REMEMBER John M. Buchanan

Comminion Meditation Broad Street Presbyterian Church
John 6:4-15 Columbus, Ohio

February 24, 1980

It is no accident that one cf the most effective television commercials over the
past decade uses the jingle "nothin' says lovin' like something from the oven" and
combines the idea of bread with people who are loved. The Pillsbury commercials
identify their product with pleasant memories of home, security, safety and affection.
Bread is a very powerful symbol, Manna - bread of the wilderness; the bread of home
and family and love; and the bread of the Last Supper.

During the blitz in the early days of World War II, the English arranged to have
many children removed from their London homes and placed with families in the country-
side, safe from the terror of the nightly bombing raids. Yt was an admirable idea but
it soon became apparent that for many of the children the terror of the city was not as
bad as separation from parents. The story is that a social worker was observing and
recording this dynamic and the objects the youngsters used to remind themselves of home -
"dolls, pencils, rocks, shells, pictures. One little girl, however, kept an entirely
different object. This child slept each night with a piece of bread left from dinner
clutched in her hand. The bread contained a memory, a reminder of security and home and
meals eaten with mother and father. It was a sign of a relationship that continued
even while they were apart; and it was a beloved promise of a day in the future, a day
of reunion and peace and overwhelming joy. It was for her, that is, truly sacramental
bread." (Bread and Wine, Lawton Posey, The Christian Ministry, 3/80, p.31).

"The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to
God, broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you: do this remembering me.'"
There are no more precious words in our vocabulary. For all Christians they are part
of our dearest rite, the Sacrament of Communion.

"Do this in remembrance..." We remember the occasion at which He said those
words; the Last Supper, or at least that's what I remember. But His friends, the ones
who sat around the table; what do you think they remembered?

Perhaps they thought about a day none of them could forget. They had been traveling
through Galilee, walking from village to village, stopping every time a crowd or small
group gathered, stopping sometimes to talk with individuals or to watch in awe as Jesus
healed the sick. Word had spread like wild fire: the crowds grew in size, people were
coming from all over Galilee and it wasn't long before He was surrounded by people
wherever He went: sick people, old people, poor, crippled, sad people. Some had begun
to push and clamor, demanding His attention, pulling at His garments. There wasn't
time or opportunity to eat a meal together or to sit and talk.

They convinced Him to climb in a small fishing vessel and sail across the Sea of
Galilee. Tt was hot as only a burning sum on the ocean can be: nobody broke the
silence; each hoping that the other shore would provide a place for a quiet meal and
rest. But from a long distance, in the midday sun, they could see them gathering again.
Somehow the news had preceded them. The crowd was waiting.

It was late in the afternoon when they climbed out into shallow water and waded
ashore. The insistent pleas began immediately: "Heal me, Jesus! Make me whole,
Master.'' As they walked up onto a hill the crowd followed, seeming to grow larger by
the minute. If memory served correctly it was Philip He had asked about money. It
was poor Philip who had to tell Him they didn’t have nearly enough money in the meagre
traveling treasury for the crowd. Andrew stepped forward then, in a totally offhand
manner, trying to break the tired desperation of the situation with a Little outlandish
humor. He pointed to a little boy, a boy who had been following closely and said,

-2-

"There you are - that fellow's bound to have some bread. Here boy ~ let's see what
you've got."

What happened next never was very clear to them. The young boy reached in his
shoulder satchel and handed Jesus his five small loaves and two pickled fish. They
remembered that Jesus told the crowd to sit down, right where they were, and that He
broke one of the loaves, lifted His eyes toward heaven and in a loud voice intoned
that same prayer His people had been praying for centuries: "Blessed art thou, 0 Lord,
our God, Ring of the world, who bringest forth bread from the earth." They remembered
Him passing the bread to them and each of them breaking off a chunk. There was a great
mystery about what had happened next. By unspoken consent they had never discussed it.
But each remembered how, when they were finished with their bread,they looked up and
the crowd was eating; those thousands of people were passing bread to one another and
they were all eating together, just like a big family at dinner.

