Sermon Sunday 9th October

Last Sunday of Creationtime

This mornings reading offer a smorgesbord of sermon possibilities. Exodus gives us the story of passover – of deliverance. 1 Corinthians offers an image of the Body of Christ where all are valued and welcome and the Gospel contains three seperate but related thoughts about feasting – where to sit, who to invite and the invitation which God extends.

I want ot finish this creationtimes series with four thoughts around food, but more specifically around this meal which we share in Church – this Eucharist or communion service. The things I would like to focus in on are Celebration, Communion, Contemplation and Confidene.

Celebration

When I am explaining what an altar is for to primary school children, I often refer to celebration and say that we have a sort of party here every week. If you have ever been around children when they are getting ready for a party, you will know what I mean. Their whole attention is on the activity, they look forward to the wonder of cake and balloons, of games and presents.

Celebration has that childlike quality of letting go, of being in the moment, of allowing vulnerability.

I wonder how many of us came out this morning ready to celebrate – with that eager anticipation of a little child, dressed and ready for a party, holding a carefully wrapped gift for God – the gift of all that we are. Perhaps that is an off-putting thought – after all life is real and complicated and come days we just do not feel like celebrating at all.

But ce;lebration is not about marking perfection, if it were none of us would ever celebrate anything – there are always problems. Celebrating does not deny the reality of life, it affirms who we are truly created to be – and that is people of God, a God who celebrates us.

Food is a big part of many parties and in this celebration here we are offered sustenance and blessing – a real feast and we pray and work towards a time when there is nearer perfection in our world as we ask God to take and heal all of us.

Communion (community sacrament)

As I said a few weeks ago, the word communion emphasises the joined up-ness of our being church together. We find community in this celebration and we extend community from it.

Extending community is not only about getting people in the door on a Sunday morning – it has a much wider reach. Extending community has implications for how we live in all of our lives and that is why we take time to consider issues like food, its production and distribution and the effect that has on other people, the environment and the balance of all our lives.

I was in Reading on Friday and there was a street evangelist preaching a Gospel of fear, of avoiding eternal punishment. I asked hime whether he did not think that people were already depressed enough and that God's love would be a better place to start – the God who made us from the beginning meets us at God's holy table. I would hope and pray that our motivation for going from this place, our motivation for ammendment of life and fair living is that love – and not a primal fear of what might happen if we are not good enough. There is enough guilt around to last all of us a long, long time – we may feel bad about our global food structures but if we are fixing them from the positive of God's love for us all, we will be more successful.

Contemplation

As we have seen already in this sermon series Luke's Gospel sits between the here and the hereafter – he writes both of the present reality of the Kingdom and that to come. When he is talking about banquets and feasts he is talking both about the reality of God's call to feast now and also the more perfect heavenly banquet to come.

We are living in a foretaste of perfection and one of the characteristics of that foretaste is abundance. This can be difficult to understand – our society is greedy and we like to hold on to things – but abundance is about outflowing, not about storage.

So as we come together week by week, we are called to reflect, not on a frightening judgementalism but rather on God's provision. Yes, there is real need in our world and yes we are called to address it – but behind the veil of humanity there lies a God of real generosity and in that generous interaction with us we can catch a glimpse of the eternal.

Confidence

Sometimes it seems as though every piece of news media is intent on denting our confidence. We are simply not sure that we are getting it right. We slide into a sort of entertainment providing mode where we want everything to be as it is everywhere else in life so that people will fall easily into our familiarity.

This meal which we offer as a church, this communion, the Eucharist, is both familiar and strange. It is simply bread and wine, every day stuff of life, but it is also taken and changed into something else, something of God, something holy – and this is a paradigm for everything that we are as a Church.

We are both ordinary, ordinary people made just like other ordinary people. Not immune from the worries and problems of ordinary life. But we are also different – we are caught up and blessed in this meal – changed and sanctified by God – and although we cherish that we do not own it.

This should give us some confidence – it is not ourselves we preach but Jesus – and if Jesus can lift us and bless us then we have to trust that He can do the same for those around us. When we call for justice in God's name we are not uttering a magical charm which will solve all the problems of the world but we are uttering a deep cry which resonates with all eternity.

We eat with joy, we eat together, we eat with anticipation and we eat assuredly – celebration, communion, contemplation and confidence. Our season on food ends, as it should, with the true bread of the world and that is our commonality with each other and with the rest of the world – commonlity in creation and need and invitation.

So as we come to the altar lets come as people who are nourished by one body and share in one cup and pray for one world where everyone eats enough food and where we put that commonality trustingly into God's hands and see all our food as truly his loving work of creation.