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    • Sunday service - Holy Communion June 11, 2023 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
    • Sunday service - Holy Communion June 18, 2023 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
    • Sunday service - Holy Communion June 25, 2023 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…

Pentecost 10, Proper 13, August 1, 2021

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Beth Crane

Bread of Life

Grace Church, Sheldon

May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts of our hearts, be pleasing to you Lord.  Amen.

This week, we join Jesus again, still followed by a great crowd.  The day before, Jesus filled their bellies with bread and fish, and the crowd wanted to make Jesus king — so he could feed them like this all the time.  While they recognize that there is something tremendous and long anticipated in Jesus, this recognition remains partial, and it is not Jesus’ chosen way.  So, Jesus withdraws, away to a mountain to pray, and his disciples depart across the lake.  Later that night, Jesus rejoins them, walking across rough water.  

When the crowds awaken the next morning, they are hungry again and they wonder, where did he go?  They count the boats: only one boat is gone.  Something strange has happened, and they scratch their heads, recalling how they saw the disciples shove off without Jesus.  And yet they receive word that he is on the other side of the lake, and so they pile into boats and head after him.  They are eager for more food.  

When they find Jesus, they ask him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”  But rather than talking about his arrival time, Jesus instead talks about the bread they had eaten the day before.  He speaks of their motivations for seeking him: it is not because something miraculous had occurred, but because they want more food.  

The problem with this kind of food, however, is that it lasts just for a day.  The next day you’re hungry again.  Yet Jesus tells them, there is another food that lasts: a food which imparts strength and health and courage without end.  In fact, when Jesus fed them bread the day before, that bread was a sign pointing toward this lasting bread, given by God.  

The crowd is confused about all this talk about different kinds of bread.  So they change tactics: “what must we do to perform the works of God?” they ask him.

Jesus’ answer is again unexpected.  He does not cite the Ten Commandments or Israel’s long scriptural traditions.  Rather, the work of God, he tells them, is believing in the person whom God sends.  They must recognize a special messenger from God and trust that person.  

The crowd seems to understand that Jesus is talking about himself.  So, they ask him for a sign, so they might believe.  Moses fed the people in the wilderness, they say.  What is Jesus going to do? 

Jesus returns again to the question of bread.  It was God (not Moses) that gave Israel bread, he replies.  But that bread in the desert was not the true bread from heaven that God is giving now.  This bread is a living loaf, bringing life to the world.  

Jesus here is speaking of himself, but the crowd still misunderstands.  So, like the woman at the well, they ask for a permanent supply of this bread.  And now Jesus cuts to the chase: “I am the bread of life,” he says.   

We see other statements like this in the Gospel of John: Jesus says, I am the light of the world (8;12), I am the door for the sheep (10:7, 9), I am the good shepherd (10:11, 14), I am the true vine (15:1, 5).  In each case, Jesus uses a formula, inviting his hearers to recognize him for who he is, as God’s chosen messenger.  Against other people and other things who make similar claims, he is the true bread, the true light, the true door, the true shepherd, the true vine.

Following this statement about his identity, Jesus adds a promise: those who come to him, who recognize and trust him, will find their fill.  Jesus is speaking of another kind of hunger, one that cannot be met with food.  We are creatures made up of bodies and spirits, and we have both material and spiritual needs.  And Jesus ministers to both.  

When Jesus insists on being heavenly bread, he is not discounting the value of daily, material needs.  As we heard last week, Jesus is all the time healing the sick and feeding the hungry, and elsewhere in the Gospels, he tells his followers to pray each day for bread.  God cares about the daily necessities of our lives.  Grace Church affirms this through feeding people at the food pantry.  

So, when Jesus heals the sick and feeds the hungry, he does it because our bodily wellbeing matters for its own sake.  But he also insists that these are signs, pointing towards who he is and the deeper healing and everlasting food that he brings.

How then do we eat this living food, to satisfy our spiritual hunger?  How do find our fill of this heavenly bread that is Jesus? 

In this passage, Jesus emphasizes belief — that we see, agree, and trust him and who he claims to be as sent by God, bringing God’s restoration to all creation.  He tells the crowd: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom God has sent.”  So there is something for us to do.  

But there is also a double meaning here.  This is also the work of God.  There is something that we cannot do: that we need God to do for us.  Our trust in Jesus is also a work that God does, God’s gift to us.  So, not only does God send Jesus, the living Bread, as a gift, but God also gives us faith as a gift.  God begins and sustains our ability to believe.

Yet for those of us who have believed for many years, we still often find ourselves spiritually hungry.  We are longing for things we cannot even name.  And this is right: the present age is a mixture of joy and sorrow.  We only taste moments of consolation now, of that satisfaction and rest that Jesus promises.  We discover this in the Eucharist, in the love between friends, in the stillness of interior peace, in the beauty of creation, and in many other moments of grace, of God drawing near to us.  

