Jr. High Madness!
Tonight was our Jr. High lock in… Thank God for Ben and the group leaders who are staying up so I can go to bed by one… and get up by six, which means 5 more hours of sleep than they are getting. Tonight we looked at sacraments; Holy Communion and Baptism.
The focus of these is well, forgiveness… kinda neat how this all fits together. We are given these gifts, promises from God attached to earthly elements and the command to “do this” not as a burden, but as a blessing.
One thing that has filled my head lately is the difference between being right and being in right relationship. I can be right about something and my relationship with others can be way wrong. Now I am not saying you need to abandon your moral compass… but what I am saying is you can stress your rightness, or you can let the road of right relationship bring you to a place of forgiveness and healing where you being right isn’t at the core.
Put it this way… Sin is real, and as Paul says “the wages of sin is death.” Then we God would be right in toasting the whole lot of us. But God chooses right relationship and so sends his Son, so that all might have life. Right relationship costs more, takes more time and the out come well, from our vantage point the outcome is in question. So for us we would much rather be right, and sometimes that boils down to the old, eye for an eye justice.
God doesn’t have the same limitations we have and so sees the whole picture. It is in this vision that Jesus commands us to forgive as God has first forgiven us.
Well the communion bread is about ready to come out of the oven for Holy Communion before breakfast, and I am shot! So… if any of the above makes sense, wonderful, if I have erred in any way, or if I have stated a heretical position, please don’t call my bishop, forgiveness might be in order.
Be careful if you are on the roads in Reedsburg, WI tomorrow morning at 6:30ish… a groggy pastor with fresh Communion bread will be on his ay to church!
Smörgåsbord
I have to admit, this food thing is starting to get out of hand! I noticed that my last two day’s posts were sugar induced and today we have Smörgåsbord. I think I was in college before I knew what a buffet was, but a Smörgåsbord, well I knew all about them. Even though it is a Swedish word, it was in fact an accumulation of enough food to even mellow out our Norwegian pride.
Lavish, is a word that comes to mind. Oh a Smörgåsbord is more that a buffet, it is an experience! You say buffet, I think of “Old Country Buffet” massive quantities of food to be sure, but 4,000 drum sticks, next to a tub of mashed potatoes, and an equally sized tub of corn on the cob, well at least they have a soft serve machine there.
But a Smörgåsbord: BORK BORK BORK! Now we are talking food. Maybe not in shear bulk, but style, and flavors, when I think of a smorgasbord I think of good food, carefully prepared, and shared with many. Maybe this is because the only buffet type meals I ever attended until I was well into my adult years were smorgasbords held in church basements. No mass produced food here, this food was homemade, made with pride and purpose and it was enjoyed in an atmosphere of fellowship! They do say ambiance is everything, and there is nothing like a church basement, sitting on a cold folding chair at a table covered with a table cloth that was hand embroidered the same ladies who are currently peering into the bottom of a now empty 100 cup coffee pot.
Ok, and this has to do with Lent, The Lord’s Prayer and Give us this day our daily bread, how? Well, It does, daily bread and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper were the focal points of today’s devotion. Communion is very much a part of my daily bread though I don’t consume it quite that often. Oh there are weeks when I do have it five or six times, (my personal record was during Holy Week 2 or 3 years ago, I think I had communion, ummm at least 15 times!) but the point is it is daily bread in the fact that Christ comes to us in this meal and feeds us with his presence in our lives.
Some may say (as someone did today) that Christ isn’t only with us in communion, and that is a good point and it is true. But this is the place where he has promised to be. So as we gather for worship and receive the gift of Holy Communion, we also know in faith that Christ is in fact there, we don’t have to hope or wonder, for he has promised.
One of the reasons this is daily bread is Christ’s presence to be sure, but it is also because of something I notice every time we gather. It is a perk of being a pastor and leading worship. But I get to see the whole people of God gathered, streaming forward for the meal, that in itself is a powerful image in my mind. I did a Google search for images of communion, and I found a lot of pictures of bread and wine, many of the pope giving communion to someone, but I couldn’t find a picture that gave that vision of the whole people of God coming to receive this gift of God.
Maybe we fixate on daily bread even in communion as a me thing and not an us thing, as in “give us this day our daily bread.” To me part of this daily bread is the bread and the wine, but it is also feeding and being feed with others. It is my friend a smorgasbord, in the best sense of the word. Holy Communion is daily bread, all God’s best gifts are given to us not in bulk, but enough, carefully prepared for each of us in Christ.
