This communal reading replaces the formal reading of Acts on Pentecost Sunday.
Directions:
Assign parts.
If read in the sanctuary, position various readers around the chancel and in the pews.
If read virtually, double check to be sure all readers are unmuted before beginning.
No extensive rehearsal required, although readers should review their parts ahead of time. All readers should be ready to jump in when indicated. No long lags between parts!
Hard copies of the reading for the congregation (or a projected copy if your congregation uses a large screen) should omit all stage directions except for those that pertain directly to the congregation.
If read virtually, screen-share the congregations’ copy.
Everybody should totally ham it up.
Maybe a little intro music first… and then begin.
The Reading
Luke: Friends, I know a great story about God. Want to hear it?
Congregation: Yes, tell us! We’re all ears!
Luke: OK. Here goes… Once upon a time, after Jesus returned to heaven, people from all over the world were in Jerusalem to celebrate a big holiday. But Jesus’ friends were in a house praying.
Choir: Praying? For what?
Luke: For the promise of Jesus to come true.
Choir: Promise? What promise?
Luke: That the Holy Spirit would come and be their helper.
Child: Why did they need help?
Luke: Because Jesus told them to go to the ends of the earth and tell people to trust God, to welcome strangers, and to love their enemies.
Child: Oh, I get it! But that’s not an easy thing to do…
Luke: Right! The disciples needed all the help they could get! Anyway, they were praying away, when suddenly… the house began rocking!
Choir: (Making noise like strong winds): Woooo! Woooo! Woooo!
Musician: (On the organ or other instrument, plays spooky music underneath the woo-wooing and the rumbling)
Luke: And after that, fire came down and settled on their heads!
Congregation: Their heads were on fire?!
Luke: Well, not exactly. Sort of. You had to be there. And then…
Congregation: There’s more?
Luke: Yes! Listen! Then, all Jesus’ friends started talking in other languages!
Choir: Like this? (In different languages, and all at once: Alleluia! Praise God! Thank you, God! God is good!)
Luke: Just like that! People in the streets heard them and hurried to the house. They were amazed! They said,
Congregation: “But they’re all Galileans! How come we understand them?”
Choir: “We are from Parthia, Media and Elam, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Crete, Arabia and Libya.”
Child: And I’m from San Diego! (or whatever town the child is from)
Luke: It was an amazing scene! But some onlookers made fun of the apostles.
Bystander: You know what I think? You’ve all been drinking instead of praying!
Luke: But Peter, who was the leader, stood up and said,
Peter: No, no, no! We’re completely sober! It’s nine in the morning, for goodness’ sake! No, what you ‘re seeing is what God promised through the prophet Joel a long time ago!
Musician: (Plays something pompous and prophet-y sounding here to introduce Joel)
Joel: (Clears throat and begins, loudly)…
In the last days, God says,
I will pour my Spirit out upon all flesh.
Your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
the young shall see visions,
the old shall dream dreams.
And everyone who calls on the name of God will be saved!
Luke: And that’s the story of Pentecost! THE END!
Child: Hey! Wait a second! I wanna know what happened next! Did the friends of Jesus stop being afraid?
Luke: Well… you’re all friends of Jesus, aren’t you?
Everyone: Yes, we are!
Luke: Well, that’s a question you have to answer!
Choir: A question we have to answer? Um….We’re going to need some help with that!
Choir: Wind sounds… AND Congregation: Rumbles…. AND Musician: Spooky music….Sound effects die down… a brief silence follows. Then, on to whatever is next in the order of service.
“For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.”–1 Corinthians 11:21 (NRSV)
“And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.”—Matthew 14:20 (NRSV)
Years ago, a faithful member of my congregation sidled up to me after Communion and cracked, “The service was great, but the portions were small.” I laughed. And then I didn’t.
So, let me ask, what’s up with equal-sized portions, little cubes of pre-cut bread, precisely measured thimblefuls of juice in identical, tiny cups? What’s up with strict Communion parity, exactly this much and no more for everyone, precisely the same?
You’d think we were on a group trip being served a set menu at a tourist trap instead of enjoying a homemade meal at the family table where you can eat as much as you want, according to your hunger, according to your delight.
