2020-07-05 Rev. Dr. Rick Spalding

Hello, and welcome to Sermons from First Press, a weekly podcast from the First Presbyterian

Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The first reading for today comes from the 30th chapter of Deuteronomy, verses 11 to

20.

Surely this commandment I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too

far away.

It is not in heaven that you should say, Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for

us, so that we may hear it and observe it?

Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, Who will cross to the other side of the

sea for us and get it for us, so that we may hear it and observe it?

No, the word is very near to you.

It is in your mouth and in your heart, and you can do it.

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.

If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God,

that I am commanding you today by loving the Lord your God,

walking in these ways and observing these commandments, decrees and

ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous,

and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you do not hear,

but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them,

I declare to you today that you shall perish.

You shall not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today

that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.

Choose life so that you and your descendants may live,

loving and obeying the Lord your God and holding fast.

For that means life to you in the length of days,

so that you may live in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors.

Hear now the word of God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

The second reading this morning comes from the 26th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew.

On the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying,

where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?

Jesus said, go into the city to a certain man and say to him,

the teacher says my time is near and I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.

So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and they prepared the Passover meal.

When it was evening, Jesus took his place with the twelve.

And while they were eating, Jesus said,

truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.

And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another,

surely not I, Lord?

He answered,

the one who has dipped a hand into the bowl with me will betray me.

The son of man goes as it is written of him,

but woe to the one by whom the son of man is betrayed.

It would have been better for that one not to have been born.

Judas, who betrayed him, said, surely not I, rabbi.

Jesus replied, you have said so.

While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread and after blessing it,

broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat.

This is my body.

Then Jesus took a cup, and after giving thanks, gave it to them saying,

drink from this, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant,

which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus said,

I will not eat.

I will not drink.

I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine

until that day when I drink it anew with you

in my Father's kingdom.

And when they had sung a hymn,

they went out to the Mount of Olives.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

but the word of our God endures forever.

Give us this day our daily bread, we pray,

as often, probably, as most of us pray anything.

As I like to say when introducing the Lord's Prayer,

these are some of the words that Jesus put in our mouth

before ever we knew what words to say.

The prayer for daily bread rises from one of the most personal

and visceral places in us, our hunger.

And if, as we heard last night,

part of why this life is full of new beginnings

is that the mercies of God are new every morning.

Well, then I think it is also true that this life is so full of new beginnings

because the hungers of humanity are also new every morning.

So, give us this day our daily bread is our daily prayer,

and daily prayer for our hungers is,

our daily bread,

new every morning as we awaken to the challenges and choices

of any new beginning.

See, I have set before you life and death,

blessing and curse.

Those words from the book of Deuteronomy

come from the mouth of Moses

as he stood with his people at the edge of the wilderness at last,

overlooking the one last valley

that they'd have to cross in order to arrive finally

after all those years of wandering at the place of promise.

After all they'd been through together,

everyone must have recognized the truth of those words.

How almost every day seems to present some opportunity

to choose between blessing and curse,

to choose life over death,

even if you can't always tell at first glance which is which.

Opportunities,

every day to keep commandments or to break them,

which is to say, to love or to fail in love,

to weave the frayed strands of community together

or to tear the fabric into pieces again,

to walk humbly or to give in to arrogance,

to revere and love that which is worthy of worship,

or to bow ourselves down before that which,

which shrinks our souls.

To speak words that free others to hope,

or words that tighten the bondage of fear

or rub the wounds of anger.

The choice between blessing and curse

has been our daily bread since almost forever.

Living is about making choices.

And though the options aren't always easy to read,

nor the path among them easy to discern,

the challenge to choose life is our daily bread.

And our hunger to live each day well is what makes it new,

what makes it matter, what makes it life.

And, says Moses, this commandment is not too hard to follow,

not too far away to hold, not too deep to understand.

Not too far, not too short, not too small,

It is easy because it is done according to the Word of God!

By bread!

Truly the word of God!

By bread!

Surely by water!

