JAMES CAMPBELL
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Flesh, Blood, and Intimacy

8/19/2018

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IT’S PERSONAL
John 6:51-58
Sunday, August 19, 2018
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
John 6:51-58
​

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
 
At the very first church I served, I was called upon to officiate at the wedding of a church member who was marrying a Catholic.  The Catholic bride had agreed to be married in a Protestant Church, as long as we had some of the trappings of a Catholic wedding.  One of those was that the bride and groom wanted communion.  “That’s fine,” I said, “as long as everyone else in the sanctuary is offered communion too.”  That was one of my Protestant trappings.  
 
The big day arrived and the church was full of people – about half Catholic and half Protestant.  Since it was a wedding, and since I was so young and inexperienced, I didn’t think to ask anyone to assist me with communion.  And I hadn’t really thought about what it would mean, logistically, for me to serve 300 people by intinction, all by myself. 
 
When we got to the Communion portion of the wedding, the Protestants tore off a modest sized piece of bread, dipped it in the cup and discreetly put it in their mouths.  But not the Catholics.  They too tore off a piece of bread, but pooped it directly into their mouths.  And then to my utter shock, they grabbed the cup and drank, and some of them deeply. The Protestants, who were standing in the line behind, witnessed this, got confused, and thinking that they must have been doing it wrong all these years, also began to drink from the cup. And I began to panic as I contemplated what it would mean if the cup ran dry.  
 
Just when I thought all was lost, a woman from my church approached.  She tore off a piece of bread and then tried to grab the cup, but this time I held on firmly and whispered, perhaps a little too loudly considering that I was wearing a microphone: “No Olga!  Dip it! Dip it!”  Well, thank God Olga did.  And then like clockwork, all the other Protestants, copycats that they were, began to do the same.  And the day was saved.  There was enough of Jesus for everybody.  
 
Communion was very complicated that day.  But truth be told, it’s complicated on most days.  It’s one of those things that we Christians do but that we don’t talk about very much.  And maybe the reason we don’t talk about it is that we’re not quite sure what we think about it.  Because it’s complicated.  What began as a simple meal that Jesus shared with his disciples has become a sacrament and, as such, a major point of disagreement between those of us who follow Jesus.  We’ve even fought wars over it!  Some of us believe that there is a mystical element to it all – that somehow Christ is present in the meal in ways that that transcend what our minds can understand. Others see it as a simple memorial – a time to remember the life and saving acts of Jesus.  Some see it as a foretelling of the end of the age, when all God’s children will sit down together at the same table of peace.  And some Protestants, like our Quaker sisters and brothers, believe it solely to be a spiritual event, not requiring bread and wine at all, but rather an inner communion of the spirit.  And in our crazy, wonderful United Church of Christ, we have folks who believe all of those things… and more.
 
So, the Eucharist or Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper is complicated.  And today’s lesson from John’s gospel makes it even more so.  Jesus speaks very strange words, rather embarrassing to hear.  “Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”  Pretty shocking, right?  But hold onto your hats because the Greek word here for eat is “trogo” which has the connotation of munching or gnawing, with an implied desperation.  And, for the first hearers anyway, Jesus’ words also would have been heard by some as blasphemy.  The drinking of blood is strictly forbidden in Hebrew Scripture (Gen. 9:4, Lev. 3:17; Deut. 12:23).  In addition, in antiquity the idea of eating someone’s flesh was a metaphor for great hostility.  It was a way to insult someone.  
 
In verse 60, which we did not read today, Jesus’s disciples responded to all this flesh and blood talk by saying: “This teaching is difficult.  Who can accept it?”  Indeed, who can?  And so, to try to make it more acceptable, we have written beautiful and rather vague liturgies, trying to tone down this untamed, hard to understand idea.    
 
But even as we tone it down, if you pause to really think about it, communion remains shocking.  Martin Copenhaver, former pastor of the Wellesley Congregational Church in Massachusetts and currently president of Andover Newton Theological School at Yale, tells this story: “On one occasion when I repeated Jesus' familiar words, "This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you," a small girl suddenly said in a loud voice, "Oh, yuk!" The congregation looked horrified, as if someone had splattered blood all over the altar - which, in effect, is just what the little girl had done with her exclamation.”[1]  And I wonder: did that little girl simply say out loud what some of us are thinking?  
 
So, we have established that Communion is complicated.  And yet, it still draws us.  The invitation to eat and drink with Jesus or of Jesus continues to woo people, even those of us who don’t know what to say or think or believe about it.  And I think it woos us because it’s visceral and earthy and mysterious and intimate.
 
