October 5, 2008 ~ World Communion Sunday
Luke 24: 13-15 and 28-35
“Translating Bread”

How do you know the identity of someone you love, someone about whom you care deeply, someone you know intimately? What makes up our “identity” enough so that those closest to us can recognize us?

On first blush, it’s all about looks. “I’d recognize that smile anywhere!” “You have the most unique eye color.” “She’d stand out in a crowd!” But appearance goes only so far, for many of us have shouted out across a street or parking lot thinking we were calling for a friend or relative, only to discover when that person turned around quizzically she or he was not who we expected. And then there’s the firefighter or soldier hurt in an accident whose own children recoil when they see the disfigured face. Or, more commonly, depending upon our exterior identity fails all of us when so-called “maturity” changes our body shape or our hair line or color, or our walk so that we are hardly the person smiling in that high school yearbook photograph.

If we don’t identify the ones we love by looks, perhaps we know them by another sense. They may have a distinctive voice, like a raspy Tallulah Bankhead or a nasally William Shatner or a reassuring Morgan Freeman. Smells are also powerful indicators of identity. The perfume my middle school choir teacher wore was so rare and compelling, even now, thirty-some years later, I stop in my tracks anytime I smell it. And touch… “O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!” extols one of the lovers in the Hebrew love song, the Song of Songs. (2:6) Knowing the feel of a loved ones skin or hair or embrace can seal an identity like nothing else.  [See Song of Songs excerpts below...]
 
But there are also less physical and more cerebral ways of knowing the identity of someone. Scouts and sleuths and CSI Agents alike have mastered the techniques necessary for determining who was here and why. Our modern conveniences help us out, when our skills are less honed. If we have Call Waiting on our phone at home, we can either see a phone number pop up on the screen, or even the name of the party calling. On cell phones there is no need whatsoever to remember the numbers of your best friends and closest family members, for you’ve programmed them to recognize their identity. On the computer, Screen Names that can be either recognizable or deceiving help or hinder knowing someone’s identity.

I ask these questions about knowing someone because I am eager to appreciate how you recognize Jesus when he is near? The one to whom we have pledged our allegiance, our hearts, our lives, is also the one who is hardest to know it seems. At least in his post-resurrection way of being in the world.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t seem to know that it was Jesus beside them. They walked seven miles with him, so his identity clearly wasn’t based on his appearance or the sound of his voice or the gait of his step. Even so, one might have expected when he began teaching on the scriptures, something they surely had heard him do time and time again, they would have recognized him. But no, it wasn’t in anything their senses could identify.

Do we spend most of our time looking for the resurrected Jesus in a form that we would easily identify? Haven’t we, too, been deceived by our senses and our rational minds to look for the Christ in the familiar, the traditional, the accepted ways? How much in our society has the name “Christian” stamped all over it, but, in fact, lures us away from really seeking the resurrected Christ in our midst. Even Jesus said, “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 7:21)

Two movies helped me get into Jesus’ sandals, as he tried to overcome the barriers of death and fear to empower his own disciples to recognize his identity. One is Heaven Can Wait where a football player killed in a freak accident comes back as someone else, and tries to say the right thing or do the right action to get his beloved to know that it is he who has come back for her. More recently the movie Ghost, in which Whoopi Goldberg is a psychic whose body accepts the spirit of a man wrongly murdered in order to have one last experience of grace with his grieving wife. Both show the frustrations and agony of trying to convince someone of your identity without having all the familiar ways available to you.

How then did these two disciples finally come to understand that the identity of the one with whom they had shared their journey was, in fact, Jesus, the Christ? It was in the breaking of the bread! It was in the sharing of a meal rather than in physical manifestation or rational thought that Jesus became known to them. This is a critical awareness for those of us who live now almost 2,000 years after he walked the earth in flesh and blood. We must resist those who tell us that we must simply rely upon looks or logic, but we must rather depend upon the experience of Christ in the breaking of the bread.

The word “companion” literally “bread fellow” from the Latin “com-“ meaning “with” and “panis” meaning “bread.” (1) Our companion is the one who breaks bread with us on the journey, and who do we want more to be our traveling companion, our “bread fellow” our “bread friend” than Jesus?