St. Paul says that at the Lord’s Supper table no one should drink too much and get drunk, or eat too little and go hungry. But that doesn’t mean that everyone should be served exactly the same minimally calculated, pre-measured portions, which always tend to be small.
Now, to be sure, Jesus can convey his loving presence with us by any means at all, including one-inch square white bread cubes. His life will surely come to us even in shot glasses. And sometimes, like during a pandemic, we have no choice but to package him up in mass-produced, pre-proportioned containers, like a holy Keurig cup. It’s the necessary, safe, and prudent thing to do.
But when we have a choice?
When we have a choice, it might help to remember that Communion is a sign. Among other things, it discloses God’s generosity. It’s embodies God’s unrestrained impulse to feed, to feed abundantly and well, and to feed everyone without discrimination, holding nothing back. It enacts a divine justice that is not minimal, but maximal. With God, it’s not just enough for all, it’s always more.
If tiny elements are any indication of what we think justice is, the one who collected twelve baskets of leftovers after the crowds ate as much as they wanted might beg to differ.
Communities that get this will make sure there’s bread that looks and tastes like bread and flowing juice for all. There will be leftovers. They’ll gladly pass them around, too. Seconds and thirds for anyone who’s still hungry.
And we are always hungry. Everyone, so very hungry. Communities that get this will also give bread, wine, justice, and themselves away in the world, in very generous portions, with great service, and even greater joy.
_______
O Christ of Boundless Treasures
7.6.7.6.D
Words: Mary Luti
Tunes: WEST MAIN, ANDÚJAR, WEDLOCK (American/Lovelace)
In an interview on PBS a few years before she died, Julia Child said, “A country that is afraid of food should be ashamed of itself.” She was referring to the anxiety about healthy eating in America that has led us to put warning labels on things we formerly ate with a carefree spirit.
Now, Julia Child knows perfectly well that in this nation we suffer from a variety of serious conditions with strong connections to the sorts of things and how much of them we put in our mouths. She is not a foe of healthy eating or safe eating. What gets her goat are the exaggerated messages we get from every side that make us feel that if we fail to make just the right choice between 1% and 2% milk on our weekly run to the grocery store, we may have sealed the fate of our health forever.
Shopping under the weight of high moral responsibility puts a bit of a damper on the joy of cooking, to say the least. In Julia’s view, we are victims of a mostly manufactured ethic about eating that is making us unduly skittish about simple enjoyment—we are a country afraid of our food. So whenever Julia, with that naughty gleam in her eye, tosses great gobs of butter, gallons of thick white cream, and oceans of good red wine into some hard-to-pronounce French concoction, you can be sure it is not merely an act of obedience to the recipe; it is also an act of disobedience to the food police.
Now, I bring up Julia’s dismay only because, if I read John’s gospel correctly, I think Jesus would have been on Julia’s side.
In this short text from the sixth chapter of John, we confront some big claims and even bigger bewilderment. Jesus’ listeners are confused and angry that a man whose parents and birthplace everybody knows to be local seems now to be claiming that he came down from heaven—and that he can go right back up there again whenever he wants. And of course we modern listeners are probably as put off as that ancient audience seems to be by that icky business about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
We know, of course, that John does not intend us to take such extreme sayings literally. In fact, if we do take them literally, John sees it as a sign that we don’t “get” Jesus at all, that we are relying too much on a human way of understanding. If we don’t get “behind” Jesus’ statement, into the deeper meaning, John says we aren’t listening with the Spirit. This is the same dynamic at work in an earlier episode, Jesus’ famous dead-of-night meeting with Nicodemus, who could not fathom how a person could go back into his mother’s womb and be born again, as Jesus said we must. John makes fun of that sort of common-sense literalism. He wants us to look deeper, to see beyond.
But when you look at the Greek words John chooses to talk about eating flesh and drinking blood in this story, you really do have to sympathize with the disgusted folk who backed away. He does not make it easy for them to assume Jesus has metaphorical intentions. He doesn’t write “eat,” he writes something more like “munch,” “chomp,” “gnaw.” This is gustosyntax, finger-licking vocabulary! It is meant to make the point inescapable — Jesus’ flesh is in some sense“real” food, his blood in some sense“real” drink. Jesus means to be “eaten” — no, devoured— in a decidedly undainty and very hungry fashion.
