The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Sermons Often Go Astray June 25. 2004



There are a lot of things going on this weekend... I'm going to see the new F9/11 movie, Driving Josh to the airport at 3:00am (he's going to he Apple Developers Conference on Scholarship) on Saturday, Attending the Ordination of one of my friends that same day, weeding the garden, giving a sermon on Sunday, and celebrating my mother's birthday that day too (Along with keeping my eyes open for a place to live). To help ease the weekend from unnecessary stress I had my sermon all ready for Sunday and would have just needed to "proclaim the good news." No such luck. I was going to preach about the eucharist and it's place in the modern church.

Scandal in the church! The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) is a fairly progressive christian denomination (though it still needs some work... at least it is questioning itself and finding different answers). At any rate, a lesbian couple at the First Presbyterian Church of Rensselaer requested to use the church for a baby shower. They also requested to use the church newsletter to invite everyone to the shower. The session of the church (of which I am a voting member) approved the request without any real discussion but voted no to the use of the church newsletter as an announcement service. We would allow the couple to use the church bulliten board as a place for announcement and of course they can always announce the blessed event during the service on Sundays. No problem right? Wrong. The former pastor of church accused the session of being homophobic! We have since told her that the issue of homosexuallity didn't even cross our minds (at least not mine and hersay knowledge from others suggest so). People's feelings have been hurt in the church.

Because of this, I have decided to change to subject of my sermon to celebrating the eucharist to celebrating hospitality and using the story of Sodom to challange preconcieved notions of marginalizing homosexuals (or any other group that is being marginalized). But I didn't want to let my sermon on the eucharist go to waste. So, I include snipped sections of it here. ps I'm so going to find the limitation, the blog only allows 2713 characters Update... I fixed the bug and now it allows 2713 in the main body and 'unlimited' in the extended portion.

Eucharist: A Liberating Theology

The Eucharist is a meal of a people liberated....
But has often times been the shackles by which their hearts have been imprisoned.
For me, the roots of the Eucharist are in the liberation meal of the Passover. The first Passover was instituted by Moses (or God, depending with whom you speak) while the Hebrews were still in bondage. It was and is the meal of the last plague sent by God to free the Hebrews. A meal shared while the angel of death 'passed over' the houses of those who believed and acted on the words of God delivered by Moses.1 The meal that was started in plague and bondage became a meal of liberation. This instituted the liberation story told of the people of Abraham and Sarah. It was told in the time of Jesus and continues on to this day. This meal of Passover was not only celebrated in the time of Jesus but also celebrated by Jesus.2 Now, whether the Last Passover Supper celebrated by Jesus was the institution of the Eucharist meal or just the last Passover celebrated before the Passion of Christ matters very little. Jesus fulfilled the the law within the Passover meal by completing the liberation started by God so many years ago. The liberation of Jesus created a whole new community of people set free from a bondage of sinful societal norms and structures. I believe this new community reflecting on this liberation desired a way to celebrate there freedom and a meal shared in community was what this group saw as the perfect celebration.

Sadly, because there was no single point at which the community could
draw on as the institution of such a meal, many interpretations
developed within the community.

Even more sadly the meal was turned into a restricted meal where only "the baptized faithful"3 are allowed to partake of the communion in the liberation of God. These restriction and arguments are the shackles keeping the communion of Christians from the liberation of Christ.

The idea of God as liberator is found throughout Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. It is a theme that is so common to our heritage as Christians we often times neglect the notion and devote much of our time on issues that separate us from the humanity of God. I believe Walter Brueggemann speaks to this idea of liberation in his work The liturgy of abundance, the myth of scarcity.4 This "liturgy of abundance" that Brueggemann speaks of is the heritage of liberation to which I speak. Brueggemann speaks of the Hebrews being set free from Pharaoh's fear of scarcity,5 of God's love coming to the Hebrews in the wilderness as manna6, of Joshua and the generosity of God,7 and finally of the Jesus Christ.8 All of these stories point directly to the generosity of God towards a people in need. That is to say, these are stories of God liberating a people from the bondage of societal structures built and building the notions lack, sin, and death. This liberation can be found connected tothe celebration or 'thanksgiving' of a meal shared in the abundance of God. The meal is a Worship of the God who frees, a thanksgiving, a Eucharist! All these meals are truly the Lord's Supper.

The communion "meal" that we celebrate today in many of our Christian churches is a far cry from the shared common meals of the first century Christians.9 There is not much information on an institution or even general guidelines for the type of Eucharist attended by the early Christian communities, but from the writings in Scripture and other early Christian documents, we can see that the Eucharist meal was not a small portion of bread stuff and an even smaller portion of wine or juice. The early Christians celebrated a full meal in which some could even get drunk10 with the amount of food and drink that was available. Dennis E. Smith and Hal E. Taussig write extensively on this subject in their work Many Tables, The Eucharist in the New Testament and Liturgy Today.11 The authors bring to light the fact that Jesus never instituted or commanded his followers to hold a meal. This work also destroys many of the notions held about the proper model for the Eucharistic meal. The early Christians, according to the authors, were as divided about the meaning and mode of the meal as we Christians today.12 Dissenting from Smith and Taussing slightly, I believe there was something common within all of these meals and that was the celebration of the abundance and the liberation of God bestowed upon the people. Even today among the many faceted Christian Denominational Church, we see this common thread in our celebration of the Eucharist. We celebrate, we believe in Christ and thus we believe and celebrate with the Eucharist meal. Even though we have this common thread as the first century Christians did, there are some within the body of believers who will deny those from other faith traditions the sharing in the celebration of God's liberation.13 We have turned the celebration which binds all humanity together into a binding of our hearts and minds and separating us from others because of social and semantic differences.

