On the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”

We’ve been reading Henri Nouwen together this summer at Emmanuel. He was one of the 20th century’s most respected writers on the spiritual life of Christians, with 39 books on topics ranging from solitude to disabilities to compassion to death and more. The one we chose, With Burning Hearts, is subtitled A Meditation On the Eucharistic Life. The clever thing about that subtitle is that it refers both to the life Jesus offers in the Eucharist, and to the life you and I can live when the reality of what goes on in the Eucharist comes home to us. When the shape of the Mass becomes the shape of our own lives.

Nouwen weaves the book around chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, where we hear of two disciples, just a few days after the Crucifixion, who meet a stranger on the road to Emmaus. He interrupts their grief and depression, and shows them how all Scripture points to what God was doing in Jesus. But it’s only when he breaks a piece of bread to share with them that they realize that he himself is the Risen Jesus -- and run out to share the news that he is alive.

The structure of this passage is also the structure of the Mass, which is certainly one reason God must have wanted to make sure it got written down and put into the Bible – he knew we would need that chapter of scripture to understand what he was doing here. We’ll have readings and homilies focusing on the Eucharist over the next 4 Sundays, with a little help from Nouwen’s book. Then on August 15 and 22, after Mass we’ll make time for group discussion.

As the stranger told those two disciples, God drops hints throughout the Old Testament about what is coming in Jesus, and today’s reading from Exodus is one of them: the people hunger, and God gives them manna from heaven. He starts by providing something they already understand: quails. We all know what quails are. But God’s next gift dares them to take a new step of trust, and they’re not too sure about it.

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

What is it? A very basic question, and it’s no wonder they are asking. The people have not seen this before, they’re not sure why it’s there, they’re not even sure if it’s edible. It’s easy to roast up a nice quail. But this stuff, this fine flaky substance, they can’t figure out. It’s a weird intrusion into their environment. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, what is it?

This is, in a sense, the position we are in every time we hear a Word from God. Something from beyond intrudes into our environment. God’s word and presence come to us from outside our assumptions, from outside what we assume should be true, from outside our perspective, and if we really take it seriously we will probably say What? What is it?

After all, if Christianity is what it claims to be, a revelation from God that brings news of God’s achievement in Christ, it has to be something we never could have made up for ourselves. It has to be something from outside that will keep on giving us new information that we didn’t have before. It has to be something that doesn’t quite fit with what we’d expect. I’ve been a Christian for just over 40 years, and I am still regularly saying What? I’ve eventually gotten used to feeling relieved and grateful when that happens, because I know it means that yet again God is intruding into my environment and challenging my assumptions with his weird, freeing, nourishing truth.

But the manna God gives me, gives all of us, in his Word and in his Sacrament is so unlike what you and I hear everywhere else. It’s so unlike all the other, easier, more normal-seeming offers out there of temporary distraction or of self-guided improvement or of curating your preferred identity through buying things. When God speaks to us, intrudes into our environment with his grace, if we’re listening, the most honest response is probably “What is it?”

And yet this intrusion, God’s giving of himself, full of grace and truth from outside us, is where we find the words of eternal life, the truth of who we are and what we’re meant to be. It is the bread from heaven, which God has given us to eat. If we do not learn how to receive and respond to God’s intrusive Word, his unexpected news of what’s really true about you and me, we will never have the full lives he intends for us. We will, knowingly or not, settle for a cheap, temporary substitute.

Nouwen writes about this in his chapter called “Discerning the Presence.” He says, “It is quite possible to come to the end of our lives without ever having known who we are and what we are meant to become. Life is short. We cannot simply expect that the little we see, hear, and experience will reveal to us the whole of our existence. We are too nearsighted and too hard of hearing for that. Someone has to open our eyes and ears and help us to discover what lies beyond our own perception... We cannot live without words that come from God, words… [that] lift us up to a place from where we can discover what we are truly living.”

So I guess my question for you this morning is, how much of the 24 hours of your day is spent trying to live without words that come from God? How regularly do you allow God to lift you up to a place where you can discover what you are truly living? If your answer is not that often, take home today’s bulletin and read one of the lessons every day this week and ask God to speak to you through it. Ask him for manna from his word. And then do the same thing next week.

If you follow Jesus, he offers you the chance to experience God opening your eyes and ears and telling you things you could never have figured out on your own. God offers you words that come from him, manna that comes from him. It’s right there in your bulletin. It’s right there in your Bible. It’s right there on the altar. Without that manna, your spirit will starve, whether you feel hungry or not. What is it? It is the bread from heaven, the Bread of Life, that God has given you to eat.

