The Eliot Church of Newton

When I began my ministry here, Tony had been visiting this particular institution once every other month, offering a Protestant service of worship that included the sacrament of communion. He invited me to participate, so that we could offer this once a month, as a ministry of Eliot Church. We didn’t have any of our congregants who lived there, but it was something that had been offered for several years. Each month I visited, I never knew what or whom to expect—especially this past year when the ownership changed hands, and management would transition. One month, I showed up, and all the residents were watching the opening Red Sox game of the season.   One month, there was a woman who kept asking me for dinner, which I would repeatedly answer, not yet. But we will have communion, and which she thoroughly enjoyed after drinking the fruit of the vine by crying out “YUMMY!!!”

Last winter, there was a new woman there that I had never met.   She seemed to not be all that engaged, but I always make it a point to offer communion to each person in the room. 
“Would you like communion?” I asked her, as I held out the wafer.
“What the h--- is that?” She barked at me….
“It’s the Bread of Life, for you” I said, in my most pastoral, gentle but authoritative tone. 

She opened her mouth, and I laid the wafer on her tongue. She closed her mouth, and her eyes, and then suddenly she looked at me, and said
“This tastes like SH--!” and opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, expecting me to retrieve the wafer from her mouth. 

Sigh.          

The Bread of Life. 
I guess a communion wafer doesn’t really live up to what it is supposed to symbolize, does it?   I don’t know what my aged friend expected when I offered her the wafer,
And I don’t know what she was hungry for, if she was hungry at all,
But in that moment,
She didn’t get a taste of the Bread of Life,

And it made me wonder,
About the meaning  meal we share together
Where we remember Jesus as the Bread of Life and Cup of Heaven.
What is it that we are hoping for
When we come through these doors on Sunday mornings?
What are you hungry for, this morning?  What are you seeking?

What was it the crowds were hoping for, when they chase Jesus across the lake, yet once again. Many scholars say that they continued to seek Jesus, because they saw him as one who could bring them out of poverty, feed their bellies, heal their illness, lead them like Moses led their people out of Egypt. 

Maybe they didn’t really know what they were hungry for—but at least they knew they were hungry, and their experience of being with Jesus compelled them to dog him every chance they had. They were hungry…for something.

French philosopher, Simone Weil, wrote, in her book Waiting for God, “The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”

So…are you hungry?

I am.
That’s why I keep showing up on Sunday mornings, that’s why I keep seeking Jesus, that’s why I continue live in the mystery of this faith that is ours. 
Sometimes,
I am hungry for something to just happen, a moment of grace, a moment of healing, a knowing look from a fellow traveler…
Every now and then, 
I am ravenous for the Bread of Life…
I am starving to be at table, like this one, longing to share a taste of bread, a swallow of the vine, as we pray for and with one another…
Hoping to encounter the living Bread as we break bread.
And indeed, many times I do encounter the Bread of Life and it is nourishing and fulfilling.

And, now and again, I don’t.

What do we do?
What should we think when we come when we come hungry, to this table, to Sunday morning or personal prayer, and we what we get tastes more like a bland communion wafer or dried old crust of bread? What happens when we don’t “find” what we are hungry for? 

Maybe it’s because we would rather be filled—a quick lunch, like the crowd, not really daring to hunger for Bread sent from heaven. Or maybe, we have forgotten there are lots of kinds of bread, and we can find it in many of different ways.

At least we know we are hungry, and when we are hungry, we search for food.

But food perishes. If you are a bread baker, you know that you don’t bake all the bread you might need for a year at time. No, you just bake a little at time. 
Isn’t it the same with God? It’s why we pray “Give Us this Day our DAILY Bread.”
We don’t have one experience of God that lasts a lifetime—no, we enter into relationship with God, every day, to be fed, strengthened, and transformed.[1] 
And there are so many ways to be sustained by the Bread of Life—through worship, through a meditative walk, through seeking justice, through whimsy, through a deep conversation with a friend, or in the silence of companions who know you all too well.  There is an abundance of bread, with much to spare.  

We can be filled. And we will hunger again. And we can feed again.

The crowds hounded Jesus.
They said, “Give us this bread of life”

Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life”
I am hungry.
Are you?