SOMETHING WE DO

UUCF COMMUNION SERMON AT GA
The Rev. Earl K. Holt III
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Salt Lake City
Text:  John 21:1-19

Our text, which was most likely not read or preached on in your church this year, is the last of three appearance stories that conclude the gospel of John. The disciples are fishing in the Sea of Tiberius, better known by its more familiar name, the sea of Galilee.  Jesus is seen standing on the beach but the text relates that,  “they did not know it was Jesus.”  This follows a pattern common to several of these post-Resurrection appearance stories: the disciples at first do not recognize him, though here it could have been just because of distance and the early-morning mist.  The passage concludes with Jesus saying to them: “Follow me.”

This story comes at the very end of John’s gospel, but in highlighting these elements of the story and as you may have already noticed, it contains evocative parallels to a famous passage that occurs near the very beginning of all three of the other, earlier-written gospels, when Jesus calls his first disciples.  As you will remember, Jesus, walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee comes upon two young fishermen, brothers, Peter and Andrew. They did not know it was Jesus then either, Jesus who cries out to them: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  And they do. They drop their nets and follow.  Shortly afterwards, two other fisher-brothers, James and John, do the same.  They followed him.

They followed -- without knowing where he would lead them, on a journey they could hardly have even begun to imagine.  But now, as John tells us, they have returned. After all that they had experienced, all they had witnessed, the teaching and healing, the trial and travail, their own betrayal and desertion of the one they had promised faithfully to follow, after his death and resurrection, here they are, back at their nets, seemingly much as they were. John certainly intends this parallel.

And again in the dawn of this new day he calls them, and here is his call:  “Come and have breakfast.”  Don’t you love it? “Come and have breakfast.”  Let’s eat.  And now, as they text says, now  they knew it was the Lord.  So much of their time with him had been like this, gathered together to break bread together.  Jesus loved nothing more than to sit at table with others to eat and drink -- with them, and in fact with just about anyone, including all the “wrong people” -- tax collectors, publicans, prostitutes, sinners.  So much of his ministry had to do with food, with being fed, in body as well as spirit.  And with him there was always enough; even when there were thousands to feed, there was enough.  Enough, and a little to spare.  Even if it was only a little bread and wine, it was enough.  And often, as it was once again on that morning, their nets over-flowing with fish, abundance.

Is it any wonder that through all the centuries Christians have remembered the life of Jesus and celebrated the spirit of Jesus by sharing a simple meal together.  A little meal that is always enough.

One of the special joys for me these last several years, in which I have been privileged to share in the ministry of King’s Chapel, has been the opportunity to welcome and meet with the groups of young people from our churches all over the country, who with their advisors come to Boston each year on their heritage trips. More and more have come each year. I’ve met with hundreds of them by now. Most come to visit us on weekdays, to see the historic building and learn a little about our long history.  But at my encouragement more and more groups each year come to attend worship, for within the context of our Association at least, it is the worship of King’s Chapel, the liturgy even more than its explicitly Christian theology, that is its most distinctive, nearly unique, feature.

Whether they come on a Sunday or on a weekday, I try to meet personally with as many of the UU youth groups as I can, ever hopeful that I might instill not so much historical facts as historical perspective.  My hope is that they get at least a glimmer of what it means to belong to a tradition, and that our tradition -- ecelectic as it has become especially in the last half-century -- has not only what we now like to call “Sources” but also a deep and substantial root, a tap root, that whether acknowledged or not, appreciated or not, understood or not, continues to feed and nourish us.  And, as I believe, if we allow ourselves to become estranged or cut off from that root we will surely wither and in time we will surely die.  That there are those who think this would be a good thing, who are embarrassed or worse about our deep roots in historical Christianity, I do not doubt, but I do disagree.

Since no one who knows me would expect a sermon without a quote from  T. S. Eliot, let me borrow from him this succinct summary of what it means to belong to a tradition:

Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.

And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.

For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:

For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of God,

For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.

And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.

For good and evil deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands alone on the other side of death,

But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.

All that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;

All all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.

Since teenagers are a particularly a-historical species and they live in a basically a-historical culture, as we all do, I don’t expect to be able to teach them in a few minutes about what tradition means, but I do try to plant a seed, hoping that at least a few will get it, that tradition is not primarily about the past but rather the connection of past and present --and future as well, that they belong to a community that exists not only in time but through time. And as they sit there in King’s Chapel, in the same pews where others sat more than 250 years ago, looking around at plaques placed in memory of people who died generations before even their grandparents were born, at least some do get it, something about not just the pastness of the past but its presence.

I always ask the kids on tour to walk around the church and not only see what they see but try to notice what they see.  Notice what is familiar to them, what is different.  Then we discuss. Surprisingly few mention the presence of the silver cross prominently centered over the altar, but often, most recently just this past Sunday, someone will question the absence of a Chalice.  “You don’t have a chalice,” they say, sometimes almost accusingly.  The first time I was asked this, it actually came as a bit of a surprise, and I responded spontaneously as I now routinely do: “Yes, that’s true. There are many very odd things about King’s Chapel, and one of the oddest is that we don’t light our chalice, we drink from it.”  (I think this may actually goes over the heads of most of the kids, but the adults seemed to appreciate it.)

