bread and bereavement

 

SERMON PREACHED at St MARY’S, NORTH OAMARU 

and St ALBAN'S, KUROW

ORDINARY SUNDAY 19 (8^th August) 2021

Readings:

 

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 

Psalm 130

Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

 

“Oh Absalom, my son, my son Absalom.”

I know of few more spine tingling moments in the entire witness of scripture, or indeed in the entire body of literature. The complexities of the death of Absalom are many, his betrayals both perpetrated and received, (dying by the sword as he had come to live), his brutal execution, so undignified a death; only some of these have we glimpsed in this bowdlerised liturgical reading of the Old Testament Scripture. Yet the cry of his father rings out across thirty centuries, and still sends shivers down my spine.

I want to tread carefully here. There will be some of you who have experienced far more grief than I have in my relatively comfortable life. There are every day on our news feeds the sanitised tales of those across the globe who are experiencing immeasurable grief as entire communities are torn apart most obviously by COVID. Communities are torn apart every day, too, in the hidden atrocities of civil war in Myanmar, oppression in West Papua, decades old hatreds in Israel and Palestine. A bereavement is a bereavement wherever and however it is; and the loss of a child, as some of you will know with nerves only too raw, is the greatest loss of all. We can only think in horror of the families of five young people who lost their lives in Timaru last night. “Would I had died instead of you, Oh Absalom.” 

So I speak not to trivialize nor to answer the great cries of time, the “why” that reverberates through bereaved human lives. Yet somewhere, as in the too many times I have stood with grieving families, I must try to wrestle with mysteries of loss, the emptiness of a universe without one who has been loved. Today we speak theoretically perhaps, but too often the theory is reality.

At the same time I am confronted with the words of one who we call Lord, one who himself weeps at the death of those he loves, and who was himself be cut down in life’s prime, a fact we must never lose sight of no matter how well we know the resurrection story. He speaks of “I am” – the timeless un-name of God (a phrase I will unpack another time), and he speaks of bread, and he, if we weave these bread of life sayings into the entire narrative of his teachings, challenges us both to consume and to be bread for others. To be the staple of life for those who God brings across our paths, for we are called over and again to be Christ to those around us.

We cannot be that with empty words. I try to ensure words are not empty, my words are not empty, though God knows I fall short, as we all do. But to be bread of life, to be Christ bearers in the midst of grief, in the midst of a sometimes bewildering and empty universe, is to seek to dig deep into the integrity and authenticity of our faith. The bread that Jesus speaks of is the very stuff of life. “All I need is the air that I breathe,” sang the Hollies, “and to love you.” But the bread is the “love” part of that equation: we are to be bearers of love and light and hope that brings those rare dimensions into the lives of those who are groaning under whatever burdens weigh them down. Let’s not think this is melodrama: we live in a nation with ridiculously, demonically high rates of suicide. Furthermore, if we are to be honest we must acknowledge that we the Church have failed – occasionally but even that is too often – to break cycles of despair. In some lives we have even perpetrated darkness, as Royal Commissions and equivalent around the world have told us. Not us individually, we hope and pray, but we the Christian community. No wonder Jesus said something about millstones.

But I think Jesus, and John who conveys his here-complex words gives us clues about the way to be hope-bearers, life-bringers in his name. There are deep hints here about the demand to encounter Jesus again and again, and not superficially but with ever-deepening awareness, in the bread-made-body of Communion, of Eucharist, of Mass. He chooses his words carefully when he hints of this, using a harsh verb that we might translate as “munch” or “chew,” except they sound more silly than sombre. We are called to consume with intent the Spirit-enriched life force that Jesus offers us in the communion that is his gift to us. For that to be life-force of Jesus rather than flimsy wafer or crumb it must be pregnant with our desire, made possible by the Spirit; for the communion to be communion with him with his life, with his resurrection life it must be saturate with the presence of God. “Be known to us in broken bread, but do not then depart.”

We are called then so to immerse ourselves in lives of justice and, similarly, lives of compassion in the communities into which God has called us, placed us, that we can withstand and be there, wordlessly yet bearing hope, as those around us or even those we love cry with David, “Oh Absalom my son.” For only when we ourselves are immersed in Christ hope and Christ love can we bring that love and hope to the despairing, near and far.

May God help us to have that integrity, for it is to that which God calls us.

 

The Lord be with you.


I apologize for the typos that marred the earlier posting of this reflection - tiredness and rushedness nearly had the last word!
M