What is going on here?
Well, one way of approaching things is to look first at a normal-sounding verse we might pass right over in our reflexive disgust at the body and blood stuff, verse 59: “He said all these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.”Ah, now we have a context! John places Jesus in a local town synagogue, preaching a sermon; and that means he’s got a text unrolled in front of him, going verse by verse, expounding its meaning, making applications, and engaging in back-and-forth disputation.
So, what text is Jesus teaching? We can’t know for sure, but because of all the references to Moses and manna in the desert in our gospel portion, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine it was Exodus 16, in which the hunger and complaint of the Israelites was met by God with heavenly bread. The application Jesus makes of these verses is to himself. He says heis the bread that comes down from heaven. He says heis a new kind of sustenance for body, spirit, and the life of the world.
So far, so good. But what could be lost on us is yet another claim being made about Jesus in this scene. To hear that claim, we need to know that there is a tradition of Jewish interpretation that sees scripture itself, the Torah, the Law, as the reality behind the manna of Exodus 16. This tradition teaches that God was indeed feeding the people with bread in the wilderness, but it wasn’t just a wafer-like substance God was providing; it was in reality the holy Law, God’s very Word, the nourishing bread of God’s wisdom.
And how do you get that wisdom? Like the manna, you eat it up! Every day a little portion, because it doesn’t keep well and it won’t last if you leave it lying around. You learn divine wisdom daily, bit by bit, not only with your intellect, but also with your body. Like food, you ingest it, you ruminate on it, like a cow chewing its cud, letting it roll around in your mouth and swallowing slowly, luxuriously; and eventually you digest it so that it becomes part of you, life of your life, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood.
“Day and night I ruminate upon your Law, O God,” says one of the psalms. “Your Law is like honey, sweet to the tongue,” says another. “O taste and see how good the Lord is,” another urges us. If John presents Jesus claiming to be food, claiming to be the manna, then Jesus is also claiming to be the Word, the Wisdom of God. And thus he invites everyone to eat him and drink him, to relishhim.
This same Wisdom shows up in Scripture in another guise too. She is personified in several Old Testament texts as a mother who builds a house for her children—everyone who wants to know her and live in her. And wouldn’t you know it? She sets a splendid table in that house, and then she goes out and calls to her children, “Come,” the scripture says, “Come from East and West, North and South! Eat my bread, drink my wine! Come to the feast I prepared for you!”
This is exactly what Jesus says in John 6: “Eat me and drink me, and you will know the endless, deep, soul-food-deliciousness of God!”
I suspect that all this may sound very odd, mystical and impossibly poetic to us modern American Liberal Protestant Christians who usually expect no more from Jesus and the Word than an ethic for living, a few guidelines to life’s big issues, and some inspiration for action in the world. But our ancestors looked for more. In Jesus’ life and teaching, in his person and work, and in his continued presence in the Spirit, they expected to taste yummy flavors, complex memorable textures, enjoyment and delight.
Our usual approach to Jesus and the Word is via the question and the doubt. Is it true? Can I believe this? We are cautious and measured, a little like the way Julia Child says we approach our food. Is this good for me? Will it harm me if I have an extra ounce of this or one more calorie of that? Are there trans-fatty acids in this passage?
We hang around the edges of Jesus, hang back on the outskirts of Wisdom, ready to peel off and back away when we reach the limit of our reason and our patience with things that seem odd to us. We are often among the first to leave when something in Jesus’ person or in God’s Word tests our assumptions about ourselves or threatens to alter our sense of the world.
You can see it in the way we typically study Scripture. We approach the Bible as an object of religious interest, at a cool objective distance. We ask a lot of historical, cultural and ethical questions of the texts, wanting to understand what they all mean. Not a bad thing, and in fact necessary. But we are rarely aggressively subjectiveabout our learning. We don’t yearn to live with, in and through Scripture. And even more rarely do we simply stand in grateful awe of it. We only seldom speak of lovingScripture, although our Puritan forebears did. They, like their Hebrew ancestors, also spoke of chewing on it, digesting it, licking up its sweet dripping edges as you would a double-dipped cone on a sweltering day.