Chalice lightings, which didn’t exist when I came into the ministry, have become increasingly common in UU worship over the past 20 years or so, usually accompanied by spoken words, What I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of these, 90% or more, refer the light, the flame, while relatively few talk about the container, the chalice; in its earliest symbolic usage it was a communion cup.  This led me to a further reflection.  Before the Unitarian Service Committee adopted the Flaming Chalice as a symbol shortly after its founding during the Second World War, later adopted by the UUA itself as a logo and more recently for ritual use in worship and other meetings; long, long before that it was best known as the symbol of Jan Hus, an early 15th century priest and martyr to the cause of religious freedom, and also of equality, specifically the freedom of the common people, equally with the priests, to take not only the bread of communion but the wine as well.  Knowingly defying an established doctrinal practice of the church, Jan Hus served both elements to his congregation, for which he was formally condemned as a heretic in the year 1415 and was burned at the stake.  The flaming chalice became for his followers the symbol of his courage and his sacrifice.

So today we are left with what seems to me a great irony, that the flaming chalice, symbol of the freedom of the people to take Communion, has become the logo and widely used symbol of a denomination that effectively denies Communion to almost all of its membership.  Not, of course, by any doctrine, which we claim not to have, but by – what to call it? –a mostly unspoken but near unanimous common consent.  You could say it’s something that, with rare exception, we don’t do.

As I said I encourage youth groups to attend worship at King’s Chapel, and whatever they may make of it, they don’t forget it.  High Anglican worship, ancient chants, readings only from the Bible, prayers repeated as they were written in centuries long past, the ministers and sometimes a few parishioners kneeling as they pray.  They know they’re not in Kansas any more.  And I especially encourage them to come on a Communion Sundays, if they can.

We talk about that too, before the service, and someone always asks what it means. Why would Unitarians take Communion?  I tell them that there are probably as many answers to that question as the people who partake. Or, for that matter, who don’t, since there are many members of King’s Chapel who never take Communion.  We have as many feisty individualists in our church as you do in yours. But mainly I tell them this: that Communion is not something you believe, it’s something you do.  The interpretation of that doing is for each person to decide.

And we do it together, so actually, its something we do. Together -- not only with those who kneel with us at the Communion rail, but with all those unseen others who through the long centuries of Christian history have done the same.  I tell them that in the established tradition of King’s Chapel, everyone, without exception, is invited to come to the table.  Or not.  And I leave them with that invitation.

Sometimes a few come forward, sometimes many.  And I know that for some of them it’s their First Communion.  It’s very moving to watch the young people as somewhat nervously they approach and kneel down at the Communion Rail.  Sometimes there are tears in their eyes, and certainly in mine.  Occasionally, as I hand them the little wafer that we at KC pretend is bread, one of them will say aloud a spontaneous, “Thank you.”  I’m always charmed by that.  Then they are dismissed, as I say, “Go in peace.”  They return to their pews and we say together the Lord’s Prayer, which I hope they do but fear they do not know by heart.

At King’s Chapel it’s just something we do, month by month, year by year.  It’s something we do, something Christians do together.

But if you think about it, faith in general is also like that. Not something we have, or think, or feel but something we do.  As Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine writes in his forthcoming book, My Bright Abyss:  Meditation of a Modern Believer, “The fundamental vanity of the intellectual Christian [is] the belief that faith may be forged within oneself like a little spiritual pearl, which one may then present to the world as a rare treasure….[But] Faith is forged not by the mind alone but by the mind’s risky, messy encounter with the world at large.  Faith is not something you have; it is something you do.  Silence is the language of faith.  Action—be it church or charity, politics or poetry – is the translation.”

In simpler words this is what Jesus told Peter, at their very last meeting.

“Do you love me, Peter?”  Jesus asks the man who in the night of his own greatest need had denied him three times, loudly shouting, “I do not know the man.”  Even so, Jesus asks him three times: “Do you love me?”  “Yes, Lord. You know that I love you.”  Then, Jesus says:  “Feed my lambs….Tend my sheep….Feed my sheep.”  And finally, as he had done by the sea at their first meeting, and though Peter had proven himself faithless, had utterly failed his Lord and himself, become with all the others a betrayer, a deserter, a run-away, Jesus invites him yet again: “Follow me.”

Jesus who called him once, now calls him once again.  And Jesus is still calling us.

Peter gave up on Jesus, but Jesus never gave up on him.  A non-canonical book called the Acts of Peter tells of him using the memory of his own denial and restoration as an example and encouragement to Christians whose faith was faltering.

In this Christ who forgives even those who betray him, who is faithful even to those who have proven faithless, this Christ who grants second chances -- and third and fourth chances -- to those who have fallen short, is an image, a reflection of the God prophesied by Jeremiah, a God who is more faithful than we are, who will not forsake us even when we forsake him, or even when we may deserve to be forsaken, a God whose mercy endureth forever.

Earlier in his gospel John presents an extended image and metaphor of Jesus the Good Shepherd.  Now, at the conclusion of his book, this image is indirectly evoked, as Jesus calls Peter to become the Good Shepherd, saying to him: “Feed my lambs…Tend my sheep….Feed my sheep.”

It is so simple, what Jesus asks:

Peter, do you love me.

Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

Then: “Feed my lambs.”  “Tend my sheep.”  “Feed my sheep.”

If you love me, Jesus says, then give your life to the shepherding of the sheep and lambs of my flock.  He says the same to each of us who say we love him.  If you love me, care for those I care about -- which is every one.

The gospel in one word is love.  Not only:  “Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength; and your neighbor as your self.”  But also, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

“Do you love me, Peter?”  The question is addressed not only to Peter, but to us.   “Do you love me, Ron, Kathleen, Joanne, Earl,,you”

“Yes, Lord, you know I love you.”

As with faith, so it is with love, not something we have or think or feel, but something we do:

“Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep.

“If you love me, keep my commandments.”

Let us pray:

Help us, O Lord, to become masters of ourselves that we may become the servants of others.  Take our minds and think through them.  Take our minds and think through them.  Take our lips and speak through them.  Take our hands and work through them.  And take our hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.  Amen.  (King’s Chapel Prayerbook, page168)