Sermon, 2021.8.8: "The Plenteous Redemption of the Bread of Life"

 

Ben Miller

“The Plenteous Redemption of the Bread of Life”

A sermon delivered at Christ Episcopal Church (Lead, SD)

XI Sunday After Pentecost, 2021.8.8

Season After Pentecost : Proper XIV (Track 1), Year B

II Sam 18.5-9, 15, 31-33 / Ps 130 / Eph 4.25-5.2 / Jn 6.35, 41-51

Do you know why the Crucifixion of Jesus is called the Passion of the Christ? It’s not about feelings or strong emotions, although there were many strong feelings and much weeping and gnashing of teeth involved in that event.

It’s called the Passion of the Christ because it’s derived from the Latin word for “suffering.”
So here’s the thing. The same Latin word for “suffering” is also how we get the word “passive.” And what does it mean to be passive? To be passive is to not be active—when you are active, you do things. You make things happen. When you are passive, you don’t do anything—you let things happen to you.

And this connection between the words passion and passive is why I have risked the horrible cliché of opening a sermon with etymology. Mea culpa. We name our Lord’s suffering the Passion of the Christ because it is a  fundamentally passive affair. When he was betrayed, and arrested, and handed over to suffering and death, Jesus was passive. He was letting these things happen to him. He allowed himself to be a victim of the Roman Empire’s cruel hand: he allowed himself to take verdict of trial by mob and the punishment of the most humiliating form of execution in that society. 

Think about that for a moment. Jesus was helpless. Nailed hands and feet. Bleeding. Thirsty. Hungry. Naked (unlike the merciful modesty of most artistic depictions of the crucifixion). It’s easy to take for granted that the Passion is significant. We know this, and so does God. But it was not seen that way by the people around Jesus. The Crucifixion’s divine power was hidden as he suffered and died. No, none of Jesus’ disciples saw any sense in what was happening. They abandoned him. The soldiers laughed at him. Even one of the thieves suffering beside our Lord thought this man claiming to be Messiah was just a big joke. 

I’m asking you to think about the senselessness of the Passion because our first Scripture this morning also deals with a senseless death. Today Absalom, David’s favorite son, is murdered in a humiliating and unceremonious manner. You see, last week the prophet Nathan warned that the sword would not leave David’s house after David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah. And now we have flash forwarded to the chief fruits of David’s sin. 

Absalom in this chapter was living in rebellion against David’s dynasty. You see, Absalom’s half-brother, Amnon, had raped Tamar, Absalom’s full-blooded sister— David’s daughter. Yes, David’s royal court is that messed up. So in revenge Absalom ordered a hit on Amnon, and fled the royal court, and after being forced back to the court, plots a revolt against David and manages to take over Jerusalem. Israel is now in another civil war, with one side for Absalom and the other for David. 

This is where we find ourselves today in II Samuel. Absalom, like David, was said to be handsome and strong. He was David’s favorite and an heir to the throne. Yet this cannot save him. He dies a humiliating death due to bad luck—his very head is caught in a tree and he dangles, helpless, like a sheep ready for slaughter. And who is the one who delivers the killing blow? Well, it is Joab’s own men. Joab is David’s chief general. The lectionary leaves out this detail today, but if you read the whole chapter, all of II Samuel 18, you can see that these men are on Jaob’s orders. And in fact, before Joab’s men strike Absalom, Joab stabs him first! He stabs him even though one of his own men had protested against such a course of action! So David’s favorite son has been murdered at the orders of one of David’s closest men. Joab has contradicted what David told us in the beginning of the reading: Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom (18.5). 

But Joab does not care. He has a hard heart and a hard sense of justice and will let nothing stand in the way of anyone who threatens his king. 

So Absalom dangles a helpless man to die a senseless death. He doesn’t even get to say anything today.

And it is not just Absalom who is helpless. The whole chapter, David was doing exactly what he did when he saw Bathsheba on the roof. He’s just sitting here. He sits and waits for Joab’s messenger the Cushite to come to deliver the horrible news. 