Some of you have met my best friend Jim, the Presbyterian minister who preached my Installation here in April.  In a recent conversation, he said something like this: “It’s interesting.  Presbyterians are not like they used to be.  They’re no longer satisfied with a strictly intellectual approach to the faith.  In the old days, a good sermon was sufficient.  People simply wanted a faith they could understand intellectually.  But that doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.  More and more of the people at my church are looking for mystery and awe, as well as intellectual stimulation.  They want more prayer and more silence.  And they want more Communion.  In other words, they want to engage their bodies and spirits as well as their minds. They’re trying to feed the whole person – and it’s personal.”  
 
And maybe that is, at least in part, what Jesus was trying to communicate when he shocked his friends with his flesh and blood talk.  Maybe it was an invitation to deeper intimacy with him.  Maybe it was an invitation to take something of his own self into our own flesh and blood; to become one with him, to participate on some deep level in the Incarnation.  
 
You know, it’s not unlike what a mother does when she breast-feeds her child.  She gives of her own body, her own substance, in order to transfer her life to her child.  And it’s very personal.  
 
The power of the Eucharist is not, in the end, about bread and wine and words and churches and pastors and ritual. It’s about getting very, very close to Jesus. 
 
So, think whatever you will about communion.  There is probably no right answer about exactly what it is.  But whatever you think, don’t get hung up on it. Jesus’s strange, strong words are not about some kind of doctrine.  His words are about the relationship he longs to have with each one of us.  His strange, strong words are an invitation, as Martin Copenhaver says, to “…receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, (so that) his life clings to (our) bones and courses through (our) veins.” [2]
 
And it doesn’t get any more personal than that.    


[1]Copenhaver, Martin.  http://day1.org/4043-eating_jesus.  Accessed August 14, 2018

[2]Ibid

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"Your words have kept people on their feet."

8/12/2018

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​WONDERFUL WORDS OF LIFE
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Sunday, August 12, 2018
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell 
 
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
​

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
 
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
 
+++
 
The late great pianist Arthur Rubenstein, who spoke eight languages, once came down with a very stubborn case of hoarseness. At the time, the newspapers were full of reports about smoking and cancer; and as an avid smoker Rubinstein decided to go see a throat specialist.  Rubinstein wrote: "I searched the doctor’s face for a clue during the 30-minute examination, but it was expressionless. (And then) he told me to come back the next day. Well, I went home full of fears, and I didn't sleep that night."  The next day there was another long examination and again an ominous silence from the doctor. "Tell me," Rubenstein said. "I can stand the truth. I've lived a full, rich life. What is wrong with me?" To which the doctor replied: "You talk too much." 
 
If you ask anyone who knows me well, they will tell you that I, too, love to talk.  I love words and not just the ones that come out of my mouth.  I love words spoken, sung, and written.  I love them in all kinds of languages.  I love them because they give expression to the deepest feelings of the human heart.  Words help us shape and understand and record the human experience.  Words connect us to others across chasms of time and culture and space.  
 
And words can be holy.  Words can have tremendous power.  In the book of Genesis, it is God’s word that called creation into existence. “And God said: “Let there be light and there was light.” The Gospel of John calls Jesus the Word of God, declaring that “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.”  The writer of the book of Hebrews says that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit; joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
 
We Protestant have taken these teachings about the power of words to heart.  For us it is the preached word that is the center of the worship experience.  Right or wrong, everything builds up to the sermon with its ability to shape the lives and faith of those who hear.  
 
And for those of us who preach, the Bible carries a special caution.  The book of James says that not many people should desire to be teachers in the church because teachers will be judged with greater strictness.  Why such gloomy foreboding? – Because words have life and energy and power.  They can do a great deal of good – but they can also do a great deal of harm.   
 
We can all tell stories about words that have hurt us, and sometimes very deeply.  And most of us can tell stories about how our words have hurt others. There are some things I have said in my life that I would give almost anything to take back; words spoken without thinking; words spoken as a weapon, inflicting maximum pain.  But as a kid in one my of confirmation classes years ago put it: “Words are like toothpaste – easy to get out but impossible to put back in.” 
 
In the epistle lesson of the day, Paul gives the church in Ephesus some practical advice on words that hurt and words that heal. The Ephesian church was divided between Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity.  And as the church grew and started to encompass more and more Gentile converts, the divide between the two groups became stronger and stronger.  The argument that divided the Ephesians was whether or not Gentile converts had to observe Jewish laws of circumcision in order to follow Christ.  And in their zeal to convince one another about that they are the ones who understood God best, words were spoken in that ancient Turkish congregation that hurt – and hurt deeply.  And if you have ever been involved in a church fight, then you know how hurtful angry words can be, especially in a place where people claim to be known by their love. 
 