As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

In her sermon last week, Deacon Chris spoke about the way that the presence and power of Christ has sustained us at Emmanuel. She mentioned the text we use in the Episcopal Church to bless the Paschal candle, the Easter candle that symbolizes the presence of the risen Jesus among us. It’s a beautiful proclamation: Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, all time belongs to him and all ages.

Deacon Chris talked about the experience we had with that text here at Emmanuel the past three years, which looked different on the outside but was the same on the inside. In 2019, the blessing was said at the Great Vigil of Easter, in the dark back by the baptismal font, with incense and a new fire burning, perhaps 150 people in the church, special music, a special reception, and a total of about 30 lay people serving in all kinds of roles at the Mass and after it. A complex 2 or 3 hour event, with elaborate ceremonial.

In 2020, the Paschal candle was blessed privately by the clergy in the Great Hall since nobody else could gather. It looked very different, but it was exactly the same spiritual event. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection was exactly the same in a very different context. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end.

She talked about 2021, when the candle was blessed publicly - but in a separate rite just preceding the first of our 3 Easter Masses, since it was not possible for Emmanuel to mount a full Great Vigil liturgy. It looked very different, but it was exactly the same spiritual event. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection was exactly the same in yet another context. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end.

We don’t know what the blessing of that candle will look like in 2022, whether we will still be working with only 40-50 participants at Emmanuel, or whether we will have had more invest themselves and will have the people resources to be more lavish. Those kind of questions about how we relaunch given where we and the world are now, that’s what our three vestry groups are working on, and it’s really all of you that will determine the answer. But the heart of what God is doing in that moment will not change. It will be exactly the same spiritual event as in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The same spiritual event, by the way, as it was in AD 121, or 521, or 1521, three more utterly different contexts. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection spoken into the world are exactly the same; it’s the context that changes. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end.

Some of the most powerful moments in the pandemic for me, were those moments of sharing communion through a window, or giving a blessing out in West Side Park, or offering the ashes on Ash Wednesday... contactless. Those moments when the church was still the church right in the middle of the context we were working with were earthshaking to me, because they proved that nothing, nothing, can take Jesus away from us. Jesus gave the power to live out our sacramental life and our witness and our service in the face of Covid, and he is able to give the same power in the face of anything. Because Jesus is the same, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. Circumstances and context are no obstacle to his truth and his power. They are the channels in which he can pour it out, if each of you turns to him.

I know that many of our parishioners didn’t quite experience what I just described. A large number of folks in our database were not here much, and just couldn't do it -- didn’t have the knowledge or motivation to take the demanding steps Covid required for someone to continue spiritual practice. Many have missed these powerful moments I’m talking about. Several folks who once came to Mass regularly to be fed by Christ are now completely out of the habit or have decided it’s no longer a priority, as you can see by looking around you.

Now Emmanuel is far from alone in this. It’s going on everywhere. If you read Marisa’s article on research by Ed Stetzer, or if you have friends in churches around the country, you know. The pandemic has been an accelerant to trends that are no obstacle at all to the power of Jesus, but that all kinds of churches were already struggling to understand and take into account: spirituality being repackaged as a consumer product to obtain and use privately at your convenience; hostility towards Christianity; growing numbers of people who have never experienced how any mature religion is lived out in community; the shift to locating sacredness is found in self-discovery and self-expression, not in a God who reveals himself.

The confusion and passivity of churches in the face of all those trends, and the resultant erosion of Christian communal practice, was evident before the pandemic, but easier to ignore in 2019 than it is now, when most churches have had a wake up call about how effective they have been in channeling the unchanging power of Jesus Christ within the lives of people in the database. All of that stuff plus Covid has affected how many people God currently has to work with here. It may affect what you guys prioritize on the Emmanuel schedule, how you try to form disciples, how you decide to reach out to Champaign-Urbana. But does anything there change Jesus? Does it change the sacraments? Does it change the Gospel? Does it change the power of the Spirit? No. By learning how to rely on God’s grace and truth and power and that alone, you the Church can be the living presence of Christ in every situation. Any situation.

Because Jesus will help us. Us. You. I mean, look at today’s Gospel. "As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." Sheep are herd animals, and their shepherd feeds and manages and guides the herd. The shepherd changes
them from isolated, hapless creatures into a body brought together, journeying together, eating together, with a common life and a common purpose. Jesus looks at these people in this text and doesn’t see an effective, united body; he sees isolated creatures with no shared guidance or goal. Another gospel writer recounting this same moment describes the people as “harassed and helpless.”

So is Jesus stymied? Is he unable to work in such a context? Is he unable to work with such people? No. When he saw the state they were in, Jesus had compassion for them. And how did he express that compassion? He taught them God’s truth, and he healed them.

