Together again...

Proverbs 9:1-6, Ephesians 5:15-20, and John 6:51-58

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper 1490 (PD)

This past week, after sharing with you all that I have accepted a call to serve in the Navy Chaplain Corps, 

I have experienced an outpouring of emails, text messages, Facebook messages and posts, phone calls, face to face conversations, and even notes expressing your appreciation for the ministry we have shared over these past few years. 

It has been both a blessing and a curse to receive these communications from you all. 

They have served as both an affirmation of the ministry I’ve been part of and an expression of your love and support. 

Each day I drive to and from this building, I can recollect all the late nights and early mornings. 

I’ve reminisced about events I have attended, hospital visits I have made, joys and griefs that we have shared. 

When I walk through my neighborhood and I greet people I realize they are no longer just folks who own a home near mine, but they are now friends whose children have played and grown with mine. 

My family and I have left some surprisingly deep roots in this place and in these communities.

And these communities have taken root in us as well. 

It makes the time remaining more emotional and far more difficult than I could have anticipated. 

We loved it here, and we still very much love it here. 

Yet, as our time comes to a close, the reality is setting in and I am being pulled closer and closer to a new ministry. 

It is inevitable as the days tick down that I am leaving, yet my grip tightens on the memories and experiences here.

It isn’t an experience that is exclusive to me or this moment. 

We’ve all experienced entering into a new community, and departing from another. 

And it never gets any easier. 

It does deepen our understanding of the texts we’ve heard over the past few Sundays though. 

It also deepens the meaning of these texts in our own lives. 

For the first century church, departing from one community in order to be part of this new Christian community meant leaving behind a sense of familiarity. 

It meant leaving behind the comfort of one’s home community. 

The early church in Ephesus was built out of a small secret group of followers, one far smaller than the community that worshipped at the temple of the Greek god Artemis in that same city. 

For many, leaving the cult of Artemis meant leaving behind more than just people. 

Christianity was a radical new religion that was frowned on because it made little sense to most Greeks. 

It was especially looked down on for its offensive practice of cannibalism, as rumors of the Christians who ate the body and drank the blood spread throughout Rome. 

It was no easier for John’s community. 

The community, to whom John’s Gospel was written, was banished from their own synagogues and households. 

They were also declared blasphemers by their own community for this practice of eating flesh and drinking blood, which certainly was the most unclean thing imaginable to that culture. 

Two very different groups of Christians. 

One group that was grounded and rooted in the gentile Greek culture. 

Another group grounded in the traditions and culture of a first century Jewish practice. 

Cast out and banished, alone. 

Yet the central theme in both of these texts is a theme of encouragement and joy, in the face of banishment and grief. 

In the face of uncertainty and the unknown. 

As they depart from what they have known. 

What they have loved, even family and friends. 

Hungering for the protection, care, love, and acceptance that we all long for in being part of a community. 

Agape Feast/Painting found in Early Christian Catacombs (PD)

We all hunger to be part of a community. 

We hunger for the love and acceptance we receive in our marriages, our families, our worshipping communities, our neighborhoods, even our places of work. 

And when we do not find it there, we have a tendency to seek it elsewhere. 

When we hunger in our marriages, many look for companionship in other places. 

When we hunger for acceptance among friends, many of us will compromise our own beliefs and values to find that acceptance. 

When we hunger to be valued in our work, many are willing to give up marriages, families, even sacrificing friendships to competitively make our way to the top. 

It’s a sacrifice we make, and it is a choice we are given between two communities, 

Because when we hunger for that love and acceptance, we only get to make reservations at one of those feasts. 

The passage from Proverbs today is one of my favorites from Old Testament wisdom literature. 

King Solomon.
From Dore's illustrations for the Book of Proverbs
1866 (PD)

“Wisdom has prepared the feast, mixed the wine, and has also set the table. She sends out her maids to announce on the heights of the town that even the simplest of minds may enter here.”

Wisdom has an open door for all to enter in, 

no exclusive dress codes,

not even a prerequisite test to see if one can grasp what is being served at Wisdom’s table. 

But Proverbs tells of another feast, a few short verses later which we didn’t hear today. 

Another feast meant to contrast and compete with the feast Wisdom is hosting.  

Another feast across town where another lady sits and waits for the simple. 

Even today the poetry of this passage implies something carnal, erotic, and forbidden. 

An invitation that preys on what we crave when we grow far too hungry.

Simple answers, 

selfish desires, 

and 

a feast of worldly foolishness that leads us away from God’s wisdom. 

One translation of the Bible seems to capture this passage the best. 

"As this lady calls out to those who pass by, proclaiming; 

“‘Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on? 

Steal off with me, I’ll show you a good time!

No one will ever know - I’ll give you the time of your life.’

But they don’t know about all the skeletons in her closet, that all her guests end up in the depths of Sheol.”

These two feasts in Proverbs are meant to illustrate this challenge we face. 

Where we turn when we hunger. 

Do we turn to the feast we need, bestowed upon us by God? 

Flavored by the love we experience.

In marriages that take hard work and time to nurture.

In families that don’t provide us the same recognition as that next step up the ladder at work.

In friendships that value us for the beliefs that make us who we are, rather than the friendships that give us the notoriety to enter into that next social circle. 

It's a hard choice to make when we hunger for love, acceptance, and community. 

In those moments, perhaps it is best to consider why both John’s Gospel and the letter to the  Ephesians demand these first century followers find refuge in a simple meal.

Because in spite of what they are leaving behind, these very different people; Gentiles and Jews, are being drawn together THROUGH Christ!

Painting of another feast from the early Christian catacombs (PD)

Leaving behind the comfort of the community they know, in order to be united with one that is very foreign to them. 

Joined together as God’s Church. 

So, this is where I need to explain how to tie this all together. 

It's a pretty crummy sermon if I am equating you all to the community that I must leave because it is the only way I can truly follow Jesus Christ. 

The point is this; 

No matter where I go, or where I serve, 

we are bound together when we gather around this table. 

When you share in this Body and Blood it will join me together with you, just as that meal united the community that followed John with the people of Ephesus. 

This meal is what unites us all to a community that is far greater, far more loving, far more accepting, far more caring, and far more uniting than any feast this world can host. 

And each time WE celebrate this feast, it will join us together. 

And I will be kneeling beside you with my hands desperately reaching out for that meal that unties our bonds to this world and unites God’s whole Church together in Christ Jesus. 

Amen

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash