10 Pentecost

August 9, 2009

1 Kings 19.4-8; John 6.35, 41-51

“I am the bread of life.”

These were the words that closed our Gospel reading last week and this week, they are repeated again in beginning of our Gospel reading. Because they are repeated two Sundays in a row, you know they’re important words. They’re words that carry a huge amount of weight to them.

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

These are obviously words we are not to take lightly. These are statements we can’t merely shrug off and ignore. These are words that confront us and jar us and make us sit up and take notice of them. Even now, we find Jesus continuing to give of himself, again and again. Even now, here, on this Sunday morning, in this church, he is here, giving himself fully and completely to us. This is what the Eucharist is all about.

Last week I talked about the importance of Holy Eucharist and how, in my own life, it has sustained me through some difficult times. Again, this week in our scriptures, we find that same theme being expanded a bit. In our reading from 1 Kings, we find Elijah in the wilderness. In that wilderness, he is asking God to let him die. In fact, we find him praying a very beautifully profound prayer, despite its dark tone.

Elijah prays, “It is enough: now, O Lord, take away my life…”

In the midst of his depression, in the midst of his anguish, in the midst of the wilderness of not only his surroundings, but his own spirit, God answers the prayer of Elijah, but not in the way Elijah wants. The prayer is answered with a beautiful “no.” An angel appears and feeds Elijah in anguish and in that wilderness. Elijah is not allowed to die, but is sustained. He is refreshed so that he can continue this journey.

This is a beautiful analogy for us, who are also wandering about in the wilderness. I think most of us have probably come to that time in our lives when we have curled up and prayed for God to take our lives from us, because living sometimes just hurts too much. It is in moments that we can find the Eucharist. It is in moments like that that Jesus, “the bread that has come down from heaven” comes us and feeds us. In the Eucharist, we find that Jesus has truly kept the promise he made to us when he ascended into heaven.

In the Eucharist, we find that he is truly with us always. Certainly, we find Jesus coming to us in many other ways. He is present in his Word. He speaks to us in the scriptures we hear here at church and read on our own. He is present whenever two or three o us are gathered in his name. He is present here among us when we come together and do his will, when we become his hands, his feed, reaching out to others in love. And he is present in the poor, the needy, the hungry, the stranger, the marginalized, the prisoners in our midst.

For us, he is especially present however here at this altar in the Eucharist. Here, we find him, in a very real way, feeding us physically, but also spiritually as well. And this unique and wonderful experience of Jesus in the Eucharist is something that is incomparable. We don’t find anything else in our spiritual experiences quite like this encounter with Jesus in the bread and drink of Holy Communion.

Last month, many of us commemorated the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Now, I’ll admit I don’t remember it—my mother was pregnant with me that summer 40 years ago. On Sunday, July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in the lunar lander when it touched down on the moon. What most people don’t know about that amazing event is that Buzz Aldrin had with him the Eucharist. He had what we call the Reserved Sacrament—bread and wine already consecrated. Aldrin was a member of Webster Presbyterian Church, Webster, Texas and he took with him the pastor's home communion kit.

Bosco Peters, a New Zealand Anglican priest, recently wrote on his blog about this event. Peters writes:

[Aldrin] radioed: “Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or wherever he may be, to contemplate for a moments the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

Later Aldrin wrote: “In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.’ I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute Deke Slayton had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly…Eagle’s metal body creaked. I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

Peters continues: “NASA kept this secret for two decades. The memoirs of Buzz Aldrin and the Tom Hanks’s Emmy- winning HBO mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon (1998), made people aware of this act of Christian worship 235,000 miles from Earth.”

The chalice Aldrin used is still on display at Webster Presbyterian Church and the event is commemorated there every year on the Sunday closest to July 20.

I love this story because it shows us that even on the moon, even 235,000 miles from the earth, this simple act of shared bread and shared drink can still have such an impact. If the Eucharist can be so important to an event happening so far from us, imagine how important it can be to us, here.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “All this talk of the special ness of Holy Communion is fine for Episcopalians like him, but for us Lutherans, it just seems a bit much.”

Well, a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a wonderful book in a bookstore in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. The book is The Lutheran Pastor, published in 1902 by Pastor G.H. Gerberding. Now, if that name Gerberding sounds familiar, it’s because he was actually a former pastor here at St. Mark’s—a fact I didn’t know when I bought the book. Gerberding’s book is actually, in some ways, still fresh and meaningful concerning personal spiritual care for pastors and all Christians for that matter, even now 107 years after it was published. In a chapter entitled “Conducting the Service Prepatory to the Holy Communion,” Gerberding writes,

“To a Lutheran the Lord’s Supper is indeed a most important and holy sacrament. It is truly the most sacred of all the ordinances of the church on earth. There is nothing beyond it—nothing so heavenly as this feast this side of heaven. Nowhere else does the believer approach so near to heaven as when he kneels, as communicate, at this altar, the Holy of Holies, in the Church of Christ.”

Gerberding goes on to write: “What a solemn act! What a privilege to approach this altar, to participate in its divine mysteries, to become a partaker of the glorified body and blood of the Son of God!”

It is a privilege to come to this altar, to partake of the glorified body and blood of Jesus. No matter how far we have traveled into the wildernesses of our lives, no matter how far we’ve traveled away from this earth, no matter how strongly we pray for our lives to be taken from us, here, at this altar, we find the angel coming to us. Here, we find the soothing words of that angel speaking to us in our troubles: “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” Here, we are replenished and strengthened to journey, to continue on, to go out and do the work that is expected of us in the world. Here, we find true refreshment, true quenching, true fulfillment.

So, come. Eat. Drink. And live fully the life that has been given us.