A sermon preached at the Crown Court Church of Scotland in London, England

August 4, 2024

Introduction to worship

I haven’t paid as close attention to the Olympics as I wish I could have, but watching the women’s gymnastics competition, I was thinking about the 2021 olympics, when Simone Biles, one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, and a 4 time gold medal winner, was pulling out of the competition. She spoke her truth and said she wasn’t in a good head space to compete. She said when she’d been competing in the vault event, she got the twisties, which means she lost her ability to know where she was in the air in relation to the ground.

I can’t even do a summersault, let alone contemplate any of the moves she and other gymnasts do routinely to compete. I trust that if you can’t locate the ground when you’re doing huge flips through the air, you shouldn’t be doing the huge flips through the air.

Plenty of people criticized Biles for speaking her truth, said she was letting down her country and should compete anyway. Thankfully,  plenty of other people applauded her for it and sent her well wishes. And Biles tweeted this:

 

Today in worship we will consider what it takes to speak our truth, and why it can be so difficult for us to do, and sometimes hard to hear from others. 

Because Biles spoke her truth, and because it was heard in love, she began to know that she is more than her accomplishments, which allowed her to return to competition. 

Because she was spoke her truth, people have learned it is okay to need help sometimes, and that therapy is a really important tool for our health. 

This past week, she became the most decorated gymnast of all time. I’m thankful that she knows she is valuable for who she is, and not just for all the amazing things she has achieved. 

I pray we all receive that awareness. 

There are whole industries built up to keep us thinking we’ll be worthy of love, of happiness, of wearing a swimsuit on the beach when we look a certain way, when we have more money, when we earn more notoriety or fame. 

But here’s the truth. Each one of you is a beloved child of God, created in the image of the creator. Right now. Just as you are. Even if you’ve never won an Olympic medal or achieved what society considers an amazing achievement. You were created by God in love. You are always and already loved by God. That’s the truth. 

Scripture

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:24-35

Sermon

What a gift if it is to be here with you for this month. I promise you that Scott is not to blame for anything I might say from the pulpit. He did not tell me, “you know what my people really need to hear is….”   

So, we are staying with the lectionary this month. And today we will look at the aftermath of a feeding miracle from John’s gospel, and a passage from the book of Ephesians. 

We don’t know much about the origins of this letter to the church in Ephesus. It likely wasn’t written by Paul, even though his name is on it. The vocabulary and understanding of the church is not quite the same as the letters we know he wrote. In some early copies of this letter, it doesn’t say anything about being written for the church in Ephesus either.

Whoever wrote it, we pause to say thanks. Because they have given us an important insight into the development of the church after the time of Paul, and how the early church struggled with, and worked through how to be church, together. How to live together in community with people who might also like Jesus, but that’s about the best thing you can sometimes say about them.

I trust y’all know what I’m talking about. Being in community is hard.

I also want to affirm that being in community is so amazing and wonderful. Covid lockdowns now seem like a bad memory, but because of them, I discovered I actually liked people—I missed them even. I missed church. I missed singing with people, and praying out loud together.

As much as I love people, though, community is still hard. 

I think Jesus knew that too. Jesus must have had moments, wondering just why he’d been called to shepherd those particular sheep. Right? Don’t you wonder about the conversations he had with God that John doesn’t record in the gospel?

In last week’s passage, he’d fed his sheep on the hillside. Thousands of people were fed, from just a few loaves and fishes. And here they are, chasing him across the Sea of Galilee, asking him for a sign, as if they hadn’t just been fed in a miracle. 

One might hope that the feeding miracle would have been a sufficient sign, but instead, it seems to have made them greedy for more. 

How often are our lives like that? We have blessings all around and still doubt the goodness of God, or we doubt our own beloved-ness. 

Jesus tells the crowd, hungry for love and belonging, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

He gives them an answer that, let’s be clear, they were not going to understand. They had not yet come to the Table for communion. They had no frame of reference for how a person could be the bread of life. 

Nonetheless, the answer he gave them is true. If being fed by a miracle won’t satisfy you, maybe you’re looking for the wrong things, and you’re going to be hungry for a long time. 