Certainly by nature, every power or creation,

per whistle of your word has a place,

from the mouth of God. He knew that it's possible to have a full stomach but an

empty conscience or a stone heart. Over and over again Jesus taught us to choose

carefully, to look for life among sometimes disguised options, to look for

blessing in the choice of whether to stop for the one in the ditch or to pass

by on the other side of the road, to look for a neighbor in the wounded or

disfigured or despised ones, to look for home even when you think you've turned

your back on it forever and squandered all the love you thought there to ever

be. I came that you might have life, he said, and have it abundantly. Therefore

choose life and live.

And at the end, when as he said the time was near, when at last they were on the

outskirts of the city that he knew would soon choose death for him, when the time

was ripe for a consummate choice of life, what he did was point into the gathering

shadows of the city streets and send his friends to find a room and set

up a table.

a table. The meal they would share there was the ancient Passover ritual marking the start of the

journey through the wilderness, a commemoration of the choice to follow God's lead out of slavery

in Egypt, out of bondage, yes, but out into the night and with Pharaoh's chariots soon in hot

pursuit, a choice between blessing and curse in a moment of danger when it must have been hard to

tell which was which. Jesus knew that night, and maybe his friends knew too as they set the table,

laid the bread in the napkin just so, filled the jug with wine as their ancestors had already been

doing for a thousand years by that point. Maybe they knew that it would be their last meal together

on earth.

But Jesus knew too that to be at that table commemorating freedom and remembering the

beginning of a long journey toward promise was a way of choosing life again. Being at that table

together was an indelible answer to the prayer, give us this day our daily bread, a permanently

renewable response to the hungers that rise from the heart of us on this wilderness way toward the

place of a promise.

A promised new beginning.

Oh, the shadow of death was in that room too to be sure. Betrayal was in the air.

One of you will soon choose death over life he predicted which made everyone

ask, is it him? Is it her? But not, which made everyone ask not is it him but not Jesus.

Which made everyone ask not is it him but not Jesus. subtlety That would be Godine.

is it her, but is it I? Because everyone knew how difficult it is sometimes to

know what you're really choosing when you're making the choice. The traditional

rap on Judas is that he was simply on the payroll of evil, and maybe it was

that simple. But it sometimes seems just as plausible to me that Judas made the

choice he did out of frustration or anger or despair, and which of us has not

set a terrible course for ourselves when choosing to steer by any of those stars?

The story seems to suggest that Judas didn't stay for the meal, so we have no

way of knowing what difference it might have made to whatever Judas was hungry

for if he'd been there for the breaking of

the bread and the pouring of the cup. But I know a church that on Maundy

Thursday makes a point of breaking off a piece of the loaf and leaving it on the

edge of the table in case Judas might return in time, having recognized the

choice of death for what it turned out to be. It's because the shadow of betrayal

is always in the air that

Moses and his disciples were able to find a way out of it, and that's why he was

able to do it.

Moses reminded his people that the choice would always be theirs, ours.

Choosing is our daily bread on the way to the place of a promised new beginning.

This summer we're reflecting each Sunday on new beginnings, because the sometimes

wilderness world we seem to live in these days is calling us particularly to

new beginnings, to have confidence in the new life that God intends, and even to greet

it with gratitude, with thanksgiving. So on this first Sunday of the month we celebrate

again the way Jesus took his answer to our perennial prayer, give us this day our daily

bread, and embedded it in the midst of the gathering shadows of his death. And it's worth

noticing that his simple, unforgettable actions at the table his friends had set for him were

embedded in gratitude. He would have used the words so familiar to his people, Baruch

Atah Arunai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe,

for these gifts of bread and wine. But then, when they would have expected the rich and

the poor to take this bread, they didn't, so they started their daily food, an end to

the ritual, to move on to the bitter herbs, the salt water, the Passover lamb. Then instead

came words that fed a different hunger. I am this bread. This cup is my life. I am here

to feed your hunger. I am the answer to your daily prayer. My life is poured out for the

forgiveness of all the changes that we make in our lives. From the day of our daily bread,

through your light, our coming of your life, our daily bread, all for the good of all of

choosing you've ever done that turned out to be grounded in frustration or anger or despair or

bitterness or greed or fear or anything else other than love. This bread of my body, this wine of my

blood, this is the choice that is blessing to you and life and length of days in the place of promise

to which you are going. I am the daily bread to sustain your choosing life, he said.

And then, says Matthew, after they had finished the meal that was both utterly familiar and utterly

new, when they had sung a hymn, they went out on the Mount of Olives. We don't know what the hymn

was.