So Paul, writing from prison, reminds the Ephesians of the incredible power of their words.  And then he gives them some very practical advice.  He says, among other things: “Speak the truth, but do it remembering that your are eternally connected to one another. Don’t lie or exaggerate about one another.  It’s OK to be angry, but don’t hold a grudge overnight.  Let no evil talk come out of your mouths.  Instead, use your words to build one another up.”
 
Then, in the midst of these practical exhortations, Paul’s words seem to morph, as they often do, into the mystical.  And he makes a most incredible claim about the power of positive words: “Do all these things I am telling you”, he writes, “so that your words may give graceto those who hear.”  
 
In Christian theology, grace is the freely given divine favor that comes to us from God.  But in a striking affirmation of the power of our human words, Paul claims that we can bestow the grace of God on each other by the words we speak.  Our words can heal broken hearts.  Our words can give grace and light and peace and strength to those who need it most.  Our words can literally change the course of a person’s life.  
 
I know this is true from my own experience. There have been many people along the road of my life, who by their words have encouraged me to become the person I am.  They haven’t just spoken nice words.  They have spoken God’s words, words full of grace and hope and love in the midst of my confusion or despair, and often they have spoken them at just the right moment. And I can also remember times when my words have been the purveyor of grace, when something I said encouraged someone who was ready to give up, or enabled someone to see another way forward. Grace-filled words are one of the most important ministries any Christian can have.  And they are especially important in this world so full of hateful, bitter, and angry words that rain down upon us from every direction.
 
The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood something of the power of words. Because of his active opposition to Adolf Hitler, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned by the Nazis and executed in the waning days of the Second World War.  Now a person who is thrown into prison, especially when trying to do good, has every reason to speak hurtful, angry words.  But Bonhoeffer continued to speak words of grace in the midst of great difficulty, because that is precisely when words of grace are needed the most.     
 
It is said that in his last days, Bonhoeffer used to walk the narrow corridors of the Flossenberg prison visiting the cells, speaking to prisoners and encouraging them, laughing and joking with them, singing hymns and praying with them.  No longer free to travel as he wished his spoken words became his primary means of ministry.  Bonhoeffer wrote: “God has put his word into our mouths in order that it may be communicated with others.  The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s word to him.  He needs that friend again and again and again.”[1]
 
In the Old Testament book of Job, Eliphaz, one of Job’s comforters, pays him a tremendous compliment.  He says of Job: “You have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands.  Your words have kept people on their feet.” 
 
In a few moments, we’ll all walk out these doors. And in the hours and days until we meet again next Sunday, about 95,000 words will spill out of our mouths - words with the power for good or for evil.  The world is already chocked full of fearful, hateful, judgmental words.  For God’s sake, let’s not add to the burden!  Instead may it be said of all of us, and of this church, that our words kept people on their feet.
 
Let it be.  Amen.   


[1]Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together, pp.11-12

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People are starving... for all kinds of things.

8/5/2018

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A DEEPER HUNGER
John 6: 24-35
Sunday, August 5, 2018
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
John 6:24-35
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”
 
Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
 
+++
 
One of the responsibilities of being a minister is not one that most folks would choose.  In essence, you voluntarily relinquish being just James or just Alison, and become instead an official face of the church.  You are held to a higher level of scrutiny. And that means that how I live at the gym and the grocery store and walking my dog matters.  Alison and I represent you to the world.  It’s a privilege and an awesome responsibility and sometimes a pain in the behind, because sometimes our messy humanity gets in the way despite our best intentions.
 
Here’s a case in point: a few years ago, I went into a deli right across the street from the church I served in Manhattan.  It was completely chaotic in there, as it was on most days for the lunch rush.  I made my way through the crowd and ordered something simple: two scrambled eggs on 7-grain toast.  And then I waited for it to be made.   And I waited and I waited and I waited.  Most of the time this would not have bothered me as much as it did, but on that day, I was really hungry.  I was so hungry, in fact, that I had the shakes.  That happens sometimes when I don’t eat.  I get weak and dizzy and nauseated… and yes, grumpy.  Finally, when I felt like I couldn’t wait anymore, I went back to the counter and the same man who had taken my order looked up at me as if he had never seen me before. “Where is my egg sandwich?”  I asked.  He turned and asked the cook where it was.  They went back and forth with each other, looking inside the bags that had already been prepared with other people’s lunches, but to no avail. In the chaos of that place, they had simply forgotten mine.
 
“Oops” the guy said, “so how do you want your eggs?”  --“How do I want my eggs?” I asked.  “15 minutes ago, that’s how I want my eggs.  But I don’t want them anymore.”  And out the door I huffed, a fine representative of the church! 
 