We are a divided people though we are prayed for by Jesus "that [we] all may be one"14 It has been our own arrogance that has led to the division. We have not trusted in God's abundance and liberation to set us free from the chains of despair. As such we have become frightened of others and other's views so we must assert our own bias views against others which causes more division. Our brokenness is not all the Church's fault. Many of our prejudices have stemmed from the fears within the society and community we live. Iris Young points out in her work Justice and the Politics of Difference15 that many social groups oppress others simply because they are "others" and part of a group that is hated by society.16 It is these fears or this "belief in the myth of scarcity"17 that has caused many deep wounds within the joining together of humanity generally and the Church particularly. We have barred entrance to the table of the Lord simple because we are afraid. God has set us free, has liberated us from the beginning our our awakening and yet we still do not trust in the abundance of God and let ourselves be set free.

It is a sad and pathetic state in which the Church of God is in today. When walls of division are built up day by day, what hope do we have? Our hope must be in the Lord, in the freedom and liberation that has been offered by God. It is not enough to say we are liberated we must rise up and tear down the walls surrounding the table of the Lord. The Lord has called many and we are not the ones who have authority to turn them away. We should be the ones turned away for we live in fear and scarcity. What right do we have to celebrate the abundance and liberation of God when we do not know or believe in God's abundance and liberation? We must turn from our division and celebrate all of humanity with God as free. Just as God called his people out of Egypt, so to are we called away from our hatred and fear. We must break free from the shackles we have place around our hearts and the Eucharist and celebrate the Lord's Table with our true liberation of being connected to God and all of creation. We are imago dirt and God has touched our being.

 
1. Exodus 11:1 - 12:30
2. Luke 22:14-15
3. Book of Order, W-2.4006, Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (USA), Louisville, KY, 2002
4. Brueggemann, Walter, "The Liturgy of abundance, the myth of scarcity", The Christian Century March 24-31, 1999
5. ibid. p 342
6. ibid. p 342
7. ibid. p 343
8. ibid. p 345-347
9. Smith, Dennis E. & Taussig, Hal E., Many Tables The Eucharist in the New Testament and Liturgy Today, Trinity Press International Philidelphia,1990, p38
10. ibid.
11. ibid. p. 68-69
12. ibid. p. 69-70
13. ibid.
14. John 17:21
15. Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990
16. ibid. p 58-61
17. Brueggemann, "The Liturgy of Abundance and the Myth of Scarcity", 1999
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David  Friday, June 25. 2004 @ 16:32
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www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com
#1 Justin (Homepage) on 2004-06-25 17:57 (Reply)
http:// www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com/

hmmm... If aliens came down and enacted the crimes that people like Michael Moore, Derick Jensen, Daniel Quinn exposed I don't think anyone would argue but because humans love to live in a world of make believe they don't want to see that there are any problems as long as THEY are "safe and secure." Who cares about anyone else?... right?

Books you might want to read that are not by Michael Moore but say the same thing in different words:
Books by Daniel Quinn
http://www.ishmael.com/welcome.cfm
# The Holy
# The Man Who Grew Young
# Daniel Quinn
# After Dachau
# Ishmael
# My Ishmael
# The Story of B
# The Tales of Adam and The Book of the Damned
# Beyond Civilization
# Providence
Books by Derrick Jensen
http://www.derrickjensen.org/
# Walking on Water: Reading Writing and Revolution
# Strangely Like War
# The Culture of Make Believe
# A Language Older than Words
# Listening to the Land

Imperialism and Facism(Corporatism)+ is alive and well in this country

+corporatism or corporativism (Italian corporativismo) is a political system in which legislative representation is given to industries or professional and economic groups. Ostensibly, the entire society is to be run by decisions collectively made by these groups. It is a form of class collaboration put forward as an alternative to class conflict and was first proposed in Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum which influenced Catholic trade unions which were organised in the early twentieth century to counter the influence of trade unions founded on a socialist ideology. The Vatican's ideas were also influential in the development of fascist economic theory.
#2 David (Homepage) on 2004-06-28 12:10 (Reply)
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It emphasizes the degradation of the workday and the deflation of wages in the USA. The USA has gone through the most massive dislocation of jobs in its history while the cry for more and more so called free trade continues. Actually free trade is not even really trade. The real commodities are not products but workers who are pitted against one another in a survival of the fittest mode. A new working poor class has been created in the USA while a destitute working poor class down to wage slave labor and even child labor is promoted abroad. The USA also finds itself as an economic colonialist with its interests now spread across the globe.
In the past, the USA help other nations develope local value added economies. The Marshall Plan helped restore Europe and the Far East based on the awesome power of our industrial might. Successful economies were fostered to duplicate the USA sucess and not export it as a commodity.
In turn the workday has degraded. Workers no longer can rely on any long term way of providing for their families. In the past, production workers made enough money to get married, buy a home and raise a family. Now that part of the Middle Class has been destroyed and there is no possible way a low paid service industry can replace this success.
Capitalism and free enterprise should be a simple process based on raising or making something and selling it at a reasonable markup. Today investments and the manipulation of corporation funds in a money game has taken over the process. International entities like the WTO and World Banks control the flow of wealth outside any real democratic process and certainly without the consent of the workers involved.
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#2.1 Tapart News Advocate (Homepage) on 2005-05-28 19:52 (Reply)
Blah, blah, blah...Sheez, write a book, why don't you.
#3 McSchmellman on 2004-06-30 12:09 (Reply)

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