Acts 9:36-43
SERMON “Daily Bread”
My recent time off included a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I serve on the Alumix Advisory Council for the Divinity School at Harvard. Among the highlights was the opportunity to present the Gomes Honor for Friend of the School to the Rev. Dr. Stephanie Paulsell, a recently retired professor who not only served as my advisor, but who also preached at my ordination. She is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), one of our partner denominations, and was the last of my teachers on the full-time faculty. Several still have emerita status, and a shocking number are quite dead. Among this latter group is Gordon Kaufman, one of the founders of Constructive Theology.
For those who are familiar with theology, Constructive Theology is the opposite of Systematics. While Systematics tries to describe fixed truths, parsing holy mystery into pint-sized certainties, Constructive Theology admits that all of our theological thinking is provisional, subject to new insights, located in the contexts of place, time, and culture, evaluated not by untestable metaphysical claims, but instead measured by their contribution to human thriving, and by extension, to the thriving of the planet as a living system. Not is it true, but is it useful. In classic theology, humans are passive in the face of direct revelation. In Constructive Theology, humans are partners with the holy in the task of meaning making.
Kaufman supervised both of my major papers, the first on prayer. Specifically, I wanted to challenge traditional notions of prayer as transactional. And I’m not even talking about the proxy transactions of the Roman tradition, where various saints and demi-gods intervene on behalf of the living and the dead, releasing people from purgatory, curing various afflictions, and in the case of Saint Anthony, locating lost car keys.
Even in our own Reform Protestant tradition, prayer is often seen as transactional. We may offer thanks and praise, but mostly we pray “for” whatever it is we are praying for.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, what sort of God needs or even wants constant praise? That God would be co-dependent at best, manipulative and abusive at worst, an immortal version of Donald Trump. Many American Christians believe in exactly that sort of violent and capricious god, which may help explain why they see the autocrat as God’s agent.
Second, and equally important, there is exactly zero evidence that either merit or prayer determines outcomes, that the transactions are successful. Good people get horrific diseases, are surrounded by prayer, and still die… while horrific people often thrive. Research tells us that prayer does have a positive impact, not because the hand of God reaches down and rewires the world like some puppet master in the sky, but because it changes us and our relationship with the world around us.
In for a penny, in for a pound, as the old English expression goes. Since I was putting prayer under the microscope of constructive thought, why not consider the most famous of all prayers in our tradition? Why not consider “the Lord’s Prayer”? Particularly, I took aim at the line “give us, this day, our daily bread.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but manna is not falling into my yard from the sky in some modern version of the Exodus story. “Give” me bread makes me passive, and that just doesn’t track for me. Even prayers for good weather turn out to be transactional and mostly meaningless. If I want bread, I’d better get out there and plant some wheat, and chop some wood, or at the very least produce something I can trade with the baker.
Kaufman, who was far from orthodox in his belief, pushed back. Though his theological thinking did not allow for a divine demiurge dropping sourdough from the sky, he valued tradition as much as he valued meaning. His reason for the Lord’s Prayer was “it’s what we do.”
Over the years, I have moved closer to his position. I still don’t worship a transactional god, one who expects me to be passive, but I do appreciate imperfect customs, not because they tell me something about the divine, but because they tell me something about us, and about the continuing work of encountering holy mystery and making meaning.
I’m still going to plant that garden, though I’ll focus on okra and cucumbers, leaving the wheat to Kansas. I’m not going to sit around and wait for someone else to feed me when I am capable of working for my own food, capable of helping those who cannot work for their own food, capable of fighting unjust systems when the demons of end-stage neo-liberal capitalism cause more and more hunger and famine.
Scripture tells us that the first followers of Jesus expected a climactic event that included Christ’s return. Almost two thousand years later, and some Christians are still obsessed with being raptured out of their Deathstar SUVs, or private jets in the case of the con artists who lead the Prosperity Gospel heresy.
But here’s the thing: even though Peter expected the Kingdom of God / Day of the Lord to happen in a different way than it actually happened, he was still out there doing stuff. Like raising Tabitha from the dead.