In last week’s passage, Jesus asked the disciples, “how are you going to feed these people?”

In that moment, they didn’t have a clue. But here Jesus gives them the answer. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

For a world, hungry for love and belonging, we’re called to give them Jesus. We’re also called to give them actual bread, because when your basic material needs haven’t been met, it is hard to focus on the bread of life. So we feed people and care for them. And then we give them Jesus, which can be an uphill challenge.

I don’t know how Christians make the news in the UK, but in the States, it isn’t good. Donald Trump is selling bibles so he can autograph them. In the States, Christians are in the news for who they want to exclude, judge, and kick out of the country. 

One of our political parties is actively trying to equate political power with Christian faith, which is very much at odds with the Jesus of the Bible. They picture Jesus holding an assault rifle and draped in an American flag.  I tell the congregation I serve that Jesus needs better PR than he’s getting. Maybe it is true here too. 

How are we going to feed these people, hungry for love and belonging? How do we give them Jesus if what they’ve been told about him is a lie? How do we help them look for better signs than they might get from politicians or tiktok?

The letter to Ephesians is not that long. I invite you to read through it all this week. Its opening prayer is lovely. “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you….” (1:17-18)

The letter talks about the faith of Christ, which has broken down the dividing walls between us. And then we get the passage we heard today, with our instructions, which might just help us point people to the bread of life.

“I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called”.

I’m guessing you don’t need to say that to people who are already busily leading lives worthy of their calling. You say that to people who are making bad choices and you feel you’re running out of options.

I beg you.

When do I use the word beg? Not often. It’s a sketchy parenting strategy—if your kids know you’ll come begging, what incentive do they have to do what they know they should do?

We don’t know exactly the situation in the church where this letter was first sent to, but it sounds so familiar, two thousand years later, and we’re reminded that being church has always been complicated and messy, and lovely, and irritating, and blessing, and challenge.

After the writer begs them, he uses the word “one” a whole mess of times, reminding us that we’ve been called to unity. Just in case they think chaos and division are just fine with God, he calls them to unity. We’ve been called both to a purpose that rises above our individual wants and desires AND that uses our individual gifts and desires to build up Christ’s body, the church, and to equip the saints.

I wanted to skip over the oneness and unity part of this passage, because blah blah blah who wants to hear another sermon on unity in the Spirit…. but in truth it is the thing we may have the biggest trouble with in both the church and in culture.

We seem to be really solid on the word “one” as in “unbridled individualism” but less clear on “one” as in:
There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to the one hope of your calling,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all,
who is above all and through all and in all.

Our culture is full of illustrations of “I want x, y, and z for me, excuse me, I mean zed, but I’m not going to be inconvenienced for you, I don’t want my money benefitting you, and I don’t care if or how you survive.”

The writer of Ephesians might have some opinions about that tendency of ours. “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about…”

Instead, we are called to use our gifts to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, even the members of the body we don’t know, or the parts of the body of Christ that we think we don’t need.

One of my favorite definitions of faith is by Simon Sinek. 

“Faith is knowing you’re on a team, even if you don’t know who the other players are”.

We aren’t called to cookie cutter sameness or to pretend that there aren’t real differences between us. Unity in Christ doesn’t require us to stop being who we are. In truth, it requires us, it calls us, to acknowledge the particularities of our gifts and callings, and then to focus those toward unity and building each other up in love, recognizing that we all belong to each other.

We are invited to speak the truth in love.

That may seem like a simple instruction, but I think it is the most important and most difficult thing we are called to do. We live in a shallow culture of truth-iness and image. But if we want to be one in the Spirit, we have to be honest with each other about who we are. We have to both tell our truth and listen and receive the truth of others.

What truth are you unsure you can speak in love?

People hide their truth, whatever it is, for many reasons. Maybe because of shame. Or fear that they are the only ones facing that particular painful truth. Or because society has made their truth illegal or dangerous.

And the hiding of our truth is killing God’s beloved children. It is separating us from each other, keeping us from community, and it is leaving us starving for the bread of life, begging for signs from Jesus. 