And the same is true of the way our ancestors in the faith regarded Jesus. They believed that we are meant to eat the rich food and fine wine that he has proved to be for the empty and the thirsty; we are meant to enjoy the free banquet he has always been for the thankful and the poor in spirit; we are meant to feel the heady flush he can be for the lover of justice and the doer of good works.
We are meant to staywith him too, even when others are all telling us that we would be better off leaving him and going away. To stay with him, even though he is a hard person to stay with because he will not let us endlessly cultivate our fears and our skittishness and our carefully constructed and controlled diet of distancing doubts and questions. At some point he just looks at us and say, “It’s all right. Let your fears go. Eat and drink. Enjoy it, enjoy me, and be at peace.”
I will never forget the very first time I attended a Jewish service on the Sabbath, especially the moment they brought out the Torah to chanting and celebration. They danced the scrolls around the sanctuary so that everyone could touch their prayer shawls to them. They were joyfully greeting not some inert object filled with rules and regulations, not some dead letter or object of study.
No, it was not some old and interesting and very wise Book, but a livingthing, a gift of God to God’s people, the very Wisdom and presence of God, the joy of the community, their glory and crown. They danced it and sang it like people at a great feast who were done with the questions for the day and who were eager for, not afraid of, the food they were sitting down to enjoy.
And I envied my Jewish friends their ecstasy. I longed to dance in my sanctuary as they did, cradling in my arms the Torah, the prophets, the book of the Four Gospels — and even those vexing old letters of Paul. I longed to dance with the whole of Scripture, and with the great traditions of our faith, and with Jesus himself! To put the Wisdom of God and the Savior of my life under my head as I sleep at night, to eat them in the morning with my corn flakes, and to dream of it them in the heat of the day.
But I am a Congregationalist. Who and what could compel me to take Scripture and Jesus seriously enough, or to trust their truth enough to dance with them, to dream with them, and, of course!, to argue with them — but not in that cool, distancing way that says “Prove it!”, “Prove yourself!”, but in that intimate, tough, expectant and tender way that people who adore each other fight, always ready to yield, sooner or later, out of sheer love?
“I am bread and wine,” says Jesus. “I am realfood and drink. I am a body and a spirit. I am Life and Wisdom. I am here to make you hungry. I am to here be danced and devoured. Don’t go away! Come to me, come to the table of the Word, and stay with me! Stay with the Beloved Community where my own flesh and blood live and struggle and serve and learn and love. And at the table of faith, don’t be afraid of your food. Don’t nibble when you could chomp. Don’t sip daintily when you could slug it all down the hatch with gusto! Dance and play with your food, as God danced and played with me, Holy Wisdom, before the foundation of the world.”
Long live God, who feeds us; long live Jesus, our food; and long live Julia Child, who commanded us to eat, and never to be afraid!
“I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will be fruitful.“—John 15:5
Jesus calls himself the vine and his disciples branches that bear fruit. The Church has always heard a reference to Communion in this saying, especially to the cup we bless.
From ancient times, the cup has stood for the lifeblood of Jesus circulating through the church’s vine and branches like nourishing sap, uniting Teacher and disciples in one common life, generative and strong, a holy communion.
But the metaphor of vine and branches is not just about communion with Jesus and each other. It’s also about communion with nature. To belong to the One who took our flesh, and to belong to all our human neighbors, is also to belong to the earth. Earth and heaven are not opposites, and the more entwined we are in each other, the healthier and more fruitful we become.
It’s not for nothing that every Christian ritual of inclusion, acceptance, pardon, peace, and nourishment requires us to touch the things of earth and to let them touch us. In Baptism, it’s water and, in some parts of the Church, salt, oil, and beeswax. For healing, anointing oil. In Communion, it’s wheat and grape. For worship, flame and flower. Through these earthy things the grace of loving Pesence materializes. By these earthy things we learn how precious and loved we are, in body as well as soul.
We are not the only stewards of God’s creation. The earth cares for us as much as we care for the earth. It’s an irreplaceable gift to our whole selves, mediating divine healing and peace to every part. Without these gifts, we would never know the sight, taste, smell, sound, and touch of the invisble God.