I probably wouldn’t have been so huffy had I not been so hungry.  Hunger can drive any us to do some things that might otherwise be out of character for us.  It might make a minister act unministerial.  Our bodies are programmed to be fed on a regular basis.  And when they are neglected, things can get desperate. 
 
But for most of us, it’s a temporary inconvenience.  But for about 800 million other people in the world, the results are much more drastic. Those people don’t have enough to eat to sustain their lives on an on-going basis. Of that number, about 16,000 children will die today from hunger-related illnesses.  In this world of plenty, it’s a moral outrage, worthy of God’s judgment.     
 
Despite these grim statistics, modern people still have it better than ancient ones did.  There were more hungry people, per capita, in Jesus’s day than in our own.  That fact helps to set the scene of last week’s Gospel lesson about the hungry crowd pursuingJesus to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. You will remember that Jesus took a little boy’s five loaves of barley bread and two fish and fed 5000 hungry people in a world where people were often hungry. No wonder they wanted to make Jesus king. But Jesus didn’t want to be their king.  He didn’t come to this earth to be a king.  And so he escaped them by fleeing up a mountain.  And what a desperate picture of desperate people that paints – a mob literally chasing the Lord up a hill.  
 
Jesus escaped, but these desperate folks hunted him down and eventually found him in the town of Capernaum. “Rabbi, when did you come here?” they asked.  And Jesus, who could be a bit cheeky sometimes answered: “You’re not looking for me because of the signs you saw or the teaching you received.  You’re here because you want more food.”  
 
Well, yeah, Jesus.  And what’s wrong with the hungry looking for food?  And why shouldn’t they look for it from you since you had miraculously supplied it?
 
There was nothing wrong with these folks looking for food.  There was nothing wrong with asking Jesus to give them some more food.  It’s just that Jesus understood that a full stomach was not all they needed.  We humans are more than our basic needs.  We’re hungry all right, but not just for bread.   We’re hungry for purpose and dignity and meaning.
 
And so, Jesus used this teachable moment to tell the people about another kind of bread.   “Don’t just workfor the food that perishes,” he said.  “Instead,workfor the food that endures for eternal life.”  And then Jesus said a rather strange thing about that work is: “The work of God is to believe in me.”  
 
And at first glance that seems like a plain invitation to believe in Jesus.  And we do receive spiritual sustenance from our trust in him as Savior and Lord. Jesus is, for us, the very Bread of Life.  But that’s where a lot of Christians stop.  They think that simply believing in Jesus is enough.  But Jesus was not really talking about we believe, in our minds, about him.  When Jesus said that the work of God is to believe in the One whom God has sent, the Greek word for believe is “pisteuo”, an active verb which implies not only to have faith, but to give evidence of that faith, to do something that expresses that faith in the world.   And that’s a Mediterranean way of thinking – faith, not merely as intellectual assent, but faith as commitment, loyalty, and solidarity. It is faith expressed imitation.  So then, the bread that we work for is to believe in, that is to imitate Jesus Christ. And in that imitation, our starving spirits are fed.  
 
Do you see what Jesus was doing? He invited these people that no one else cared about to a richer, fuller kind of life.  Jesus took those poor, hungry, uneducated, desperate people and invited them to do what he did; to reach out to the least, the last, and the lost; and to feast on purpose and meaning and dignity for the perhaps the very first time in their lives.  Scholars say that one reason Christianity took hold the way it did was that it challenged the class structure of the day by insisting that everyone was equally important.  And no one had said that before.  It was revolutionary.  It still is.
 
And that begs the question: how do we share the Bread of Life that Jesus offers - the bread of dignity, meaning, purpose, and respect in 2018.  How do we share that food with the hungry as individuals and as a congregation?  
 
And that brings me right back to that grumpy preacher in a New York deli.  I thought about that deli guy this week and I wondered: what might it have meant for that tired, overextended man to have been greeted, not by my anger, but by my understanding for his tired feet and his homesickness and his struggle with a new language?  What if I had smiled and looked him in the eye like an equal and said “No worries.” What if I had fed him with some respect and dignity?  How would that have changed him, and me?  And how then might that have changed the way he responded to the next person in line? 
 
In just a moment, we will come to this table where the Bread of Life and the Cup of Blessing await us all.  It is a time for us to come close to Jesus, the Bread of our lives.  And it’s a time for recommitment to do the things he did; to literally imitate him in everydayness of our lives.  That’s the bread we all need.  And it endures for eternal life - for those who give and those who receive.  
 
Thanks be to God.  Amen.
​

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"The glory of God is the human person fully alive."
Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, 2nd century