The Candy Jar
Today our devotions mentioned that “It is possible to make too much of bread.” I am not so sure of that. It also mentioned that it is very easy to confuse our needs and our wants. That statement I have no problem with at all!
Is it indeed possible to make too much of bread, well I am sure if you worked at it, yes it would be. However, you would have to limit the understanding of “daily bread” and carry it to the extreme! However, I have already talked about the fact that bread is whatever we need for life. That is not limited to our physical needs. Daily bread also includes God’s word and will for our life. In this case I don’t think you can make too much of bread. Is God abundant with daily bread, yes. It is ours to hoard, to keep as signs of special blessing, I don’t think so… If we were to get what we deserved, we would get so very little. But God… well…
The following is my version of a story I read someplace, but I think it gets to my point of God’s gracious providing in all things and our need to share those gifts.
One fine day a young boy went shopping with his mother bef
ore going to play with his freinds. In one old fashioned boutique the mother shopped as the young boy did his best to keep his fingers off of things. The shop keeper noticed the boy and offered him a handful of candy from a large jar on the counter.
The mother nodded her approval, but the young boy didn’t make a move. Again the shop keeper offered the glass jar filled with treats to the boy, and the mother added her verbal approval saying “go ahead hun’ take some candy.” But still the boy didn’t take any candy.
They shop keeper asked the boy: “you like candy don’t you?” in reply the boy rapidly shook his head in the affirmative. So at last the shop keeper reached in the jar himself and pulled out a handful of candy, put it in a little sack and gave it to the young man who was grinning from ear to ear.
On the way home the mother asked the young boy “why didn’t you take the candy when the shop keeper offered it to you?”
The young boy replies, “Mom! My hands are very small and if I took the candy, I could only take a few, but you see how many I got when the shop keeper used his big hands, now I can share them with everyone!
So the point of this lovely little story… When we take we may get a little. But when God gives… He gives us more than we can imagine or hold. However, we are not called to horde our gifts, we are called to use our hands to share out of the abundance God graciously gives so that all might have their daily bread!
A loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese a can of lemonade and thou…
Perhaps one of the most memorable meals I have ever eaten, was not so much of a meal as it was all we could scrounge up at the time. Kristi and I had just flown into London and taken the train into town to try and find our hotel. It was a long trip, and I was wedged between the bulkhead behind me and a lady who insisted on reclining her seat. On the best of flights things are tight, but by the time we got to London, I had the two semi-permanent divots in my knee caps from the little metal bars on the seat back in front of me. Anyway… once we landed we were ready to begin our adventure. So, with luggage in tow… we wondered out of the train station and on to the streets of the first foreign country we had ever been in. Fine, I know its England and they speak English, more or less, but still!
Anyway we were trying to get our bearings and after wondering around a bit, we were still lost, but we or at least I discovered I was very hungry! So 
we found a little shop just off the Thames, bought what we thought we could afford for dinner, it amounted to a Baguette, a hunk of cheese and a big can of a lemonade-y type drink. We walked back up to the river and ate and looked and soaked it all in.
Glamorous? Not really, it was London, not Paris! Memorable? Absolutely! Would I have remembered this if I was all by myself, well maybe, but what made it really memorable was that I was with my wife!
As we looked at daily bread in our book of faith devotions today it brought up the fellowship aspect of our daily bread. It talked about all those people Jesus ate with, and the somewhat interesting fact that most of the people Jesus ate with were not, how shall I say this, hmmm… well they were people your mother would most likely frown upon you hanging out with.
Yet, these were the very people the Gospels tell us over and over again that Jesus actually invited and accepted invitations from, to share meals. There is a whole ton of cultural stuff that “breaking bread” brings with it in Jesus day and ours, and I am not going into it here. But suffice it to say many of the memories about what Jesus taught and where he taught it, revolved around food. Then there are all the comparisons between heaven and the most outrageous all you can eat buffet that you have ever seen! The best part is that everyone is invited.
With that in mind, think about the most memorable meals you have ever had. Who was there, what made them memorable. Have you had a memorable meal because someone was there that you would rather not have eaten with? How does it make you feel that person has an invitation to the heavenly banquet just like you?
Ok, more questions than anything else today, but it is Friday, my lap top is giving me fits, but the question mark key still works well! Blessings!
Let them eat cake.
People seem to love cake. I don’t.
Cake is fine and I think I know why people like it, it is just I wouldn’t cross the road to get a piece of cake, with the exception of a German chocolate cake with my grandma Glesne’s fudge frosting, for that I would cross a four lane highway. Daffodil cakes, coffee cakes, bunt cakes, fancy wedding cakes, birthday cakes, cakes made in bakery’s large or small thrill me not at all.