Nearly all of us now are "harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd," and we barely even know it. We have become so unfamiliar with what the life God offers us, the good life, feels like that we barely realize we’re going without it. And of course 18 months of living much of our lives virtually, shut away, has accelerated this trend, teaching every single one of us -- oh, so many things that go against how God made us. Teaching us to dip quickly into all kinds of things rather than soak in the important ones, to stay home on the couch rather than make the effort to go out, to be schooled in how life works by memes and screens instead of by Scripture, to stay away from the sacraments and find a podcast or a meditation that suits our taste, to sign on for being harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

What does Jesus feel about people like this? About the people he sees in today’s Gospel? About us? Compassion. What does he do for them and what will he do for us if we turn to him? Teach us, heal us, as in today’s Gospel. Love us. Feed us. And even better than the shepherd and the sheep, live in us. And once you’ve soaked in his truth and his love and his healing, then he will use you. Christ can use exactly who Emmanuel has, exactly where you are, for exactly what he wants. We have nothing to fear.

But first us harassed and helpless people have to come to him and let him heal us, teach us, feed us, and love us. You have to become sheep with a shepherd. You have to become Jesus’s before anything else. Then you can start.

Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, all time belongs to him and all ages. To him be glory and dominion through all ages of eternity. Amen.

We are at a liminal point in time right now. The pandemic, while definitely not over, is on the downside (hopefully that trend is continuing) and our gradual return to a more normal level of activity will keep going. So, we are at an in-between state—which is a fairly unique place to be. Something is ending and we are at the edge of something new. It is a time that is ripe for reflection of the past and thoughtful prayer about what the future might be. Our lives rarely have these liminal times so it is important that we don’t rush through them.

I ask you to join me in some reflection of the past and perhaps during the time visiting after church you may want to talk about your favorite memories of church.

While I enjoy all the liturgical year services, at the top of my personal list is the Easter Vigil. One of my favorite parts of that liturgy is the blessing of the Pascal Candle. For those of you who may be newer to the Episcopal Church, for most of the year  that candle is located in the back of the church next to the Baptismal font. During the Easter season and for any baptism or funeral it stands next to the pulpit.

(Symbolic for me, the 2020 Candle arrived in its well-packed box with a large crack in it. That crack continued to grow as the year progressed!) But I digress…
 
 Pre-pandemic the blessing of that candle happened in the Vigil after lighting the new fire and before processing the new light through the darkened church. In 2020 the Candle was blessed with just the clergy in attendance.  In 2021 it was done with a slightly larger number of people prior to the Saturday evening Easter service. I look forward to 2022.

Regardless of how it happens the blessing itself is what has sustained me throughout this troubling time. Mother Beth slowly said these words as her hand traced the cross on the candle. Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the End. Alpha. And Omega; All times are His, and all ages; To Him be glory and dominion, Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen.
 
No one has gone through this last 18 months unaffected. Some have experienced more loss than others but all of us have been touched during this time. For me these words of the Pascal Candle blessing have sustained me through the most difficult parts.  My summary of the blessing which is easier for me to remember is: “Christ yesterday, Christ today and Christ tomorrow. That is an eternal, unchanging truth. Christ was and is and is to be.
 
That is true for this liminal time also. While change is often challenging, sometimes frightening and sometimes exhilarating, this truth of Christ is throughout all of life. It is the rock on which life is grounded. Christ yesterday, Christ today and Christ tomorrow.
 
This morning we heard the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The theme of this letter is God’s eternal purpose in establishing and completing the church—sometimes known as the body of Christ or God’s temple or the bride of Christ. In the first half of the letter Paul gives the theology of the universal church and then in the second half he offers more practical suggestions about how to be the church. In total the letter indicates the importance and the glorious blessing it is to be the church. 

The passage read today is the introduction to the entire letter. Thank you (reader’s name), for your thoughtful reading of this; I know it is very dense and not an easy read. In the Greek these verses are one long sentence with a lot of different clauses. At least the English translators tried to help us understand it a bit more!
 
I am going to suggest, as have some commentators, that we look at the passage as poetry, rather than what might be called a straight forward paragraph with one sentence logically leading to another. When we consider it as poetic images, certain words and phrases stand out.

For example the word “blessed or blessing” catches our attention. We who have received God’s blessing return that blessing to God. We, together as the church, bless God, as he has blessed us. A similar word used often in the passage is “praise” or “praise of his glory”. Our response to God’s loving care of us is to praise his glory. Another related word that comes through is “Grace” and Paul explains what that freely given love has encompassed. Blessing, praise, and grace are words that tell of God’s gifts to us and also our gifts to God. They point to our relationship as a collective body, the church, with God.

In this same vein Paul uses the names of the Trinity, God the Father, the son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit throughout the passage. Christ is mentioned six times in these few verses! And mixed in with the Trinity, Paul speaks of us human beings as children of God and God’s own people. The relationship between the church and God, what wondrous things God has done for us and how the church responds to the love of God is what these phrases are about.
       