Each had wondered about that day: perhaps the gesture of the little boy was so
right and timely that every person there was inspired to take out his lunch and share
it. Perhaps someone had brought a lot of bread along and shared it. And perhaps,
somehow, in a way they couldn't begin to comprehend, that bread had become enough bread.

They didn't discuss that possibility. Things like that didn't happen. And yet -
all those people,and their own hunger after a day on the water, and the good taste of
salty fish and chewy bread, and everybody sitting down and Jesus talking until the sun
faded and the air grew chilly and the breeze came up and the people drifted away.

"This is my body which is for you. Do this remembering me." That strange day
is what they may have remembered when they broke bread together,

Modern Christians ask, first, about this story: "Did it happen and how?" That is
the wrong question, albeit our favorite. The New Testament doesn't say how. As a
matter of fact, the author doesn't even say that Jesus multiplied the bread and fish;
simply that the people were hungry and that there was enough to eat. The New Testament
works very hard to avoid making its testimony about Him dependent on His ability to
perform miracles. But the effort is lost on us mostly. It's almost as if we could
dismiss Him and relax about the whole business if someone could prove conclusively that
He never walked on water or fed five thousand people.

The only appropriate question is what does it mean? What does it say to me about
God and the world and my life?

May I suggest that it says, very simply but profoundly that God cares about
physical things - like hunger? Jesus himself would have been confused by the way we
divide spiritual matters from physical concerns. That idea is Greek - there is some
of it in the New Testament as a result of using the Greek language, but Jesus never
heard of it. He didn't differentiate between spiritual and physical needs. He simply
reached out in love and helped people wherever they needed helping: by healing, feeding,
forgiving, or simply Listening.

Helmut Thielicke wrote somewhere that even a Beethoven Symphony doesn't sound very
good if you're shivering. And the Epistle of James asks simply, “If a brother or
sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in
peace, be warmed and filled’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what

does it profit?" (James, 2:15-16).

~3-

What Jesus wanted His friends to remember was that God could be counted on to
deal with the wholeness of their. humanity. He cares about us in our wholeness, not
just the parts we label religious. Jesus Christ came to redeem us and make us new ;
our time, our values, our relationships, but also our physical needs. That's first.

The second meaning of this story is that Jesus Christ offers us something as
necessary and fundamental to our existence as our daily bread. Now we don't always
believe that. We act sometimes as if this religion business is entirely peripheral,
a leisure time activity, with little if anything to do with the rest of life.

Hew curious that the social sciences are telling religious types to take themselves
a little more seriously. Psychology knows how desperately we need to be loved and
accepted for who we are; and how, when we are deprived of grace in some redeeming form,
life can become a frustrating, maddening hell of grabbing, striving and grasping for
it. Psychology knows how many of us drive ourselves twelve, fourteen hours a day, to
prove our worth; that nothing is too precious to be offered up on the altar of self-
esteem; that we will sacrifice our marriages, our families, even our health, ta
document, if only to ourselves, that we amount to something. That's how deep this
hunger is.

Just as He fed the hungry that day long ago, so Jesus Christ offers to meet your
deepest need today. The Good News which He announced, taught, demonstrated and
incarnated in His own life is just this: we are loved, loved by God; as we are;
sometimes in spite of what we have become. What Jesus Christ offers is God's love and
the joyful freedom of His grace.

That is food we need more than any other, It is bread and meat and wine.
"This is my body broken for you. Do this remembering me," He said.

So remember Him this day - in bread broken at a friendly lunch, or in your
aloneness as you eat in solitude, or in the shouts and banter and interruptions of
your children at dinner, or here - at His own table, in bread broken and a cup shared.
Remember Him as your needs are met - this Lord who loves you, and cares about you

and feeds your hunger.
Amen.

God our Father, be present in the breaking of bread - this bread, but also all
the bread, all the relationships, all the hunger and need we experience. In these

blessed days of Lent, draw us close - in Jesus Christ.
Amen.