I am not a pastry snob in any way shape or form. However one of my first jobs as a kid was working at Fosdal Home Bakery in Stoughton, Wisconsin. No I did not bake, I did not frost, I did not decorate, I cleaned up. I washed hundreds upon hundreds of cake pans, cake, sheets, and angel food cake forms. Granted I was in Junior High at the time, but the experience has left me scared for life! Ok, that is a bit dramatic, I think it is just that I plain old don’t like cake that much, give me a just baked loaf of bread any day!
But people do tend to make a fuss about cake, they love cake they go on and on about cake. I have heard people say “oh, they have cake, well I guess I will be there!” I guess the thing about cake for most people is 
that it sets the occasion apart as something special, you just don’t have cake every day! Marie Antoinette aside… Bread is a staple, it is the basic building block of many of the world’s daily diets. Cake on the other hand is well… ummm… well in the realm of our daily bread, cake is the icing on the cake… uggg… I don’t believe I just wrote that… well you get the point.
But here is my thought. In the book of faith Lenten Journey Devotions today we continued our look at daily bread. They highlighted Luther’s explanation of daily bread. “Everything that nourishes our body and meets its needs, such as: Food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, yard, fields, cattle, money, possessions, a devout spouse, devout children, devout employees, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors and other things like these.” A pretty big list, in fact our devotions seem to expand that list even further with things like; the arts, health care, freedom from political and military violence (I wonder what Luther would have thought about the additions to the list!) I think I get the point, daily bread goes way beyond a loaf!
But as I looked at the lists Luther’s, which is a bit more basic and grounded, and the list from our devotions, very modern and quite a bit more specific, I began to wonder… when does praying for and accepting our daily bread become and expectation for daily cake? Even for those folks who come into St. John and get a bag of groceries are getting way more than just the basics of bread. Now no one is going to get caviar in their bag of groceries, but we do a fair job of going beyond the basics, to add a loving touch to the basics that many people so desperately need. Daily bread is in fact more that the basics just needed to keep a pulse going, daily bread is also relationships, and life, and not just life, but as Jesus puts it abundant life.
But the question just what is our most basic daily bread, and when do we if in fact we do, cross the line from daily bread to daily cake? Because there is want in this world, there are those who do not receive for one reason or another their daily bread, be that food, or relationship or the life that God intends for us in Jesus Christ. Maybe, as it state in our devotions, it is a distribution problem, too much cake for some not enough bread for others…
Built-in Time Machines
We all have things that evoke strong memories. Sights, smells, songs… other words that begin with s… um… well you get the point, we all have triggers that act as time travel devices. Once you experience one of these triggers you are instantly transported back in time.
For me one of those triggers is this picture. No matter where we lived for years this picture hung next to our dining room table. I cannot see this picture and not remember meals shared and time spent with my family.
The official name of this picture is “Grace” as in saying grace, before your meal. But it has another name as well, and it is “Daily Bread.” The themes of thanksgiving and daily bread are tightly interwoven and right fully so, but daily bread means more than just being thankful.
Our book of faith – 40 day Lenten devotions today say that as we pray “give us this day our daily bread” it begs the question, about “our” bread. We do not ask for my bread, but that our daily bread would be 
granted. So what does the our mean for you.
Frankly I think our devotions over play the justice side of this a bit. That doesn’t mean I don’t see injustices in how daily bread is handled they do exist. But when they equate this justice matter to a sacramental level by comparing it to Holy Communion, I am troubled. These lines from the devotions got me thinking: “Everyone regardless of his or her station of life, gets the same small piece of bread, the same small cup of wine. The “haves” do not get the whole loaf while the “have-nots” get the crumbs, as so often happens in the world outside the church.”
Um…I don’t get the cup nor the bread at many houses of worship. God’s justice is bigger than our human understanding of this sacrament, this wonderful gift.
You can argue that our Lord’s intent is that everyone of his baptized children should receive communion, and I believe that to be true, but it doesn’t work that way.
So in comparing the justice of “daily bread” to how humans actually handle this gift from God, may not work so well. I don’t have a complete answer to this… it is a struggle.
But in all these things I trust that God does in fact supply my daily bread, your daily bread, and daily bread for all of creation. I guess my simple prayer is that I might not get in the way of God doing what God does out of Love for all he has made, and if I am lucky, I just might get to be a part of providing others their daily bread.