Yes, David is a passive figure in this story. There is a sad sense of futility in his life now. His deepest wishes for his son are brutally violated. Multiples heirs in his line have died. The stability of his kingdom is threatened. I wonder what David imagined as he sat at the gate, waiting for news about the battle. Did he wonder why one’s plans in life never work out? Did he think about why people suffer senselessly?

Perhaps these thoughts added to his grief as he hears the Cushite and weeps:

O my son, Absalom, 

my son, my son, Absalom! 

Would I had died instead of you, 

O Absalom, my son, my son! (18.33) 

Out of the depths has David cried to the Lord, hoping for deliverance.

Where has the Absalom been in your life? The event that makes you feel helpless?

And how often have you had these moments in life?

How often have there been no words left, except for a single phrase repeated in tears and frustration? Absalom, O Absalom.

How often have we prayed, or sighed, or wept out, something like today’s Psalm,
Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord? (130.1)

The psalm says today, I wait for the Lord. (130.4) 

How often has this been hard for us to do? 

I am here to point you to David today, and to the Psalmist today, to simply say, 

It is okay to grieve.

It is okay to feel helpless in the face of it all. 

Who could help it? This is part of the world in which we live. 

Death is a wound in the universe, and you don’t need me to tell you that this wound never seems to stop bleeding. And if you’re not careful, these wound make you mean. If you’re not careful, these wounds twist you into the kind of person that the Letter to the Ephesians warns against today, and this simply grieves the Holy Spirit of God. (4.30)

And yet in the midst of all this, our heavenly Father has looked upon us with tender mercy, to deal gently with us exactly the way Absalom was not. 

With the Lord there is plenteous redemption. (Psalm 130.6)

This is why the Son of God came down from heaven. 

He saw all of our helplessness and did not despise it, but experienced it himself, all so that we may be transformed into a new kind of person who does not hunger and thirst. This is the promise of the Gospel. 

We are hungry and thirsty to make sense of our lives, and to make sense of what is outside our control. 

We hunger to make sense of senselessness.

And to this Christ came down from heaven to be our bread. And not just a cheap fix—not the corn flakes of heaven! No, Christ came down to be the bread we truly need. And what is this bread? The Scripture concludes today,

The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6.51)

And what kind of flesh? 

This was a human flesh, our very own. 

It was a flesh that knew what it was like to be hungry, and weary, and sad. 

It was a flesh that suffered. 

It was a flesh that knew what it was like to be helpless.

Christ experienced this senselessness. He became like Absalom and David for our sakes. 

Like Absalom, Christ dangled from the tree, a helpless Son.

In suffering for our sake he makes sure that the suffering inflicted by this world is not our destruction, against all odds.

It is the senselessness of the Passion of our Christ that has the power to bring us to our senses.

 

And the senses needed in this world are the tenderhearted senses of love. 

Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 5.2)

It is the love of God, given in the Passion of our Christ, that is our bread to heal our wounds. It is the love of God, given in the Passion of the Christ, that is our bread to make us strong, to make us a people who do not grieve as isolated individuals without hope—but rather, Christ works in us to build us all up as One Body with members who support each other through every trial and every grief. 

Christ told us today, 

Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. (John 6.47–48)

Take this bread today. 

Have faith that God loves you in the midst of your worst pain and grief. 

Have faith that as we walk in love, we shall be more and more tightly sealed (Eph 4.30) in the infinite heart of Christ. 

Have faith that if God would not let death and senselessness destroy his only Son, 

God will never let any death or senselessness destroy you.

Because with God, all things are possible, and the plenteous redemption (Ps 130.6) of the Passion shall come as surely as bread feeds five thousand.

Gracious Father, 

whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven 

to be the true bread which gives life to the world:

Evermore give us this bread, 

that he may live in us, and we in him; 

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, 

one God, world without end. 

Amen. 

Word count: 1671