Make the Most of the Time - 8/16/15 sermon

“Make the Most of the Time”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 15, August 16, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58

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Last Sunday we had the beginning of this passage, with Jesus saying “I am the Bread of Life” and my sermon explored what the Bread of Life might mean. I won’t say a lot more just on that, so I offer if you weren’t here, the sermons are on our church website, facebook page, on my blog (and here is a link to that sermon), on my soundcloud, and they are also printed out and available on the table in the entryway. If you weren’t here, or if you want to revisit it, I suggest that you do so. Partly because in the middle of the sermon I asked from you who were here for some of your images of bread. Things that you think of when you hear the word “bread”. So feel free to revisit that sermon.

But I do want to talk a bit more about Jesus as the Bread of Life. Partly because today’s Gospel reading is, well, there is something creepy and uncomfortable about “eat my body” and “eat me” and “drink my blood”. Eat my flesh. It’s a very uncomfortable passage to hear. At least it is for me. I don’t know if you reacted that way, but I get a kind of icky feeling reading it.

But as I mentioned last week, Jesus isn’t saying that he is literally a loaf of bread. Nor is Jesus asking us to cannibalize his body. This is all metaphor. It’s all symbolic. Kind of bloody metaphors, maybe not the ones we would use today, but he is using bread as something that everyone would understand and know. Bread as the source of life. And so Jesus is saying he is the course of life, and that the Bread of Life here is also The Way of Jesus. The Bread of Life is a way of life. To eat the bread of life is to participate in Jesus’ Way. To say that I am eating the body of Jesus, or eating the Bread of Jesus, is to say that I am following in his ways, and doing what Jesus would like us to do. It is to follow his path, which is living in love and compassion. It is the way that says that the hungry deserve to be fed, so let us feed them. It is the Way that says the sick deserve to be visited and to have access to healthcare. So let’s make sure that no one goes without access to healthcare. It is a Way that says workers deserve a living wage. That we all need forgiveness. That we all need to forgive. It is the Way that says all people deserve dignity, and deserve to have their dignity recognized. It is the Way that hangs out with the wrong people and goes to the wrong places, because that’s where God’s people are. It is to go wherever God’s people are, to connect with God’s people and thus to God. To connect with all of God’s realm, and not just the part of the world that is comfortable or familiar to us.

Following Jesus is to partake of the Bread of Life. And to partake in the Bread of Life is to follow Jesus, which is the Way to eternal life. But note that eternal life is not something that God dangles in front of us like a carrot in front of a mule, with promise of some reward at the very end. That’s an abusive kind of god. Eternal life is the journey itself. It is the following itself. To follow Jesus is the eternal life. The fullness of life. To live fully as Jesus would have us live. To be aligned with Jesus, to be aligned with God, is to live in the eternal now, already. It is to accept the eternal life that we already have.

There is the bread that we eat in Communion, that is an actual loaf of bread that we eat and consume symbolically reminding us that we are the Body of Christ, reminding us of our connection to God, reminding us that it is God who feeds us and who provides. I’ve mentioned before, that in all our technological cleverness, humanity cannot make anything grow. We can help the conditions, but we can’t make anything grow.

THere is also the symbolic Bread of Life that is Jesus’ Way. It is the sum total of Jesus’ teachings, his examples of living, his commands -- and there are only two of them: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The Bread of Life is the sum total of all of Jesus’ teachings, his path of love and mercy, his Way of connecting with people, especially the outcast and the marginalized.

We are talking this summer about connection, as part of our discipleship plan that we’re talking about over the next year of Connect → Grow → Love. We are in the period of talking about connection. The BRead of Life is the path of relation with other people. To connect with other of God’s people. Not just to invite them to church, though that is a good thing to do, but really inviting people to understand and know their own right to dignity. To invite them into forgiveness. To invite them into grace. To invite them into the eternal life they already have, but which they maybe don’t know they have. That’s the connection we’re trying to make with people. The message we are trying to spread in our neighborhood, and in Eau Claire, and which the church spreads around the whole world, is to invite them into the eternal life they already have but maybe don’t know that they have. Maybe have not heard about yet, or just aren’t sure. We could also say, taking the words from Ephesians, to make the most of their time.

I like that first sentence in Ephesians that we read: “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” Making the most of the time.

I think Jesus would say that the way to make the most of the time is to follow the Way he showed us. That is the way of eternal life. Making the most of the time. Another way that this letter could have been phrased is to say, “Because there is so much evil, only do good.” Let your good be the prophetic message against the evil in the world. Because evil does a good enough job on its own. It doesn’t need our help. It seems to do just fine. Imagine doing good. Don’t be tempted by evil’s agenda of immediate gains, or power, or wealth, or whatever sparkly thing that evil is putting in front of you that we all find so tempting, but make the most of the time by eating only from the Bread of Life.

Maybe another way to say that is to ask the question, “What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?” What kind of effect do you want to have in the world? How do you want to be remembered?

The other side of the coin of eternal life is how you live on in others’ memories. We always live on with God, but how do we live on in other people’s memories? What kind of relationships did you have? How did you connect with other people? Did you make a positive difference in the world? Go out and make the world a more loving world. Let that be the use of your time: to make the world a more loving world. Connect with people. Build relationships. Live the Way of the Bread of Life making the most of the time.

Last week at the end of the sermon I challenged you all to connect with someone new, and I hope that you all did. I suggested to go meet a neighbor you haven’t met yet. Or go find out someone new that is around you. Make some kind of connection with someone during the week. And I hope that you did.

I offered that challenge, and I’ve offered a few others this year, not because I enjoy giving commands or because I like hearing my own voice telling people what to do. I offer them because these are practices and exercises to build your faith. These are exercises and practices that will make you a better disciple. That will make us all better disciples, better followers of Jesus, to do some of these things. So I hope that you connected with someone this last week that you have not met before. I did.

I’ve told you many times before that I will not ask you to do something that I am not willing to do. So I connected with some new people. Doing that is important. So I challenge you to connect with someone new this week. I challenge you to do it again. As I mentioned earlier in today’s service, we’ll be going out to hang door hanger invitations after worship to the homes in our neighborhood. That’s one way to connect, because you might meet or encounter someone outside. But it is also a way to extend an invitation. Invite someone to the songs and s’mores on Wednesday night. That’s a good way for all of us to connect with new people: if everyone who is planning to come that also brings someone new with you, there will be a bunch of people around the circle that we don’t know. That will give you all a chance to connect with someone new, to hear their story, to talk with them, to build some relationships.

It is a good thing to connect with others. It is the vocation of the church, to spread the Good News, and inviting people in to God’s fellowship. To invite them in to feed and be nourished on the Bread of Life.

Make the most of the time connecting with the people around you.

Let us pray: Life-giving God, Bread of Life, as we are in process of connecting with others, of expanding our community, of being the Bread of Life for others and making the most of the time, give us your Spirit of hope and love to keep moving forward, to keep growing in faith, and growing in our discipleship. Give us your Spirit of courage to be invitational. To connect with the stranger. Give us your Spirit of care to what to enlarge this fellowship of friendship and love that is Plymouth UCC, so that more and more people will know your love and know your grace. Amen.