It would be easy to read this text, as well as other accounts of miracles in the Apostolic Age, and create a special category, an exception to reality. It is all too easy to say “that’s the Bible but this is real life,” or to wait for God the drop a bagel on your head, but God already gave us everything we need for human thriving, planetary thriving.
Look at those thumbs! Look at the centuries of intelligence and imagination the produced domesticated wheat, that saw what happened when a wild fungus called yeast interacted with the wheat and the right balance of salt and sugars, and then turned that into a cultural practice, the art of our daily bread.
Yes, it is God-given in that the human story is the story of bipedal primates filled with holy mystery, and creation is a wondrous work of sacred art, but we come to the table because we built the table and grew the wheat and brewed the beer and invited over friends.
Micah 6:8 does not instruct us to wait for justice. It tells us to do justice. So while there are passive texts in scripture of the “give us this day” variety, I’m looking for the calls to action. They sent for Peter. Peter came and entered into that space of grief and hope. Peter acted, and what seemed dead no longer seemed dead.
My focus, our focus in the tradition of the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, is on “practical Christianity.” That is not to deny the transcendent and sometime miraculous that surrounds us. It is not to deny the power of prayer to make us more Christ-like. It is an acknowledgement that our purpose, if there is such a thing as purpose for one species in this ever evolving and changing work of holy art we call creation, our purpose is to do, to do the biological functions of any species, but also to do the creative functions that are so incredibly obvious at advanced stages of evolution, arranging flowers and writing poetry and standing in front of the office of a neo-fascist member of the U.S. Congress with a sign that is serious but sarcastic and maybe even a little clever.
And to do creatively requires asking and imagining. The location of our questions reveals a lot about how we understand the holy and understand our being in the world. In this time, that revelation of assumptions and systems of belief is all too often disturbing, human existence considered a constant and bloody battle by many, nation against nation, diaspora against diaspora, religion against religion.
Sometimes, for the worst of us, the only god is the one in the mirror, and there is no compassion, no vision of what might be for “we,” only for “me.”
Peter goes when Tabitha dies and they call.
Peter believes that Jesus meant it when he said that it is what comes out of our mouth that makes us clean or unclean, not what goes in, and abandons ancient dietary restrictions, opening the faith to more cultures.
Peter and James the brother of Jesus meet with Paul, a man with no credentials even by the loose standards of early Christianity as a social movement, and they imagine together how what was once a small Jewish reform in Galilee might change non-Jewish lives in places like Corinth and Rome.
Peter and Paul, who expected the return of Jesus in their lifetime, did not sit and wait for that to occur, but they turned outward, like Christian boddhisatvas, determined that they would share the good news with as many as possible. And when horrific drought and famine hit Palestine, a crisis that would eventually lead to a devastating war, Paul collected gifts from those far flung churches to feed those starving in the very streets Jesus once walked.
Our task is to bring as many of those drowning in a sea of hatred and despair into the safety of our boat, and should we be blessed, as were the disciples, to have a catch too big for the boat we have, to build a bigger boat. Our job is to do, to love, and to walk… just, kind, and humble, for both hope and action are requirements if you wish to walk on the Way of Jesus.
“Tabitha, get up!” Let us open our eyes, open our hearts, open our hands, and live. Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Holy Mystery We Name As God,
Mother and Father of Us All,
on this Mothering Sunday,
we celebrate beloved mothers,
mourn lost mothers,
try to forgive abusive mothers,
stand in solidarity with mothers in the rubble,
searching secret prisons,
looking for children and partners
disappeared in Syria and Baltimore.
We recognize that mothering takes many forms,
not only through giving birth,
and that the traits traditionally assigned to mothers
are good and holy
regardless of the sex or gender of the nurturer.
This is also Good Shepherd Sunday,
when we ground ourselves in the context
of the life and ministry of Jesus,
fields and farms and fisheries.
We confess our own role
in an exploitative food system
where we depend on undocumented and unprotected workers.
Most of all,
we hear your call,
to live fully,
creatively,
lovingly,
this day and always,
praying as Jesus taught us, saying:
Our Father…