Sunday: 12th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18; John 6:56-69
Preacher: Dent Davidson

Our Seattle area home went on the market this weekend; the home that, over the last 25 years, had become our hands-down favorite. Several days ago I was proofing the online virtual tour which would hopefully lure prospective buyers. I found myself filled with a mix of emotions. The spaces in which we gathered so frequently with friends and family were carefully staged for the shots, nothing out of place. Most poignant for me was the kitchen - the heart of our home, my place for sanity and relaxation, a place where 2 dogs made fervent prayer just below the cutting board. Gone were the ceramic pots filled with wooden spoons, brushes and ladles; the blue KitchenAid mixer and my favorite chopping block nowhere in sight; a place once so alive to me, now sanitized into some kind of perverse snapshot of purity. Then there was the picture of our little den where Jim and I sat a year ago over several evenings, discerning how to answer the call from Chicago; that place of deep discernment, now just a photo of 2 empty chairs and the piano. It was a painful choice to leave our comfortable, established, settled life in Seattle. We had family and friends, not to mention over 2 decades of business contacts! But the call seemed full of promise and challenge; and more than a little risk, which made it feel authentic. Over the last 10 months it's been often tempting to second-guess our decision. But now that it's officially on the market, it's become clear that this home is a wonderful, but nearly closed chapter of our lives. Having chosen this call, we are on to new things in a new land, trying to trust that God will sustain us.

Jesus offers his followers a major choice in this morning's gospel reading. Either be scandalized, or respond in faith. And he doesn't use comfortable words, but words meant to agitate. He offering them a choice that would fundamentally change their lives."I am enough," he says. "I am all that you will ever need. I am Living Bread; choose me rather than the bread your ancestors ate. They died, but if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, if you so fully receive me, I will live in you and you in me forever."

Their response: "This is a difficult saying - who can bear it?!" The clever use of scandalous, offensive language pushes away those who want to follow their own agendas. I can imagine many of those disciples just up and quitting with a tone of righteous indignation. "Well, I never - the nerve of that guy making himself God!" Or recoiling with horror: "Gnawing on human flesh and bone? No thank you!"

But the truth is, they find it easier to retreat into settled and comfortable patterns. "Better the devil we know than the one we don't." Fear of something new is easier than considering change. They are filled with anxiety that there will never be enough. Jesus is weeding out those who don't really have a stake in his message; those who won't choose a new path. It's a simple fact of being human: We don't like to make choices! And when faced with them, we often choose that which is most comfortable, and involves the least amount of change.

Thomas Aquinas says that every choice is a renunciation. We cannot have it all - and that is a difficult saying for a society that seems to pride itself in amassing wealth, power and prestige - in many forms.

The current conversation (or yelling match) over Health Care Reform is probably on the minds of many here.
Is this nation really so incredibly impoverished that 46 million people should remain without adequate health care? Tough choices need to be made in government and industry to make the necessary changes. Yet underlying fears paralyze both. Will we renounce the obscene profits made by insurance companies and lobbyists, or will we renounce those who are poor and have no voice?

In the Church we have choices to make as well, on many levels. As we live and move and have our being in a world that barely recognizes us, is it possible for us to change, to adapt, so that it can hear God's message of love and liberation for all? The world won't change if we don't, folks. Bishop Jack Spong says that, given the choice, many churches would indeed choose to die rather than change. Sadly, the proof of that is all around us. (Happily, that is not the case here.)

However, we are technically in transition, and we need to keep asking ourselves: Are we really stake-holders in the message of God? Are we choosing to teach the Good News to our children? Are we shouting it from the rooftops? Are we feeding the hungry and proclaiming liberty to the captives? Or is this just something nice we do on Sunday before brunch?

The 6th chapter of John concludes with Jesus turning to the Twelve, and asking them point blank, "Do you also wish to go away?" And I love the Twelve, because they are such great examples for us. They are faithful and sinful and eloquent and bumbling and clueless and scheming and loving - all of them. They are snapshots of us. So very human! Hearing about them somehow makes the costly, risky choice of discipleship,
at least a little less daunting. We don't have to be perfect.

Peter, in one of his more lucid moments gives this confession, "Who else could we possibly go to? You are the Holy One of God. Your words are everlasting life." Peter and the others, in all their ineptitude, get it. They have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. This tiny band is becoming the Church, learning to BE the body of Christ, willing to be broken and given. And if they could be Jesus - to a world so hungry for him, then by God, so can we!

We've had five straight weeks of bread readings. I'm sure we are all quite full now. There's a reason that this chapter is so long, and so central to our lives. Each time we come to this Table, we learn once again how to give ourselves away. It's risky to be sure. We are choosing to act sacrificially rather than selfishly. Renouncing our petty needs and wants, we put on Christ.

So that, as we are stretched by painful new births, we learn acceptance.
Through our own brokenness, we learn compassion.
Through our wayward wanderings, we learn forgiveness of others and ourselves.
Through the way we judge others, we learn mercy.
Through our own hunger and thirst, we learn justice.
So let us choose this moment to renounce the things that are comfortable and easy. Let's give Jesus new flesh in our own hearts and new blood in our actions.

Please sing with me ...

Let us be bread, blessed by the Lord, broken and shared, life for the world.

Let us be wine, love freely poured.

Let us be one in the Lord.