Though it seems just as likely as anything to have been the psalm that we'll hear when our own

table is set in a few minutes. But they moved out into the night holding on to a song because a song

can keep gratitude alive even in the shadows. A song can be a way of choosing life and blessing.

A song can be an answer to prayer.

Who knows?

Who knows what song they were singing as they left the table and went outside?

I'm not quite sure why, but that question was sort of stuck in my imagination the other day when I tuned

into an NPR station from home that I like to listen to as they happened to be replaying an Independence

Day interview with Pete Seeger, the great troubadour of Americana of our generation, a special from a few

years ago, telling stories about how he came to write Where Have All the Flowers Gone and If I Had a Hammer.

Then, as Pete began to talk about his friendship with the great Woody Guthrie, the strains of that song

they wrote together began to steal in behind the interview. And then the chorus came swelling in,

This land is your land.

This land is my land.

It was one of those live in concert recordings with crowds and crowds of people singing along and Pete's

quavery silver voice soaring over them all in one of those exuberant, outrageous descants of his.

I found myself riding the updraft of that voice in the midst of everything that's been going on around us in this land

these days.

And as I listened, I realized that I'd never before

heard that song

from the edge of the wilderness

never heard it

putting a choice out there

as it does now

this land was made

for you and me

and them

all of them

this commandment is not

too hard for you

neither is it far off

therefore choose life

and blessing and continue

on together

toward the place of a promised

new beginning

so this weekend

I'm thinking about choosing

choosing as

our daily bread

our perennial prayer

and I'm thinking about Bill Coffin

saying that patriotism means

loving a country enough to be

critical of it

I'm thinking about that

and about leaving the table with a hymn

to hold on to

riding the updraft of Pete's voice

to get a good look at all of it

from the edge of what I hope

is a new beginning

I hear Pete

singing out danger

hammering out a warning

ringing out love between my brothers

and my sisters all over this land

and suddenly I can't help

but think about how little I've

understood justice and freedom

and love between my sisters

and my brothers as things

I need to choose

to hammer out

to ring

to leave the table singing about

how much they are part of the good news

of this life

that Jesus came to give us

in abundance

this life that was made for you and me

and them

for all of us

all of us

at the center of our faith

there is a man

standing on the edge of a wilderness time

among people who are weary

of a very long journey

a man of sorrows

who nonetheless couldn't stop being grateful

as he broke his life open

to feed our hunger

who even in the midst of the valley of the shadow

carried a hymn

away from the table

his silver voice ringing like a descant

over all our struggles

he said

come unto me

all you who labor

and are heavy laden

he said

and I will give you rest

take and eat

take and drink

this is for you

this land is your land

and their land

come unto me

you tired

you poor

you tempest-tossed

who yearn to breathe free

this world

this life

this land

and all else

its high hopes, even in the midst of the shadows of betrayal, all this was made for you, for me,

for us, for all of us. Therefore, choose life. This is not too hard for you. This is not too far away.

Therefore, choose life, that you and all my beloved children may live side by side in the

place that I will show you, the place of a promised new beginning. May it be so. Amen.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. And all that is within me, bless God's holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

And forget not all God's blessings.

Let us pray. Nourishing God, thank you for inviting us to your table. We're all are welcome

for feeding us with the bread of life and for quenching our thirst with the cup of blessing.

As you have filled our lives with love and hope, send us out into the world by the power of your

spirit, that we may be a source of your love and hope for all others who,

are at great need of your presence. As your promised faithful ﷺ, do unto póny of the

earth that they may be in wrath, in anger, and thirst for good news. Amen.

Amen.

Dear friends, our service now begins. So go from this time and take with you whatever

you have found of the zeal for justice, of the promise between our sisters and our

furrows of the world, that it may bring forth the fruit that God intends. And as you go, remember

that the word is very near you, in your mouth, in your heart, and you can do it. Remember that the

life and love of Jesus are broken open and poured out for you, and that as you make your way to the

place of promise, you go with the blessing of God who as creator imagines you, the blessing of God

who as savior restores you, the blessing of God who as spirit enlivens you, this day, this night,

tomorrow, and even forevermore. Amen.

Amen.