One of my truths is that in college, I had an unplanned pregnancy. I had a few weeks where I told nobody, hoping I would wake up one morning to find I had been mistaken. I was crippled by the shame of it. I was a good church kid. What would my parents say? What would my church say? What would my friends at college say? Would I be asked to leave school and if so, what would I do?

In my head, I spun out a million terrible scenarios about what might happen. And then one morning, I looked in the mirror and, I still can’t quite explain how I knew what I knew, but I knew that I couldn’t fix all my problems at any one moment, but if I could be honest and truthful about who I was, that I’d be okay. That I’d get through it, day by day, with God’s help.

And so I told my best friend. And then I told the father of the baby. And I flew home and told my parents. And I told the Dean of Students at the University. And I told my sorority sisters. And I told my pastor. All of a sudden, everyone knew what had been secret and shameful and I didn’t have to hide. I could just be me, the pregnant girl on campus.

I still think of that time as the Great Unburdening.

A very few people on the sidelines of my life offered unhelpful comments, but the people who cared about me gave me love and acceptance where I expected to receive shame and judgment. Maybe the biggest surprise came from the people I didn’t know that well who stepped up and cared for me, buying me lunch, typing my papers so I could rest more, loaning me clothes to wear.

And while I wouldn’t encourage everyone to go out and have such a challenging life event in order to experience the character building and grace that I experienced, I will say it shaped me deeply to speak my truth and to be accepted as I was. It taught me to extend love to myself and to value and honor my relationships, and to care, and dream with hope, for my unborn child.

I placed my son for adoption, and have been privileged to be a part of his life all along the way. He’s now 35 and he, his wife, and my three year old granddaughter are expecting my grandson in October. Back at the beginning, when I was spinning out all of the many ways the story might end, none of the scenarios included this one I’m now living in. I wouldn’t trade a minute of it.

Shame and silence keep us from imagining the best future God is trying to dream for us. They keep us from the love and belonging that comes from the Bread of Life.

I recognize that speaking your truth is never easy, and it might not be safe. People can lose jobs and relationships when difficult truths are admitted.

You don’t need to post your Truth on Facebook, or shout it on a street corner, but can you tell one person? Is there one safe person where you can bring your truth so you don’t have to carry it alone?

Before we can speak the truth in love, we have to know our truth will be received in love. How can we, as a church build a world where people can speak vulnerable truth and have it be received in love?

Are our congregations places where people can bring their truth with them to worship? Or do they feel they need to keep showing up to church in their proverbial Sunday best, while leaving the Monday worst at home? 

One thing I learned when I was honest and vulnerable about my truth, was how it connected me to people. Most other people had not experienced the exact same truth I was going through, but everyone had some experience of shame, and fear of exclusion and judgment. My story gave them space to look at their own story differently. Our lives and stories became connected through our challenges, far more than I’ve ever connected with people through my successes. 

The author of Ephesians writes:
But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

If we want to be one in the spirit, ‘joined and knit together’, it has to be around the real and vulnerable places in our lives, the places where we can let God in, acknowledge our limitations and failures, and work for redemption.

In our world right now, we seem to join and knit together around the people we exclude, the ideas we fear, the causes we champion. That is not what the author of Ephesians is hoping for. It may feel good in the moment to rally with others against another group, or another idea. But it isn’t the joining that leads to the unity in the Spirit.

Can we join and knit together not against others but for them, trusting we are on the same team? Can we join and knit to form the whole body of Christ “joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love”?

I’m not promising it is easy or glamorous work to build honest community where people can bring their whole selves, but it is the only way I can see for us to get through this shallow world of dis-connection in which we often find ourselves.

When the crowd follows Jesus across the Sea of Galilee, he says to them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”

The bread and the fishes weren’t the miracle, he’s saying. That is food that perishes. The miracle is that in the mysterious grace of God, we have been given life abundant and eternal, the food that endures. 

Speaking the truth in love is how we grow toward Jesus, and grow into becoming his body in the world. I pray that we all may have and build community that is joined and knit together in love and truth, that we may know what it is to be fed the bread of life.