Eugene Peterson in his eBook on Ephesians, titled Practice Resurrection says this,
“Ephesians roots the church in the gospel of grace, our redemption in Christ and our calling to be the vibrant, living, Holy Spirit empowered, presence of Christ in the world”

We are called to be the vibrant, living, Holy Spirit empowered presence of Christ in the world. Christians are to embody God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in all we do. Our daily lives must be Christ like. This is a powerful charge to us now as it has been throughout the generations since Christ’s resurrection. The church building itself is to be a sacred place where we are formed and strengthened to do this work. We as people then are to be the living presence of Christ.  

Now if you are not thinking, me, you? How can we do that? This is an overwhelming task! Well, my friends, we do not do it on our own, independently by ourselves, for sure. Rather we do it collectively, together with one another and together with God.
       
Peterson actually goes on to say that the church offers hope to the world not because of what individual human beings do on their own strength, but because of what God is doing through the body of Christ, the church.

This is a powerful charge to us but also an empowering one. We as the church are important and necessary to the work of God.

While I am fairly sure that the church in the time of Paul and in Ephesus did not look or even sound the same as the church in our day and time the basic truths are the same. We human beings are called into relationship with God to be His body on earth, to participate in His work in this particular moment. In this liminal time and as we seek to discern what changes we may make in the future, this awesome truth about the church remains the same! Our rock, Jesus Christ, is there always, present with us in all our circumstances and in all times. This is unchangeable.
       
Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the End. Alpha. And Omega; All times are His, and all ages; To Him be glory and dominion, Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen.
        

I think we can count the people we pretty much trust on two hands and the people we trust completely on one. And that’s because trust isn’t something that’s common. It’s not something we give or receive freely because trusting someone opens us up to possibilities that we can’t control. Trust makes us vulnerable, and if the promise is broken or the relationship betrayed, we risk getting really hurt. 

All of us have experienced that kind of wounding to some degree, whether we were a child or an adult or somewhere in between. And what’s so deeply tragic about that fact is that those wounds influence our perception of ourselves and of other people and, most importantly for us today, our perception of God.

At times we may catch ourselves wondering if God is like the friend who left because we couldn’t solve the argument. Or if he’s a wild-card, who is one day kind and the next day malicious, like the boss who made our first job hell. And without us realizing it, we begin to hold back from God because we’re so accustomed to doing so with everyone else. 

What would it look like to really trust God? Like, really really. 

In our psalm appointed for this morning, we hear from a man who knows in his very bones that he is out of options. He and the people he’s praying for are without resources or recourse — they are poor and oppressed, and no one will help them. The situation is dire and would be hopeless; but the psalmist cries out to the God of his forefathers, saying, “Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.” 

He and his people are exhausted, worn down by their poverty, mocked and beaten and left for dead by the leaders who were supposed to protect them. There is no help available to them, nothing and no-one on earth who will listen but God, and so they appeal to him, looking away from the pain of the present and toward the sky: “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until he has mercy upon us.” 

“We will wait for you,” the psalmist says. “We will wait just like a servant waits to hear his master’s command. We know that nothing on this earth will help us, so we put our trust, all our trust, in you.”

That level of trust doesn’t make sense to us. It’s almost baffling. We’re so used to picking ourselves up and taking care of our own problems. Waiting on the action of someone else just doesn’t seem like a good idea. How do we know that the LORD will act? How do we know God actually cares?

The psalmist knows the answer to both questions is yes. They trust in the LORD, which is not an empty name or meaningless word. When the psalmist prays, “O LORD, have mercy upon us” and “so our eyes look to the LORD our God,” they are remembering the Name that delivered them out of bondage and into freedom, out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. When Israel is pinned between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, they panic and murmur, but the LORD reassures them that he will fight for them — they need only be still. 

This is just one of the stories the psalmist holds in his heart as he prays. As he waits. We don’t know what answer he received. We don't know how long he waited. But we do know that the LORD loves the broken-hearted and the down-trodden. That he is near to the sorrowful and the distressed. As Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 

And it is Jesus who ultimately tells us what God is like. It is Jesus who ultimately tells us that God cares and cares so deeply that he would send his Son to earth to die for our sake. Jesus knows what it is to suffer, knows what it is to be betrayed, and when he invites the weary and the burdened to come to him, he does so as one who understands, as one who loves us more deeply than we can ever know. 

What would it look like to really trust God? It looks like taking Christ’s hand and walking with him through the ups and downs of our lives. There may be days when we falter, days when we stumble, but Jesus promised never to leave. He is our hope, our sure defense, our savior, our friend. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, to Christ Jesus our Lord, until he show us his mercy. AMEN.


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