Jan. 31 Sermon: Daily Bread
Daily Bread
By Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Holy Covenant UMC, January 31, 2010
Luke 19:1-10
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Give us this day our daily bread.
When we pray this, what are we praying for? To have enough to eat today? Are we praying to have our material needs met ? Are we praying to be fed spiritually—filled up with comfort and hope and peace? Are we praying about feeding others, who are hungry? Feeding them with bread and with love and with justice?
What is daily bread?
We know it has to do with the daily: something we ask for each and every day. We’re not asking about tomorrow, or next year, or after we die: we ask to be supplied daily.
It’s easy for us to live in the future…asking for a secure retirement, hoping that in 10 years our family life will look like we want it to, living for our summer vacation instead of focusing on the work at hand (trust, me, this winter, I’m continually fantasizing about the sun): but this phrase is calling us right back to the moment: give us bread today.
Zaccheus, in our passage from Luke, knows something about the NOW of today.
He hears that Jesus is passing through town. He’s heard about Jesus, this rabbi who teaches and preaches and feeds, who talks to those on the margins, even tax collectors like himself, and, most recently, healed a blind man. He can’t wait to see this Jesus guy close-up So when he hears about Jesus’ coming from a man in his office, he immediately stops sending e-mails, leaves his account files spread all over his desk, and doesn’t even shut down his computer. He immediately jumps up from his big leather chair and runs as fast as he can to the road. But when he gets there, he discovers he’s not the only one to hear about Jesus coming into town. The road is packed, people are piled 10 deep along the sides of the streets, and he can’t see a thing.
*A few years ago I was in London and my mom and I were walking down a busy street. We suddenly encountered a huge crowd of people screaming and jumping and flashing cameras, and we had no idea what was going on. But then I looked up and realized we were under the marquee of the theater where Madonna was performing, starring in a play. We happened to get there at the same time she was exiting her limo and heading to the entrance. Before I knew it, I was part of that screaming, jumping crowd….I couldn’t see Madonna, I was too far back, but I did reach my hand as high as I could and snap a picture. If you looked at it today you probably couldn’t tell what it’s of, but I know. And I still tell people I “saw” Madonna in London*
This is how I imagine the scene that day, the crowd gathered around Jesus. And poor Zaccheus got the memo too late…and he had no camera, his arms weren’t long enough to reach up anyway, so what does he do? He notices there is a tree nearby, so he scurries up, perches himself on the highest branch, and peers down…a bird’s eye view.
Now Zaccheus is the most prominent, wealthiest, and feared man in town—the chief tax collector. An employee of the Roman government, getting rich by stripping others of their money. You better believe he was in a designer suit and shoes, which isn’t exactly the best attire for climbing trees.
It’s easy to imagine why Zaccheus would have turned right around when he saw that crowd: He could have thought to himself: well, I missed it, I’ll just wait for another day when Jesus comes back through this way. Or he could have gone to another town, where he knew Jesus would be in a few days….he would have had much more time to plan. He could have gotten there the night before, wearing comfy clothes and shoes suitable for sitting on the ground, camped out over night, and had a prime Jesus-watching position. But something led Zaccheus up in the tree, no matter how absurd it seemed, because he wanted to see Jesus that day—he didn’t want to wait. He was living in the moment.
Jesus is also concerned with the daily. Do you remember what he said when he sees Zacchaeus up in that tree? “Zaccheus, come down from there, because I’m coming to your house today”. TODAY. Not tomorrow, not when we can find a mutually agreeable time after comparing our schedule on our blackberries, but right now, this day.
What was so urgent? After all, Jesus is an important man on an important journey…he has places to go and people to see…why would he take time out of his travels to stop and not only speak to Zaccheus, but travel to his house and share a meal with him?
Here we have these two men, both living in the moment—Zaccheus is so excited that he hurried, hurried down the tree so they get could to his house. Now, if someone said to me, right now, right here, I’m coming over for dinner, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry…especially if that person was so important, a respected rabbi…if a bishop, for example, showed up today and told me that she’s coming to my house, I would be worried: wondering if I made up my bed, scanning the kitchen in my mind trying to remember if there are dirty dishes in the sink, feeling a twinge of embarrassment as I know my dog will jump and slobber all over her; hoping I have more than a frozen veggie burger and diet coke to offer up.
But Zaccheus is ready for this day, this moment, and so is Jesus. (Though, I have always wondered about Zaccheus’s wife…what it must have been like to get a quick call from Z on his way over, saying he was coming for lunch and bringing Jesus with him…so she better get cooking. I imagine it was a bit harder for her to live in the moment…)
What happens in their encounter? We don’t know, the text doesn’t give us much detail, but we do know that on the spot, in the very moment, Zaccheus offers to give half of what he owns…half…to the poor. AND, he promises to refund 4 times those he defrauded.
And he doesn’t work out a monthly payment plan or figure out how to do this over a period of 10 years, or will it to a foundation after he dies…nope he pays restitution and gives generously that day. The day he encounters Jesus.