We owe earth care not just because it’s in our self-interest, although it surely is, and so we must; but also because she is the beloved medium of God’s self-showing, the indispensable partner of God’s adoring attention to us, the one who reveals the Holy One to our senses, in beauty, in nourishment, in joy.
When We Eat Bread, We Eat the Soil and Sun
10.10.10.10
Words: Mary Luti
Tune: SHELDONIAN
Alternate tunes: CLIFF TOWN, CHILSWELL
When we eat bread, we eat the soil and sun,
the quiet winter rest, the surge of spring;
we eat the summer’s heat, the cloud and rain,
and every breeze that makes the meadows sing.
When we drink wine, we drink the soil and sun,
the tendril’s climbing curl, the pruning’s grief;
we drink the blue, the dusky purple, and the pale,
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I tell you, the bread of God is that which comes from heaven and gives life to the world… Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.’”—John 6:32-34, 51 (NRSV)
Jesus Mafa, The Lord’s Supper
Early Christians thought Jesus was talking about Holy Communion here. Of course, at this point Jesus didn’t know what Communion is—he hadn’t given us that gift yet. But our forebears heard that meaning in Jesus’ words anyway.
They’d come to experience Christ’s Body as truly life-giving and even spoke of Communion as medicine for what ails us. They believed that partaking of the Bread shored up and mended our frail human condition. To approach Communion was to be diagnosed, admitted, treated, and released to a new regimen of health, body, mind, and soul.
Regularly partaking also vaccinated you against the estrangement that destroys human solidarity. Being in communion with the Healer and all our convalescing siblings in the church staved off deadly infections like a divided heart, moral indifference, and an evasive life.
Communion was also a foretaste of the permanent health of the life to come. Exactly what such a fully wholesome life would be like, no one knew, but it had to be at least something like Communion— the beloved as one in the Beloved, feasting.
But the most important thing was how you knew the medicine was taking. The proof lay in service. The church’s body was healing when it found itself caring about and tending the bodies of others. It could claim health only when it was putting its own body on the line.
Which is why examining the life we lead in our bodies has traditionally preceded Communion. It’s a wellness check, and if it shows we’ve been indifferent or hostile to our neighbors’ bodies, we know we need to come to the table again. And again, to eat the Bread that heals us go and do otherwise.
“It is written, ‘God gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Then Jesus said, ‘I am the bread…’”—John 6:31-35
During a class on the sacraments, a student, Carol, told this story: After a snowstorm, only a few folks who lived within trudging distance made it to church, including Carol and her daughter, Melanie, who was four. The service was simple, a hymn, scripture, Communion.
Melanie had never received Communion, but she was there, and no one was stopping her, so she held out her hand. With everybody else in the reverent circle, she ate. Then she broke the hush:
“Mommy!” she cried, “This is the most deliciousbread!”
Adults overthink everything. Especially Communion. We divide into theological camps over it. We exclude people deemed morally, denominationally, doctrinally unfit. We bar little children until they’re capable of abstraction. We understand everything about bread except that you’re meant to eat it.
But Melanie tasted what we forget—before all else, communion is food, delectable Presence, Jesus’ sweet surrendered self. It is the most delicious Bread.
You don’t need to be grown-up or confirmed to know that something tastes good; to savor a grace of exceptional flavor; to sense that this is a mercy and no ordinary thing; to be surprised at it, grateful; to cry out, delighted. You need only be there, extending your hand. You need only eat.
And so, by the way, if communion isn’t delicious in your church, if it’s gummy Wonder white or sawdust gluten-free, why not replace it with something less disagreeable? It’s hard to believe you’re at heaven’s feast when the meal tastes like cardboard and glue. When choosing an edible sign that Christ is truly with us, always go for flavor. Do not disappoint Melanie.
And don’t disappoint the world that needs us, who eat the bread, to be more than a thin starchy presence for the hunger of bodies and souls. That needs us, who drink the cup, to spill out onto its thirst a love more generous than a thimble cup. That needs us, who have known the meal’s delight, to be delicious.
Sicut Locutus Est 