in worship we should never announce we are going to “take” the offering; it sounds too much like the congregation is going to be handing over their wallets at gunpoint. We were supposed to announce, instead, that we would “receive” it. So I wonder why Jesus didn’t receive bread in all these stories instead of taking it? It would be so much more genteel. Like I said, I’m not getting into some minute study of the history of the Greek word. I’m just speculating that maybe the word equivalent to “take” is used because it implies an act of will. A person has to reach out to take something that is offered. I’m recalling countless scenes in movies and TV shows in which someone who is in need stands before someone who has what they need. Say it’s money; the empty-pocketed one looks down at the ground while the one who has plenty to share stands there with a hand outstretched, holding a roll of bills. “Take it,” he urges. Often there is a kind of reluctance on the part of the empty-pocketed party. To take the aid offered requires humbling; he’ll have to admit he’s not self-sufficient in order to accept help. Have you ever seen this little drama played out? Have you been in it? We have been in it, each and every one of us, where our relationship with God is concerned. We always stand empty-pocketed before our Creator who gives us everything—life, love, food, oxygen, purpose, direction. God offers us abundance. We are often curiously reluctant to take it and thereby signal our dependence on someone other than ourselves. But humbling ourselves in order to reach out and take the blessings God offers is part of our spiritual journey. Take. Next, bless. When Jesus blessed the bread at the tables at which he ate and shared, he followed in the footsteps of his ancestors in faith who pronounced a blessing every time they ate bread. Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu Me-lech Ha-o-lam, There was a special blessing for the wine as well: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha‑olam, bo're p'ri ha‑gafen. Translation: "Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine." Why bless the bread and the wine? And why speak the blessing every time you eat and drink? I don’t know the specific history of this blessing in Jewish tradition. But such a practice is meant to remind us of God, who creates everything and then gives it to us to enjoy. There are few attitudes that open us to enjoying abundant life as much as gratitude. When one offers a blessing like these ancient blessings, one notices God. You notice that there is a God, and you are not it. Further, you pay attention to the many gifts God showers on us. Monica Shannon wrote down a memory of her grandfather who one day took out of his basket two loaves of bread, a goat cheese, garlic, salt and pepper. He divided up the food and said as he passed it around, “When we eat the good bread we are eating months of sunlight, weeks of rain and snow from the sky. We eat everything now, clouds even. It all becomes part of us, sun, clouds, rain, snow, and the rich earth. We should be great, each of us radiant, full of music and full of stories. Able to run the way the clouds do, able to dance like the snow and the rain. But nobody takes time to think that he eats all these things and that sun, rain, snow are all a part of himself.”[1] When you offer a blessing, you take time to think of the Creator, the Creation, and your part in it. Bless. Next, Break. There is an obvious meaning of this word as bread is shared, and some subtler hints about the spiritual journey as well. First the apparent: in order for bread to be shared, it must be broken. One loaf becomes many pieces for the benefit of the community gathered around the table. We might also think of being broken in connection with Jesus’ body. One version of the story of the Lord’s Supper in the Bible recalls Jesus saying, “This is my body which is broken for you,” when he breaks bread. Different Christians have a lot of different interpretations of what that means. I’ll give you my understanding in a nutshell: I believe Jesus was willing to make himself completely vulnerable for us and with us. He gave up the human impulse to protect himself at all costs and was willing to be wounded and broken in order to follow God. He leads us in his courage as he allows himself to be broken. Broken for us. And broken with us. For we are broken people. Not one of us over a certain age has gone through this life unscathed. We are all broken by tragedy and sin. Jesus stands with us as broken people, never demanding that we be perfect. There is yet a subtler meaning of the word “break” in the Christian journey. There is a sense in which we are called to be broken-hearted people. Listen to the way Parker Palmer speaks of this in The Politics of the Broken-Hearted: "There are at least two ways to picture a broken heart ...The conventional image, of course, is that of a heart broken by unbearable tension into a thousand shards--shards that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. ... Here, the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we too often inflict on others. But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart 'broken open' into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one's own and the world's pain and joy. ... Here heartbreak becomes a source of healing, enlarging our empathy and extending our ability to reach out." [2] A heart broken open in compassion can hold, with the risen Christ, the world’s joy and pain. Break. The last word to zoom in on is give. After we have taken the gifts God offers, gratefully returned thanks, broken the bread to be shared and allowed our hearts to be broken open in compassion, we turn to give our lives for the sake of the world. We give food to the hungry, care to the distressed, our talents and skills for the work that needs to be done, our time to those who need our help and attention. I don’t need to say any more about give; from the oldest to the youngest you already know the rich blessing of giving. Take. Bless. Break. Give. Having zoomed in on these words in this Emmaus road story, zoom back out so that you can see them in the big picture of the spiritual journey. Take the help God offers you---healing, guidance, sustenance, strength. Bless God who provides for us so abundantly. Break open the closed fist of your heart so that it can contain all the love God wishes to share through you. Give of yourself and all that you have as freely as God gives to us. As we share in communion today, taking bread, blessing God, breaking it, and giving it to everyone, swallow with it strength and direction for your journey. “Here We Come” by James E. Magaw Here we come to the table again, The holy table set for us unholy saints. Here we come, the broken-hearted, The unemployed, the fearful ones, The guilty ones, the lonely, the anxious, The despairing, the grief-stricken. Here we come, men and women, Children and parents, poor and rich, Rolling and walking, left and right, short and tall, Every color and class imaginable. Here we come, because we’re hungry, Used up, worn down, tired out, Hung up, cast off, stressed out, Turned off, put down, lost! Here we are, eating again, Without credentials, without money, Without vouchers or coupons, Just because you say we belong. Thanks! Here we go, full, from the table again, Still unholy saints, but saints again alive, Renewed in compassion and hope, Taking bread with us for those not yet at the table. (Alive Now May/June 1997, p. 19) (Included as “bonus” material in written version of sermon) [1] Shannon, Monica “What We Eat” Alive Now September/October 1976, p. 61 [2] Palmer, Parker quoted at http://peace.mennolink.org/cgi-bin/m.pl?a=332
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