Sermon on the Holy Eucharist
Part III, The Offertory
Back when I was involved with prison ministry I remember sitting with a man on the subway in Boston. He was lamenting his fate, and this was what he said, “When I was in prison I had my own TV, my own radio and my own fan. What do I have now?”
How do you describe freedom? How do you give someone a taste of freedom? It is so far beyond having a TV, a radio and a fan, and yet … how many of us find ourselves lamenting our fate, counting our losses, keeping the account ledger going, and all the while, the glorious freedom of the children of God is beckoning us, but we can’t hear it’s beautiful music? No, all we can hear is this song: “I lack, I want, I need. You have it and I don’t.” Eucharist reminds us that that old song is simply a lie. It is not true. All those silly things we think we lack are nothing in comparison to the glorious freedom of the children of God. God frees us from such self-centeredness so that we can truly love one another. No longer caught up in keeping accounts on one another, judging and resenting one another, no longer singing our miserable song of envy and lack, we are freed to truly love, and the love of God is glorious indeed.
Thank You.
“If the only prayer you ever say in your life is ‘Thank You,’ that will suffice.” So said the 14th century mystic from the Rhineland, Meister Eckhart. Thank You. The only prayer you ever say and this will suffice.
Eucharist means Thanksgiving. The Holy Eucharist is a great big Thank You to God. It is an offering of our selves, our souls and bodies, in full thanksgiving, in immense and all encompassing gratitude, for simply being here in love.
If ever anyone would be filled with gratitude would it not be a prisoner who is now free? If ever anyone would be filled with love and gratitude would it not be the disciples of Jesus who taste sweet communion with their Beloved? And yet, so often we are here lamenting what we don’t like instead. Our Gospel passage shows us that the Apostles also had this problem. Jesus had sent them out two by two and when they came back, he took them away for some time of communion with him. However, they had been so loving and true, so strong in God’s presence, in their ministries on the road, which people were seeking after them, hungry for Truth and Love. People followed the Apostles of Jesus out into the wilderness. A crowd gathers, and Jesus continues to impart Truth and share Love with the crowd. He continues to feed them. The disciples are there too, and they too can be fed. In the economy of divine Love and Truth, sharing increases the harvest. In other words, there is plenty of Love and Truth for all, the Apostles included. But they are anxious and don’t see this. They long to get Jesus back all to themselves – they don’t seem to believe there is really enough Love to go around, nor enough Truth. They tell Jesus it is time to send the crowd away so they can get something to eat.
You give them something to eat, he says. In other words, do as I do. Welcome all who come and feed them. Feed them with Truth, with Love. They are hungry.
But they can’t see it. They are stuck in the prison where they once had a TV, a radio, and a fan. They’ve had a taste of freedom but they’ve already forgotten. They haven’t really moved into the freedom of the Kingdom of God where those things no longer matter and it is the giving away that brings joy. And we do this, we get a taste and then we forget. For a long time, we may go back and forth before we really trust that God’s Love is Real. The Apostles are back in the world of keeping accounts. They don’t have enough. They tell Jesus they can’t do it.
He says, then take what you have and give it away.
This is gratitude, real gratitude, to give the very gift we have been given. To give it as freely to others as it is given to us. To give with utter abandonment to the Divine, and with no thought of reward or recognition. This is gratitude, this is Eucharist. This is what Jesus wants us to do.
This Eucharist is not a little thank you based on the keeping of accounts. This is not thank you for the TV, the radio and the fan. This is a great, big, all encompassing THANK YOU !!!!
The disciples are keeping accounts – its something we all do, and its based not upon the great love of God, but upon our little likes and dislikes. In keeping accounts, we have our good list and our bad list, and we measure and compare and keep track of what we like and what we don’t, what we have and what other people have. And when the disciples try to imagine making Eucharist from the keeping of accounts, they do not have enough to share. Jesus says share it anyway. We have to start here and now to live in the Kingdom, even though we think we can’t. You don’t think you have enough, give thanks and share it anyway. Eucharist is thanksgiving that goes way beyond what we have and don’t have, what we like and don’t like. Eucharist is like the Thank You that a mother says after a birth, and yes, the pregnancy was hard and the labor was painful, but it hardly matters in the glorious presence of that new life. This Eucharist, this Thanksgiving is so much more than making a little list of things I like and saying thank you. That is like comparing diamonds with sand.
