Living Bread As Covenant: Our Gift of Holy Vulnerability - August 9, 2009 at St. Stephen's Church, Reno

John 6:35, 41-45

Bread is central to your identity as a congregation not the least through your bread program and love of hospitality. Bread is central to the larger church too. Stories about bread are stories about people in relationship with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Bread is the conduit of all of these relationships – but not just any bread -- the Living Bread.

One of my favorite bread stories is the one at Emmaus after Jesus’ resurrection when the disciples did not recognize Jesus until they saw him in the breaking of the bread. These were his closest friends, but they did not recognize Jesus until they shared a meal with him. The Emmaus story reminds us of the centrality of the Living Bread.

Bread was central to the Emmaus story, as Jesus had become the Living Bread. Bread was also essential to the disciples’ story in the way it helped them to recognize Jesus. At Emmaus, Jesus’ story and the disciples’ story became one in their shared communion. Living Bread was a sign of the diversity of their transformation. Their stories depended on one another through their relationship with each other. As Jesus was changed into the Living Bread the disciples began their transformation through the Living Bread.

I am reminded of the OT text – Jer 31:31 – the prophet said of the Lord, “I will make a new covenant with them….”I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The new covenant in the New Testament is Jesus. Through Jesus’ passion and resurrection we have been gifted with the Living Bread as our means to deeper communion through an ongoing process of transformation.

One way of seeing the Living Bread is as our covenant with one another in and through Jesus. Often there has been some confusion that a covenant is the same as a binding contract. That is you do this and I will do that and if one of us fails we will take disciplinary action against the other. Covenants are not hierarchical pacts that coerce the other to stay in relationship, but rather an expression of our desire to be together. Christian covenants are based on the virtue of unconditional love. A covenant is less about finding the right words to exactly describe the relationship. Contracts can never be covenants as they attempt to freeze relationships into place so they will never change.

Covenants anticipate that people will change and thus leaves space for change to gracefully emerge and tenderly engaged. Covenant provides a structure so that our best intentions are given the space to breathe and unfold bringing us into unexpected places of grace. Structure should not be confused with authoritative top-down hierarchy. Living Bread transforms structure through covenant. Living Bread as covenantal structure reminds us what we want to be mutually intentional about with each other.

A covenant that has shaped my life is made up of only eight words. In 2005 when Stefani and I were preparing to be married we went on an eight days retreat in the Tetons between Idaho and Wyoming. It was an Episcopal parish whose primary ministry was to offer centering prayer retreats. The church was across the street from a small rustic hotel where retreatants stayed. Our time together initiated a process of an unfolding covenant.

During our one-week of being together on retreat we decided to keep a journal as a means of communicating through the silence. Stefani had the journal from the morning to the evening and I had it from evening to morning. We wrote our reflections on our prayer as well as expressions of our appreciation and affection for each other. We also wrote down the ways we were beginning to envision our life together. In addition to our individual reflections, we would also write responses in the margins on the other’s comments.

Out of this retreat/journaling experience emerged an expression of our love and commitment. Specifically eight words emerged telling our unfolding story. These words are: truth, intimacy, hospitality, table fellowship, celebration, abundance, vulnerability and joy.

With further reflection we saw natural pairs: truth/abundance, hospitality/table fellowship, celebration/joy and intimacy/vulnerability. As we designed our wedding rings it seem as natural to decouple the paired words. In each of our wedding rings we have four words from each of the four pairs of words. Stefani’s ring has truth, hospitality, intimacy and celebration. My ring has joy, vulnerability, abundance and table fellowship.

Together through these two rings is the expression of our shared vision for a full life. Through these rings we are saying to one another and publicly to others that we are more likely to live a life of truth, intimacy, joy, hospitality, abundance, celebration, vulnerability and table fellowship when we are together than if we were apart.

The words did not compel us to live this way. We already were living in this way but we both wanted to deepen our experience through a shared life. In the presence of the Living Bread we exchanged our wedding rings to remind us of our primary covenant with God who forever calls us into an ongoing process of transformation.

I acknowledge to you that there’s an innocent quality to the story I just told you. However, have no fear, I am not innocent to the pain and suffering associated with a betrayal of power. Over the years of my life I have witnessed and experienced such betrayals where I have worked as well as where I have worshipped.

