We’ve just had an amazing week of Vacation Bible School. 137 children K through 5, 73 Middle and Sr. High aides, and 89 adults had a wonderful time. Each day began in the church with a prayer and then lots of singing, including a good deal of clapping and hand motions.
The theme was “God’s Blueprint: Built with a Purpose,” comparing our Christian life with the building now going on at Redeemer. The focus for the week was Holy Week and Easter Day. The classroom settings for the days of Holy Week were really amazing. In one there was a dramatic presentation of Jesus’ trial before Pilate and the crucifixion. Another classroom was set up to look like a cave, meant to remind the children of the empty tomb. It really did look like the inside of a cave.
On Friday I asked the children what their favorite part of VBS was. I expected to hear about one of the days of Holy Week or Easter Day–Palm Sunday or Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. Secretly, I hoped someone would answer Easter Day, since I taught about the resurrection! Lots of little hands shot up. One child answered, “Water day.” The Palm Sunday experience included a water feature where the kids got soaking wet. Then another child answered, “Tie-dye day.” Another child answered, “Snacks.” Then several who liked that particular answer chimed in as well. “Snacks, snacks, snacks!” Actually, that was my favorite part, too!
One of the most important things that we can give to our children is the opportunity to develop a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. Redeemer devotes a great deal of energy and resources toward that end, and I’m so thankful that we’re able to do that. What a blessing it is here at Redeemer!
Years ago, Irma Bombeck wrote this about children: “I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless… They may crash… You add a longer tail… They hit the roof top… You pluck them out of the spout… You patch and comfort them, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly.
“Finally, they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out and with each twist of the ball of twine, there comes a sadness and somehow you know that it won’t be long before the beautiful creature will snap that string and soar as it was meant to soar…. Free and alone. Only then do you know that you did your job.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but I see our faith as the tail on the kite. The tail is what really enables the kite to soar.
Our Lord Jesus used another metaphor to describe himself. He called himself bread. “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” Bread is the most basic food there is. Mahatma Gandhi said that “there are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
When we were in the Republic of Georgia two months ago, bread was an important and distinctive part of every meal. One day we stopped at a roadside bakery. It was a little shed, about 12 x 15’. The oven was a large clay pot, called a tone, about 3 feet high, with a wood fire in the bottom. A large, red-faced woman with a black kerchief on her head and big hands took slabs of dough, the size of large loaves of Italian bread, and slapped them against the inside of the oven. When they were done, she deftly took them out of the hot oven with her bare hands and put them on a table to cool. She made hundreds of such loaves, called puri, every day and sold them all every day. There were several such bakery sheds all along the road.
Every culture has its own way of making bread. When Jesus called himself bread, he used a most basic human food as a metaphor. When the Hebrews were in the wilderness, traveling to the Promised Land, God fed them with manna, the miraculous bread from heaven. Jesus reminded his listeners that eventually all of the people who had been fed with manna died, but he said that the one who eats the bread of which he spoke would live forever.
Our Lord Jesus is alluding to the Eucharist. When we consume the Eucharistic bread, we’re consuming the Body of Christ. Jesus says, “The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Jesus himself is present in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist.
Someone said to me, “I don’t believe that Jesus is really present in the bread and wine. “I answered, “Then you believe that Jesus is really absent in communion?” “Well, I don’t really believe that, either,” he said. Well, you either believe he’s present or he’s absent. He can’t be both. Queen Elizabeth I wrote a poem about the Real Presence: “’Twas Christ the Word that spake it. The same took bread & break it. And as the Word did make it, So I believe & take it.”
To be a part of the Church is to be a part of the Eucharistic community. Does our Lord Jesus Christ come to us in different ways? Of course, he does. But the most basic, the most essential, the surest way is through the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
“That last night at supper lying mid the twelve, his chosen band,
Jesus, with the Law complying, keeps the feast its rites demand;
Then, more precious food supplying, gives himself with his own hand.
Word made flesh, the bread he taketh, by his word his Flesh to be,
Wine his sacred Blood he maketh, though the senses fail to see;
Faith alone the true heart waketh to behold the mystery.”
This is the faith that brings us here today. This is the faith we want to pass along to our children.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
13th Sunday after Pentecost
12 august 2018