“Is There Bread in This Church? A sermon for World Communion Sunday”

This is the time of loaves and fishes.

There’s a story that has been passed down to me from my mentor, who heard it from his mentor and it has become central to my ministry and to how I understand what a church is and can and should be. And on this Sunday, when we will break bread together, I now pass it on to you.

The story is about Mortimer Arias, a former Methodist Bishop of Bolivia. As Bishop, he would travel to churches across the country, performing sacraments and rites and rituals. Now it is a big deal when the Bishop comes to town, especially in some of the more poor and rural villages in Latin America. Everyone dresses in their finest clothes and no one misses church that Sunday. They pull out all the stops to welcome the Bishop who will Baptize new babies and confirm new church members and preside over a communion service. It is a particularly special blessing to receive communion from the Bishop.

So one Sunday, Bishop Arias visited a rural church in Bolivia. He baptised children and preached a homily to a packed house and then began to prepare the communion feast. He walked to the altar table, lifted the loaf of bread for the whole congregation to see, and broke and blessed it saying, “This is the bread of life, given for you.” And then he lifted the cup and blessed it, saying “this is the fruit of the vine, given for you.” And then he began to pray.

But in the middle of his prayer, a small boy entered the church. He ran down the aisle, grabbed the consecrated bread from the altar table and began to eat it. The congregation, who wanted to be on their very best behavior for the Bishop, was stunned and mortified. The Bishop stopped mid prayer.

“My child,” he said, “What are you doing?”

The boy, still clutching the bread in his small hands, looked up at the bishop and said simply, “They told me there was bread in the church.”

They told me there was bread in the church.

Friends, “Is there bread in this church?”

That is the question we should all ask ourselves every time we set foot in this building. Are we being nourished here? Are we providing nourishment for others? There is no more central question for a church.

People are hungry. For meaning, for purpose, for connection, for justice, for community, for beauty, for respite. And I know we can’t do everything. We can’t meet everyone’s needs all the time, we are only one church, operating within a society that has inequality and isolation and disconnection built into its very structures. We can’t do everything, but when someone comes through our doors who is hungry, whether it’s for bread or friendship or comfort or inspiration, our first instinct should always, always be to feed them.

It is, in many ways, this is the central theme of the Christian story. And this calling, to nourish one another, is what we remember every time we partake in communion. See, over and over again in Christian scripture, Jesus’s main concern is feeding people. Literally and metaphorically. In the gospel stories, there is rarely any separation between physical and spiritual nourishment and there is never an excuse for turning away someone who is hungry for either.

In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus feeds the 5,000 with just a few loaves and fishes, this is often described as a miracle, but Matthew doesn’t write it that way. The distribution of the loaves and fishes is not described as some kind of magic show with Jesus eager to demonstrate his special powers to an adoring crowd, like Harry Houdini. The disciples raise the question of food to Jesus saying, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Jesus doesn’t reply “have you forgotten I can do miracles!” He replies, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

“There isn’t enough” is not an acceptable answer. We’ll figure it out. Jesus is asking the disciples a rhetorical question, “Well, is there bread in our church or not?”

In the Gospel of John, the resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples and he doesn’t hover above them offering ghostly wisdom, like you might expect a risen deity to do. He joins them on the beach, while they’re fishing and cooks them a simple breakfast of grilled fish and bread. And Peter is there, Peter who, in the hour of his friend's greatest suffering, denied even knowing him three times. Peter is overjoyed to see his friend. Overjoyed and also ashamed. He begs for forgiveness and Jesus asks him three times, Peter do you love me? And when Peter says yes he responds, if you love me, feed my sheep. Peter is the rock upon which Jesus has said he will build his church and his only ask of him is, “feed my sheep.” Jesus is telling Peter, “Make sure there is bread in this church.”

The examples are nearly too many to name.

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.”

Blessed are those who hunger for they will be satisfied.

He has filled the hungry with good things.

When you give a banquet, invite those who are poor.

He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

“Do this in memory of me”

Do THIS in memory of me.

This being, sharing bread and wine.

At the last supper, Jesus does not ask his disciples to recite a creed or dogma or ascent to a specific set of beliefs in memory of him.

He asks them to break bread and drink wine. He asks them to make sure there is always bread in the church.

Communion is a physical act of remembrance. In Christian theology, this is called Anamnesis. It is more than just a memory of the past, but a way of making a past event present and real in the current moment. It connects an event from the past with our actions and callings in our own present time. When we take communion, it is an embodied way of remembering Jesus’s request to feed one another. When we take communion, we remember what it is like to be fed, no matter how we showed up here today. Doubtful, skeptical, angry, petty, exhausted. The deacons don’t ask if you put money in the plate or if you drank fair trade coffee for breakfast or if you were kind to your spouse and drove the speed limit and recycled before they offer you communion. It is offered freely and abundantly. We remember how Jesus fed all those who came to him hungry. There was always enough and no one was turned away for being undeserving. When we receive communion, we remember that we are asked to do the same. As we taste and chew and swallow, we remember, physically, what it feels like to be fed, so we know how to feed others. Oh yes, this, we say as the bread and wine pass our lips. Of course. This, this is what we’re supposed to be doing.

That may seem obvious, but in practice, it is so easy to let decorum, convenience, or appearances come first. It would have been easy for the Bishop or the congregation to say to the boy, “This is consecrated bread for communion, if you need something to eat you need to go to the soup kitchen.” It would be so easy for us to say to someone who comes here full of grief on some sunny Sunday, “I’m actually here to see my friends and you’re making me sad or uncomfortable.” To tell a family with wiggling, crying children who are hungering for a religious community, “this is kind of distracting, maybe you should come back another week when your kids are better behaved.” To say to someone who comes here who is struggling to pay rent, struggling to navigate our immigration system, struggling to stay sober, struggling to fit in, hungering for relief and belonging and comfort, “I feel for you, I do, but I’m not sure how we can help you.” But when we take communion, we are reminded that we are not called to uphold decorum or convenience or appearances. We are called to feed others just as Jesus fed his disciples.

“They do not need to go away.” Jesus tells us, “You give them something to eat.”

Do THIS in remembrance of me.

We draw from a diversity of religious traditions in our UU faith. And one way of dealing with pluralism is to collapse differences. To say, all religions are basically the same. But another, and I think richer way, is to lean into differences in belief and practice. To see what a particular story or ritual is uniquely able to communicate. For me, when I take communion and meditate on the gospel stories associated with the practice, I am reminded in a way that is so specific and so embodied, that we are called to ensure there is always bread in this church.

So as we break bread and pour out wine together today, may this shared ritual awaken in our hearts a commitment to feeding the hungry. May we remember the story of Bishop Arias. And when that little boy comes through our church doors… and I promise you, some version of him comes every single Sunday. Right? Most of us have been the little boy at some point in our lives. And When he comes through our church doors hungry and seeking, saying: “They told me there was bread in the church,”

May we be ready to say,

“Yes my child,
there is,
come and eat with us.”

May it be so. Amen.