As a young man I aspired to be a “wounded healer” to use Henri Nouwen’s term. At the same time I was fortunate enough to realize that I was then too wounded to be a priest. Then I yearned to receive healing more than I wished to be a sign of it. I left seminary and only returned twenty years later.

In the interim years with the blessing of wise mentors I sorted out my own issues of faith identity, family history and my issues with authority. During these years a new vision of ministry was unfolding within me.

Some ministers seem to think that they can minister and heal out of their open and unhealed wounds. These ministers have not done their own inner work and can be dangerous to the People of God. The ministers who are even more dangerous don’t even know they are wounded and undiscerning churches ordain them.

I am not telling you anything that you don’t already know very well. I am confident that you like me know that it is the Living Bread who heals not even the most non-anxious priest or lay minister. It is when we believe that either priest or layperson heals our yearnings that we betray the power of the Living Bread as the only wounded healer.

In today’s second reading we are being called to deepen our relationship with each other by becoming imitators of the Living Bread. Caution is necessary here, for we must never come to believe that we can become God for then we betray Living Bread as our healing power. The emphasis must always be on our being imitators.

All of us are always in process of becoming more loving to be in communion with Living Bread but not to replace the centrality of Living Bread. It means that we bear with one another’s stories, questions and unfolding hopes. Yet this kind of transformation is challenging if we have ever been betrayed for we fear the unknown cost of our being vulnerable.

I know as a chaplain and as a spiritual director that the stories we tell our selves and each other reflect where we are in this healing process by what we say as much as by what is left unsaid. Michael Lapsey is an Anglican priest in South Africa. In April 1990 he lost both of his hands and one eye opening a letter bomb targeted for him due to his anti-apartheid activism.

He has spent his whole life since teaching people about reconciliation and communion. In a sermon he gave at All Saints Church Pasadena he talked about his travels around the world. As a means to come to know his hosts when he visited people’s homes he would ask them if he could see their family photo albums.

Lapsey noted that as people showed him their albums they seem to skip over selected stories. Sometimes albums had an empty space where a picture had been torn out. Lapsey would inquire what about the picture passed over or the empty spaces. He said sometimes people refused to talk about it and at other times people would briefly say something clearly wanting to move on with little notice. However the pain Lapsey saw in their eyes told another story.

As it turned out in almost all cases the empty space was covering up some form of deep hurt or betrayal. The picture seemed to be pulled out as an attempt to extinguish their memory, their pain and mostly represented their blunt refusal to ever be vulnerable again. Who among us cannot identify with their conviction not to be hurt?

Like couples we who are drawn to live in a parish community imperfectly enter into each other’s lives and if we are humble enough we even know that we will inevitably fail one another. Just as in other healthy relationships we are not paralyzed by this fear for we acknowledge Living Bread is our only source of communion and healing. Through the Living Bread we relearn a holy vulnerability that those in Lapsey’s story must have thought was not possible.

It has been my experience that when we forget the centrality of the Living Bread it is then that we risk betraying each other by imposing our false idols on one another. Vulnerability is not the source of our betrayal rather it is our unhealed wounds coupled with false power that imitates the power of God when we most risk betraying each other.

The Living Bread discerns and cherishes our holy vulnerability. “To you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.” The Living Bread knows each one of us in our blessed vulnerability that cannot be surpassed even by the most affirming intimacy of two lovers. Would being known in this way embarrass or shame us? For the most part I suspect not.

My sense is that the Living Bread would tenderly tell our stories. As Living Bread speaks all our pictures are cherished. Then even the pictures as in Lapsey’s story that still provoke pain would have a sense of deep healing. To be known by each other in the way that God has come to know us is our lifelong work.

As we learn to find our satisfaction only in the Living Bread then we will become vulnerable to each other letting our stories gracefully unfold. At its best this way of being is a contagious process where story begets story and questions begets new stories.

Be cautious though of people who promise you a way to fast forward yours or your congregation’s story without struggle for these are false idols of Living Bread. Our covenant call is to live into an unfolding story entrusted to communion with the Living Bread. A sign of our holy vulnerability and patience with this unfolding story is when we can acknowledge to each other that we are each only imitators of Living Bread and celebrate this without shame.