Communion In Covid 6.21.20

Communion In Covid

A Homily on Genesis 21:8-21

by Griff Martin

For the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (and the Fifteenth Sunday of Online Worship)

June 21, 2020 

*This document comes from an oral manuscript.

I was doing yoga last week and my instructor Jen called out, "Now if you want to make this pose more restorative..." ...and I had to stop myself from crying out “Amen and Amen.” Because yes, I want to make this more restorative, right now I want to make everything more restorative because not much feels restorative these days we are living. 

What was odd was the restorative pose was way harder…. Probably something spiritual there. But it all got me thinking about restorative today...

In particular, what is it that I am missing in my life that typically restores me? The list was quick -- a plunge into Barton Springs followed by drying off in the sun reading a good book, an evening sitting on the Loro patio not at bizarre distances and not in masks with friends, the Alamo Drafthouse and a big summer blockbuster movie, and then above all, communion and community at our space, near the nets. 

Communion and community are by far the most restorative elements most missing in my life right now. 

It’s now been 16 Sundays since the last time we celebrated communion together on a Sunday morning, it’s been 15 Sundays since the last time we were in worship together… And my soul is really feeling that need. 

It’s the word that is so important but is so hard for us to say aloud, “I feel lonely.’ 

Lonely is the word I feel right now when I am most honest. I feel lonely because seeing you all on a screen is not even close to the same as seeing you in person. I feel lonely because our world is being ripped apart and falling apart and I am experiencing that in a rather small cocoon of people. I feel lonely because I am without the support of my normal schedule and I have no clue what the new one will look like, I feel lonely because the world feels lonely, the world feels lonely because it is lonely, I feel lonely because things are beyond my control…. And I am willing to venture a guess that I am not alone in this feeling. 

Which is an odd ironic phrase, that I deeply believe I am not alone in my loneliness. 

Dorothy Day titled her amazing memoir, The Long Loneliness. It’s her story of trying to find a home in her faith, her politics, her social activism, her sexuality and her unique family and a push for seeing more and creating better ways of living. It’s kind of a perfect book for right now. In the end, one of her conclusions: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

And community happens around a table, with food. The two almost always go hand in hand. 

Some of you have asked me why we have not had some form of communion beyond our daily prayers in worship; it’s a question that I think is really worth asking and here is why: because we have struggled to find a way to do communion that feels authentic, inclusive and feels less like a cooking show or the Today Show when Ina fixes something amazing and we have to just sit and watch her and the host eat it. Although, ironically, it was thinking through that image that gave me the idea for this week: what if we cooked bread together and then did communion using that bread together on Sunday morning?

That felt right, and I knew that we had the perfect minister on staff to help us make bread -- the one who knows not only how to make bread (in particular the best biscuits I have ever had), but also the meaning of bread. So a few days ago, Jared taught us all how to make tortillas.

And in space where I felt alone, this helped me find communion and community. 

Because that is the cure to loneliness.

Which is what our text this morning tells us. Now, this story is difficult, but let me be upfront -- we are about to spend some time in Genesis and that means we are going to face some difficult stories. But that is an important part of our spiritual formation, if we can dive into the deeper difficult texts of our own story then we will be more empowered and equipped to dive into them in our world, just imagine how much better our world would be if we had dealt with the stories of abuse of women and the issues of race and class and the problems of empire, if we had faced and learned from those stories in our own book, perhaps we would have cultivated and grown a better world around us. As Maya Angelou taught us, “When you know better, you do better.”

This story begins with a child that is not the child. God has promised Abraham and Sarah a child, it does not happen on their schedule so Sarah takes matters into her own hands (mistake one), and a child is born from Sarah’s servant. And then she becomes jealous of the solution that she herself designed so she wants to push these things away from her vision (just sit with that…. Someone wanting to push the issues of race, class, economic and gender beyond their view, to not have to deal with it…. Welcome to the long loneliness).

Abraham sends them off, with enough water for a few days, right into the wilderness. And as always, let me remind you what wilderness means, it’s the Hebrew word toou which means “beyond the safety of the Nile, a land where God’s mercy alone must suffice.” I think it’s another place we know well today because we are experiencing this. 

Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness, cast aside that which we don’t want to see. Hagar wanders into the wilderness and believes she is destined for death, the water won’t last forever, what will they eat, where will they leave, who will provide for them?

Which is of course right where God steps in because every time there is a question of provision, God is going to be the answer. God always hears our cries, God always steps into the space of pain, God always has in visions the things we would rather not see. 

God steps in to provide. A glass of water, a source of life, a promise and hope for the future. 

God feeds Hagar and Ishmael and in that, there is the promise of a new and better life. 

God provides. 

It’s the foundation of communion. As baptists, we could do a better job of emphasizing this sacrament. Communion is the essence of everything that we believe -- God provides for us, God gives that which will sustain, that everything is based on abundance and not scarcity, that feeding one another is as spiritual as it gets, that sitting around a shared meal is as spiritual as it gets, that this very bread and wine is our calling for life, that we receive this to become this, that we are fed so that we go out and feed. 

Stop and look at the bread and wine you have sitting in front of you and take that in….

Communion is the essence of everything that we believe -- God provides for us.

God gives that which will sustain.

That everything is based on abundance and not scarcity. 

That feeding one another is as spiritual as it gets.

That sitting around a shared meal is as spiritual as it gets. 

That this very bread and wine is our calling for life. 

That we receive this to become this.

That we are fed so that we go out and feed. 

Now take a deep breath to prepare yourself  for communion, quiet your mind, still your heart….

Take a deep breath… Where are you feeling loneliness today? 

What do you need God to provide so you can go out and feed? 

Now imagine our community gathered together, all of us now in our separate spaces with our bread and wine in front of us, full plates and full cups. We are not alone, we are in this together.

Now take the bread, hold it….

On the night he was betrayed, surrounded by his closest friends (including some who would soon betray and run from him), Jesus served them the meal that tasted of freedom and of grace and of mercy and of love. Jesus took an ordinary loaf of bread and holding it he paused and then said, “This is my body… broken for you. Eat this in remembrance of me.”

And then taking a cup and filling it, Jesus said, “This is my blood shed for you. Drink this in remembrance of me.”

Eat this, drink this, in remembrance of me. 

First Austin, communion and community is our calling still today. It is still how we will remake the world, it is still how we are fed so we can go out and feed. May this nourish and restore you so you can do the work that is your communion and community to our world.

Amen and Amen. 

*artwork: "Hagar in der Wüste (Hagar in the desert)" (1960) by Marc Chagall.