Wordplay

            For a few years while I was in college, my hometown buddies and I had a Thanksgiving weekend tradition of getting together that Friday afternoon for a football game.  We played wherever we could find some open space:  the high school track, the golf course, somebody’s back yard.  A couple of us were decent athletes, though most of us were more like me, and the games results were usually more the fruit of luck than skill.  Case in point:  I remember one play where my friend Alan – and actually, three of us in our group of friends were named Alan – Alan went out for a long pass that somehow wound up getting stuck in a tree.  And while we stood there wondering how to score that one, Alan – the receiver – grabbed one of the lower branches and started shaking it violently until the ball fell out of the tree, and into his arms, whereupon he ran into the end zone for a touchdown.  “You can’t do that,” we told him, “the ball got stuck in the tree.”  Alan smiled and replied, “Hey, doesn’t it say the Bible, ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves?’”
            Well now, on this morning, even our second graders, who now have Bibles of their own, will be able to tell you that, no, “The Lord helps those who help themselves” is not a Bible verse.  Nor are certain other cherished phrases that we tend to associate with the scriptures, like, “To thine own self be true,” “God works in mysterious ways,” and – my mother’s personal favorite - “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  Today is World Communion Sunday, a day when Christian communities around the world come together around the table and celebrate the fact that though we are many, and though we are different, we are all one in Jesus Christ.  But it is also true that as Congregationalists, we are heirs of the Reformed tradition, and while the Lord’s Supper is important, it is the Word that is central to our worship life together, even on World Communion Sunday.  So today we celebrate both Word and Sacrament, with the sharing of the table and the presentation of Bibles to our young people.
            And as a way of doing this, I’ve chosen a passage from Luke that brings both to life.  Barb read for us a section of Luke’s gospel that we’ve listened to so often that we may not actually have heard what Luke wrote.  In a way it’s like the Lord’s Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance, something we know so well that we don’t really pay close attention to what the words are actually saying.  Did anybody notice something a little unusual in Jesus’ words at the table in Luke’s Last Supper?    “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said ‘Take this and divide it among yourselves…’ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them… And likewise the cup after supper saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’”  Luke has Jesus passing the cup around, not once, but twice – both before and after the bread.  How many times have we heard these words from Luke, and how many times have we noticed the two cups?  Did Jesus really pass the cup around twice, or is Luke trying to tell us something through repetition?
            I’ve found myself thinking this week about my early experiences in each of the three churches I’ve served, probably because I’ve also been thinking about Angie starting in her new church next week.  One of the things she and I talked about before she left is that every church has its unanticipated obstacles, little land mines that you don’t find out about until you get there.  In my first church it was the 1980 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.  The issue was not what I said about the election campaign, but rather – and you can be forgiven for not believing this – it was that I didn’t say anything at all about it.  Some of the elders expected me to come out and endorse the challenger, and because I didn’t, I was somehow suspect.  In my second church, the unanticipated landmine was an overly saccharine portrait of Jesus that was donated by a church family in memory of a recently departed relative.  And it wasn’t the portrait itself so much as where they wanted to put it – right up here smack in the front center of the chancel.  And even to politely refuse their idea was in their mind to disrespect the memory of the dearly departed.  And yes, when I arrived in Beverly eleven years ago I found myself unexpectedly drawn into a turf war going on in the kitchen, an experience that made me so cautious about the territory that to this day I still don’t know how to run the dishwasher.  The church is an oftentimes curious animal – we can differ about the humanity of Jesus, or the presence of God, or the unity of the church, but don’t you dare take liberties with the kitchen!
            In the early days of the church it actually was the humanity of Jesus and the presence of God that was the not-so-hidden minefield which threatened the church’s unity, hence our two cups this morning.  You might remember last month when Kate Pinkham preached, she alluded to some of the differences that divided the church back in its earliest days, and one of the biggest differences had to do with the nature of Jesus:  was Jesus fully, 100% a human being, or was he a divine being come to earth in order to bring salvation to humanity?   There were strong opinions on both sides of the question, so strong that, one or two generations after Luke wrote, certain biblical scribes decided that Luke’s original account of the last supper was an insufficient depiction of Jesus’ humanity – like my silence about the election was an insufficient endorsement of Reagan - and so took the liberty of adding about a sentence and a half to make the matter crystal clear.  Luke’s original telling ended in the middle of verse 19, “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them.”  Period.   But some later readers didn’t think this showed Jesus at his most fully human, so they added language which referred specifically to Jesus’ body and his blood.  The revised version then goes on after the words “he broke it and gave it to them,” and has Jesus say, “This is my body which is given for you… and likewise the cup after supper saying, ‘This cup…is the new covenant in my blood.”  For later generations, the last supper is not complete without mentioning that Jesus had a real body that could be broken and that he bled real blood, which meant of course he was fully, 100% a human being.  And, inadvertently, the addition resulted in Jesus’ passing the cup around the table, not once, but twice, once before the bread and once after.
            Of course, this is only something we notice if we open our Bibles and actually read them.  And this is one of the reasons Heather and I decided to give Bibles to our young people now, at the beginning of the church school year, instead of the way we have done it in the past, giving them out at the end.  The Bible is not a reward for a certain level of achievement, or for good Sunday School attendance, or anything else – it is the opportunity to read for ourselves that wonderful, ongoing story of faith which is not just about the people in these pages, but about you and me, and where we see ourselves in these stories.  This morning we saw a good intersection of Word and Sacrament, how the words that were written can influence the flavor of what we enjoy at the table, like some fresh-cut parsley can bring new life to a soup or a sauce.  As Gail read for us from Isaiah, “the grass [may] wither, and the flower [may] fade, but the word of God will stand forever.”  We put that word into our children’s hands so that they, and we, may discover that freshness for ourselves.  But it will only happen if we open our Bibles to see what they have to say to us; after all, as it is written somewhere, The Lord helps those who help themselves!
            Let us pray.