We need to break bread more often. This means, as we Disciples of Christ are prone to do, every time we gather for worship, but also we should be in worship more often. The more we come to this table, the more likely we are to see Jesus, experience the Resurrected Christ, to know God embodied in our lives.

But we must also break bread with others! And I don’t simply mean hold a Communion Service with everyone we meet on the street, but to find time to sit down at a meal and get to know each other. That’s why I rejoice every single time I hear that we are going to have a fellowship dinner or potluck supper at Franklin Circle Christian Church, especially those that have no other agenda than for us to get to be with one another. Who knows, the Christ we look for may be in our own congregation!

In part, this is also why I’m pushing the upcoming Circle Service Spots, one on October 30 at the Catholic Worker Storefront on Lorain and one on November 6 with the Interfaith Hospitality Network in Tremont, because they involve sharing a meal. They involve sharing food, but not distantly, as in handing something across a meal program serving table or out a serving window, but alongside someone to get to know them. Who knows, the Jesus for whom we long may already be present in our community, just waiting for us to break bread with her or him in order to be revealed.

Janelle Eccleston and I went to hear Marian Wright Edelman this week, Civil Rights activist and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. She talked about the state of our children today, and pointed out that one of the reasons, and there are many we all acknowledge, that our children are so very much in danger these days is because we have so privatized our relationship with the children of our community. We have idolized the relationship of the family unit so much that we have abandoned our role in helping to raise ALL the children of the community. Yes, the ultimate authority with our children are in the parents or legal guardians, but that does not absolve us of being responsible for all children.

Oh, we’ll complain about other people’s children. We’ve become fanatics about dissecting how this parent or that family “ought to” raise their children, but then we go our merry way consumed with our own lives. No! God put more than one family on this planet for a reason! We are in this together! Companions on the journey!

And Edelman pointed to the mealtime as the preeminent place where we remind ourselves that we are all on this journey together. We have lost the chance to sit down around the table and get to know our own families as well as we should. That is where we talk about what it means to be a good neighbor and about the Family of God. We forget that we should, as much as is possible, set a place for someone else at our table who doesn’t have a “nuclear family unit” to eat with. And not just once in a while, but ALL THE TIME! You know I’m challenging me and my family as much, if not more than, you!

And then we need to get to know the children of our community – by name – so that we can legitimately be responsible for their upbringing and nurture. Not a Child Dedication nor Baptism goes by that I don’t ask the congregation to help take responsibility for this child or youth. How do we do this? When we have church dinners, sit with the children who may not be your own. Help them keep their elbows off the table and ask them what their favorite Wii game is (God knows I don’t know what that is, but it’s what they talk about!) Ms. Edelman said, “When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people's children, I'm doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found.” (2)

I want to know Jesus passionately. I want to see Jesus more than anything in the world. But if I’m going to have my dreams realized, then I am going to have to rely less on appearances and logic and more on sharing bread with others, especially the children of our community. We must translate bread into the language of this community, so that others will understand that in sharing bread, the sacred source of life, the divine defender of justice, the holy host of heaven can be found. Companion… That translates Bread Friend, and it’s what we, as Christians, are all about. Translating bread! Bread Friend – That is Christ’s Identity… That should be OUR identity. Let’s eat more bread!

Amen.


(1) Online Etymology Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=companion

(2) http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/marian_edelman.htm
Song of Songs

Song of Songs

From Chapter 4:
How beautiful you are, my love,
how very beautiful!
Your eyes are doves
behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats,
moving down the slopes of Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes
that have come up from the washing,
all of which bear twins,
and not one among them is bereaved.
Your lips are like a crimson thread,
and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David,
built in courses;
on it hang a thousand bucklers,
all of them shields of warriors.
Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that feed among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
I will hasten to the mountain of myrrh
and the hill of frankincense.
You are altogether beautiful, my love;
there is no flaw in you. (4)

From Chapter 5:
My beloved is all radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
beside springs of water,
bathed in milk,
fitly set.
His cheeks are like beds of spices,
yielding fragrance.
His lips are lilies,
distilling liquid myrrh.
His arms are rounded gold,
set with jewels.
His body is ivory work,
encrusted with sapphires.
His legs are alabaster columns,
set upon bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as the cedars.
His speech is most sweet,
and he is altogether desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem. (5)
 

Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2008 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096