When the disciples share what they have, they discover that they have much more than they thought. God’s Love and Truth are hidden within us until we dare to risk letting go of our little likes and dislikes. God’s love is not about who or what we like or dislike. God’s love wants to be shared with everyone we meet, whether we like them or not. When the disciples are obedient to this command, they find far more food, far more nourishment, in the profligate sharing of God’s love than they had hoarded in their selfishness.
So as we come to Eucharist, we may find that we come with a sense of inner lack. We are keeping accounts. We think we need more for ourselves, and we don’t want to be inconvenienced by having to share with others. We are preoccupied with what we think we are not getting and we are not really saying “Thank You,” in a big, or even in a little way. Instead of being touched by the immense love of God, we are irked or irritated in some way by something that is not exactly to our liking. And life presents us with all sorts of things that don’t go exactly our way.
We may come into worship wanting quiet and instead find a bustling assembly. We may, like Greta Garbo, “want to be alone,” and instead find a child who wants our attention. We may want to hear the Gospel read a certain way, and instead, the voice sounds to us “all wrong,” or there is a mistake (and there are always mistakes). These things should in no way steal our thanksgiving. If they do, the problem is with us, not with God and not with the situation. Mistakes happen in life and we move onto the next moment. Children need attention in life and that is just what children do. People are hungry for Love and Truth and they want us to share what we have with them. All of this is present when we come together for Eucharist. And so it should be. If we are going over and over and over a sense of lack in the midst of the Eucharist (thinking “I don’t have enough time, quiet, rest, money, whatever …”), we might want to stop that mental process and freely give whatever we have instead.
So when we come to the Offertory, it is important. Offer your whole being to God in that moment. Offer yourselves again and again. Know that you are so much more than any little thing that might have captured your thinking or feeling and stolen gratitude from you right now. You have much more Love and Truth available to you than you think, and dwelling on what you think you lack is just a lie. Gratitude is the truth, the big truth of this whole situation of life in Christ. Know that gratitude is the truth, the reality. Just make the effort to return to truth.
I used to work in a church where a member regularly met me at the threshold during the procession and handed me a list of all the mistakes the secretary had made in the weekly newsletter and bulletin. I remember another time when someone gave me a list of their favorite hymns for Easter and then stormed out of the Easter Vigil dramatically when one of those hymns was not in the bulletin. These were highly successful people in the world, and I guess that that approach was working for them in terms of getting what they wanted in world. But it is not what brings us to the Kingdom of God. Only Love and Truth will get us there, and for this we are immensely grateful. It is this what St. Paul speaks of when he says, “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content” (Phil 4:11). And that is real gratitude. We think that getting what we like makes us more grateful, but actually it can just make us more selfish and demanding, it can weaken us spiritually because it strengthens our selfishness.
Our expectations get disappointed, our egos get bruised, our fragile little images get broken, and that’s the gift – the gift of coming together in community are all these opportunities for embracing situations we do not like. In relationship, in community, there are all sorts of surprises. The ego does not like surprises. If we can embrace the surprises of life with one another, we will find so many opportunities to see the limitations we’ve put on love. Limiting love to what we like is a terrible diminishment of God’s love. Facing what we do not like is an invitation from God to break free with God’s help into a much greater love. And for that, we can be truly grateful.
So offer yourself sincerely at the altar. Don’t just offer your image of yourself, or your little personality, offer your whole, mysterious being, your true identity as a child of God, the immortality of your essential being along with the mortality of your personality and body, the mysterious eternity of who you are in God along with the temporary identities you wear in daily life. When we are afraid to give up our little likes and dislikes it is only because we don’t realize the immensity of love and joy that are made real for us in the Kingdom of God, and that we can begin to live that immense love and joy right here and now, if we will let go of these little likes and dislikes and offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, sincerely.
That is the glorious freedom that is our heritage and our calling. We offer it all to God and we find that, although we may not have a TV, a radio, or a fan, we have something that is so far beyond that, that those things no longer matter. We have the freedom to Love as God’s own children. What a gift, what a feast, what a blessing.
The Rev. Edie Bird
July 23, 2006
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