And what does Jesus give him? Salvation. Today, Jesus says, salvation has come to your house.
Not tomorrow, not when you die, but today, today salvation has come
What does this salvation look like? And what on earth does it have to do with bread?
**
I read, this week, about an organization called ECHO, based in Florida. ECHO stands for the Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization. For 28 years, this Christian organization has been training development workers in small-scale sustainable agriculture for the tropics. Their mission is “to equip people with resources and skills to reduce hunger and improve the lives of the poor”.
In 2009, the number of hungry people reached a historic peak: 1.02 billion, and it will continue to escalate. The people most affected are farmers in the Global South, 60 percent of whom are women and girls. Something needs to be done.
ECHO’s farms replicate many different climates around the world, and they do research on the best forms of sustainable agriculture and provide resources, educational materials, and free seeds around the globe. People from Bangledesh to Madagascar to Chad can download free documents on the internet. Their goal is to increase options for farmers around the world—not teaching them how to farm, but partnering with farmers who have a wealth of knowledge and providing them with new kinds of research methods they couldn’t afford on their own.
Tim Motis, ECHO’s director of the Department of Agricutlural Resources and the seed bank, recalls a visit to Haiti that had a particularly profound impact on him. He heard people singing in their churches about heaven. He says this: “Many had so little food, such poor shelter and clothing, that they had pretty much lost hope for life on this earth. I believe that Christ’s redemption doesn’t just start after we die. We can begin to experience life in all its abundance right here on earth. I realized I wanted to help people experience a better life right now.”
**
When we have an encounter with Jesus, when we come face to face with the redemptive power of Christ, we can’t help but share bread, today. After all, we know, from Jesus’ teaching, that we’re called to feed the hungry, share our resources, and do all we can to respect ALL human life. This is what happened for Zaccheus. But he wasn’t able to start feeding others until he was fed himself…not with bread, of which he had plenty, but with spiritual food. He encountered Jesus and received salvation: he was saved from selfishness to generosity, abuse of power to reparations, isolation to connectedness, and ultimately from the death of hope to the new, abundant life offered through Christ.
After encountering Jesus, his life is forever changed.
And this is true for us, too. No, Jesus won’t walk through the streets of Chicago and invite himself over to your house for lunch today. Or will he? Because we DO, in fact, have the choice to encounter Jesus each day: through worship, in the faces of our friends and family, strangers, the faces we ignore or exclude, through reading scripture, for digging deep within and believing that we are God’s beloved and the face of Christ resides not only in our neighbors, but in us.
And when we choose to recognize this encounter TODAY (not tomorrow or next year or when we’re in a better mood), we will be fed. We will be saved.
And our lives will change forever.
Some of us here need food, need bread, to survive, and so we pray for God to meet our needs. Some of us need spiritual food, to know we are loved and whole and nourished.
All of us need to break bread together, in community. For bread connects us all, we all need it to survive. And we’re so interconnected, that in the sharing of a meal, we can’t help but recognize, like Zaccheus, that the way we live our lives…spend our resources, relate to others…necessarily has an effect on how other people are fed, both materially and spiritually.
So we stop and we pray for daily bread.
When we pray, do we know that we will be immediately filled up? Are there people who pray every day for bread and still go to bed hungry? Yes.
But there’s power in this prayer, and it saves us. Prayer reminds us of the God who wills spiritual and material fullness, and we’re changed by praying this each and every day.
Today, after worship, we as a community are going to eat a pot-luck lunch and watch a documentary on The United Methodist Church and sexuality. We’re going to explore the real pain and hatred that and injustice that results from the language in our rule book that says “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching”. It’s a recognition that even though we pray every day, the world isn’t yet perfect.
But today, TODAY, we’re gonna break bread together, a meal where ALL are welcome. We’re gonna cry, and then we are going to act. Are we going to lament that the church is imperfect, and sit around wait for it to change? No, we are going to fill up today. Right here, right now. We’re going to see Jesus in the faces of those gathered in this place, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/straight, and that encounter will save us. Save us to work for change and to share the bread of life and of hope.
We get the chance everyday to encounter Jesus. My prayer, for all of us, is that we have our eyes open. That we let Zaccheus be our guide, and that we live in this day, this moment, instead of waiting for the future: So that when we know Jesus is around, we leave our computers with our work half done; we climb up into trees to catch a glimpse of the divine, even when we don’t think we’re dressed for it and we know it will make us look silly; we respond to spontaneous invitations to break bread with those we meet on this road (unconcerned with the quality of food we have to offer), and we are changed by that encounter. We’re fed, with love and forgiveness and hope, and we can’t help but feed others, to give what we thought was ours, and we are saved.
Let us pray for bread, each and every day.
Are we praying to have enough to eat? To have our material needs met? Our spiritual hunger filled? Are we praying about feeding others, with bread and with love and with justice?
In a word: Yes. The answer is yes. For today, TODAY, salvation has come to your house.
Amen.
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