August 12, 2018 - Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost - Are You What You Eat?

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" Matthew 5:6 

"But he (Jesus) answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God"  Matthew 4:4

People will, at times be hungry. Man does not live by bread alone, but living things also do need bread / food.

Pastor Ray played with that today in the Children's Time. He asked the children, "What is your favorite food?" Pizza and spaghetti were two responses he received. "Could you live off pizza and spaghetti alone?" he asked and he was answered "Yes!" He, of course, countered by saying that would not be a healthy diet. This, of course, was an obvious reference to one of Jesus's responses to the temptations.

Pastor Ray also preached on the phrase "You are what you eat". Apparently the earliest known printed example of the expression is from an advert for beef in a 1923 edition of the Bridgeport Telegraph, for 'United Meet [sic] Markets'  "Ninety per cent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat."

Of course the congregation was amused by the idea of this phrase coupled with the previous pizza and spaghetti answers.
In the context of church the spaghetti answer also brings to mind the humorous Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism. This was first described in a 2005 tongue-in-cheek letter written to protest the Kansas State Board of Education decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes.

The author demanded equal time in science classrooms for "Flying Spaghetti Monsterism", alongside intelligent design and evolution. The central belief is that an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. This is an argument that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon those who make unfalsifiable claims, not on those who reject them

Humor aside, we are in the middle of Sundays focusing on the first of God's metaphors in the Jesus "I am" statements. Jesus uses metaphors, not similes. Pastor Ray was using the phrase "You are what you eat" to encourage contemplation of becoming what we receive at communion. He summarized a number of questions he initially asked down to two:

Is Jesus who he says he is? 

If we are what we receive during communion, what do we become when we receive the communion bread?

There are simple, common sense, answers and more questions to arrive at the truth. Jesus is not truly bread, a gate, or a vine because these are metaphors. I don't want to get ahead of myself, however. To move on, Jesus did not say "I am bread" but rather"I am bread of life."  What is the bread of life?  When talking about eternal life, Jesus uses the present tense when he says “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47)  The details of eternal life that Christ is talking about in this life is unknowable except through faith.

What do we become when we receive the bread? also has a common sense and, perhaps, a more faith based answer. Common sense answer is I am who I was because I only ate bread dipped in wine. The faith based answer is harder. Are we Christ's body on earth? Perhaps C. S. Lewis is correct "He (Jesus) has what I call "good infection." Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else."  Yet there is only one God. The temptation in the Garden of Eden is purportedly about the human desire to be God.

There are theologies built up around each of these answers, theological structures that are constantly made with the help of the Bible. They serve as our own Towers of Babel or fortress walls. We try to reach new understandings of God and defend these theologies. We think we build these towers and walls with scriptural truth but, instead, we use bricks of our own making with Bible verses as our base material. This can not lead to solid understands or defenses of faith. Yet the need remains to articulate the kind of Christian you are to yourself.

Perhaps Jesus offers an invitation or something to ponder on where to find authentic and solid rock on which to build. Notice the metaphoric language that must be used since there is no other language to use. Jesus says, "This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died." Perhaps this is a subtle suggestion that what sustained our ancestors may not sustain us.

We come to God's table and renew a relationship to live. We eat the flesh and blood of Christ to sustain ourselves - not as a passive, inherited tradition from our past life but a change of perspective of how we live in the community of the faithful.

Matthew 43: “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed" 

Forgive me for using another metaphor because these are the only words we have but Jesus must be the corner stone of our faith and the Bible only gives us the truths our understanding can accept at any given time.