However, our persistent spiritual hunger pulls us towards God and towards God’s mission of healing the world.  The fourth century African bishop Augustine said that the Christian life is a holy longing.  And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds us that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed, for they will be satisfied (Mt 5:6).  Complete satisfaction is coming, but not yet, and in the meanwhile, we long for the fullness of God’s kingdom and for feasting on heavenly bread.

So, like the crowd, we too say to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Amen.

(Author/Homilist: Emily Dubie

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All Saints Sunday Year C November 3, 2019

Posted on November 3, 2019 by Beth Crane

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

Our opening reading today is from the Book of Daniel. This book was written to inspire God’s people during a time when they were being persecuted by an extremely cruel tyrant called Antiochus IV. The book purports to be taking place at the time of the Exile from 586 to 538 B.C.E., but it was actually written during the time of Antiochus. Using information in the book, scholars can actually date it to 167-164 B.C.E. (Gene M. Tucker, Preaching through the Christian Year C, p. 482.)

We remember Daniel as the great hero who won the battle against the lions in that famous den. Our passage today describes a vision. The four winds of heaven stir up the great sea, and four great beasts come up out of the sea. The actual descriptions of the four beasts are omitted, but they represent four empires—the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Greeks.

Earthly empires rise and fall, but the holy ones of God will receive and possess God’s kingdom forever. This was a beacon of hope and inspiration to God’s people struggling under the cruelty of a tyrant who was persecuting them.

In our reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, we read of the precious inheritance we have received. Like all the saints who came before us, we have set our hope on Christ. We read these stirring words. “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know the hope to which he has called you.” There is that word again—hope. We are a people of hope.

We have received such a great gift. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, all the saints who have gone before us, those who are here now, and those who will follow, and they are all cheering us on as we run the race, following our Lord Jesus. As Sister Rachel Hosmer of the Order of Saint Helena used to say, “Christ has won the victory. We are part of the mopping up operation.”

As we celebrate All Saints Sunday and think of all those who have gone before us—Laura, Hoddie, Charlotte, Harriet, Gertrude, Geraldine, A. J., Theresa, Gwen, Ruth, Frederika, Kate, Arthur, Eva, Albert, Sue, Alvin, Nat and so many more, we contemplate our gospel for today, Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Plain.

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is easier. It has all blessings and no woes. It is placed more on a spiritual level—“Blessed are the poor in spirit” rather than simply “Blessed are the poor.” In Luke’s gospel, our Lord says, blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed on account of our Lord. Woe to those who are rich, full, laughing. Woe to you when people speak well of you. As many have observed, it is a huge reversal. 

Fred Craddock reminds us of the time when our Lord read the prophecy of Isaiah in the synagogue. When he finished, he said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled.’ (Luke 4:21.) Craddock writes, “The today that Jesus declared in Nazareth still prevails. The messiah who will come has come, and the prophecy of Isaiah  (Isaiah 61:1-2) concerning the poor, the diseased, the imprisoned, and the oppressed is no longer a hope but is an agenda for the followers of Jesus.” (Craddock, Interpretation: Luke, p.88.)

In this sermon on the plain, on the level, Jesus is calling us to take the poor and hungry as seriously as we do the rich and those who have plenty of food. This is just another way of saying that this gospel is calling us to honor our baptismal covenant to “respect the dignity of every human being.”

The last portion of this reading is even more challenging to us. Our Lord calls us to love our enemies and to pray for those who abuse us. Craddock writes, “This unit… lays down the general principle that Jesus’ followers do not reciprocate, do not retaliate, and do not draw their behavior patterns from those who would victimize them.” (Craddock, p. 89.) At the same time we need to say that, if someone is being abused, they have every right to seek help. healing, and justice. 

And then he sums it up with what we know as the Golden Rule. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Every major religion in the world has this rule or something like it. As we all know, if all of us followed the rule, God’s kingdom would come to the earth.

As we meditate on these readings, I thank God that you and I are not in this moment living in fear of being killed by someone like Antiochus IV, but there are many people who are facing such persecution in one way or another, and I hope we will pray for them and pray and work for the day when there will be peace on earth, when everyone will have enough to eat, water to drink, clothing  and safe shelter and medical care and good work to do.

As I think of these beatitudes, I think of our interfaith food shelf. People are welcomed with hospitality and respect. No one is turned away.  Our two main upstairs greeters who welcome folks and keep our records for the United Way and other agencies know almost all of our clients by name. I have seen them deal with folks who feel ashamed to have to ask for food. I have seen our volunteers extend God’s love to these people. I think that is what our Lord is talking about in this gospel.

As we celebrate with joy this great feast of All Saints, I hope we will feel the energy and love of that great cloud of witnesses cheering us on. May we continue to build God’s kingdom of peace, harmony, and wholeness  Amen.

 

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