The New Deal

This sermon was heard at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Bossier City, Louisiana on Sunday August 9, 2015.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

It’s a cliché that the Presbyterian Church is aging, but unless you are over 80 years old, you don’t personally remember the Great Depression. From 1929 to 1933 the American economy was in a free fall. Manufacturing output fell by one-third. Unemployment went from 4% to 25%. Many who had jobs found themselves going from full to part-time. Prices fell by 20% causing deflation that made it harder to repay debt. Over 800,000 families lost their homes to foreclosure. Nearly half of the nation’s human capital went unused and the GDP fell accordingly.

Bank insurance? It didn’t exist. Banks failed in wholesale fashion and life savings were wiped out. There was no unemployment insurance. There was no Social Security. Our economy hasn’t come out of its doldrums, not for those in the bottom of the ladder, but there’s still a reason why we use the phrase “…not since the great depression.”

This was one reason for the groundswell that brought Franklyn Delano Roosevelt into the Presidency in 1932 and The New Deal in 1933. The New Deal was a series of reforms and programs that provided what historians call “Relief, Reform, and Recovery” to the economy. To provide relief the New Deal gave us the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration which brought electricity to rural areas especially in the South. Along with the FDIC, the New Deal gave us the Securities and Exchange Commission on the reform side. To help with recovery the New Deal gave us Social Security, the Works Project Administration, the National Youth Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

It was said that the WPA and the CCC provided “make work” programs for people and that may be true. But what those “make work” projects provided was quick cash and a way to teach skills people could use when the economy picked up again.

Before seminary I worked over ten years in higher education, most of them in rural Southeast Colorado, the home of a WPA work camp which still stands and Colorado WPA Project #1, a stone tower in a city park which marks a spot where Zebulon Pike camped on his march west. This is the sort of history school children and sojourners learn because of the New Deal. To this day I can imagine not only Pike camping, but the men who worked and the families that were fed because of FDR’s New Deal.

Jesus said “I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” “He who comes to me will never be hungry.” “If anyone eats this bread he will live forever.” Now that’s some bread. That’s the most special bread on Earth. It’s the most important bread on Earth. But if there is one thing that needs to be said, it’s that our relationship with bread is different from those living in the Holy Land. One of the best understandings I have found was this from Bill Hinson in “The Power of Holy Habits.” He writes:

I heard an Armenian describe the bread of life. He said that Westerners do not understand what Jesus was saying when he said, 'I am the Bread of Life.' In the Middle East, bread is not just something extra thrown in at a meal. It is the heart of every meal. They have those thin pieces of pita bread at every meal.

This isn’t so different from traditional Mexican cuisine. Substitute “tortilla” for “pita” and you are on your way. Many Middle Eastern cultures today do this with naan, another kind of flat bread made with yogurt. We don’t have the same relationship with bread, but there are still echoes in our meals today. As for me, I can’t imagine a hamburger without a bun. Continuing Hinson’s words:

Those strict people would not think about taking forks and putting them in their mouths. To put an object in your mouth defiles it. You certainly would not take a fork out and put it in again and go on defiling yourself like that. Instead, you break off a piece of the bread, pick up your food with it and eat it.

So where we often use bread as a side dish, in the time of the Lord bread was instrumental to the meal. In Jesus’ time meat was rare for regular folks. Fruits and vegetables had their seasons. Grain kept so bread was available. Bread was a staple.

So out of something ordinary, out of something people ate at every meal, out of the most basic component of every meal, Jesus made his point about who he is. Again, from Hinson:

Indeed, the only way you can get to the main dish, he said, is with the bread. Jesus was saying that the only way you can come to life is through him. That is why he was saying - I am the Bread of Life; I am the only way to come to life.

When choosing something to compare himself to in John’s gospel, Jesus chooses the most important things in the lives of the people of Israel, bread and water. Jesus chose things the people could not live without. It’s as easy as that. We can’t live without Jesus; he is the way to life eternal. He made that point clear to the people who heard and he tries to make that point just as clear to us.

That does leave us with one very important question though, what does Jesus mean by eternal life?

I feel very, very strongly that salvation is not something that once received we thank God then await the hereafter like waiting on a bus. With salvation, with the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven and the living water comes eternal life, a life we are called to live today and share today. We are called to take the light of Christ into the world.

The Rev. Dr. Michael Jinkins writes of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Jinkins writes, Bonhoeffer “protests against our tendency to let the decisive theological question ‘Who are you?’ dissolve into questions about ‘how’… The how questions are the fragmenting mechanical, manipulating questions, the debilitating questions about mere techniques and technologies.” Bonhoeffer makes a point that is abundantly clear from our reading.

Jesus never once tells the people “how” he did what he does. He never shows us how a miracle happens. He never shows us that, as a friend of mine once told me he suspected, the feeding of the 5,000 happened because everyone stopped being greedy for one moment, opened their lunch pails, and shared their meals with one another leading to a surplus of food. (As if that wouldn’t be a miracle!)

Jinkins goes on to make a very astute observation: Good answers only come from good questions. He tells us that the right questions the church needs to answer have nothing to do with how and everything to do with who. The right questions according to Jinkins are “Who is Christ? and Who does Christ want us to be?” The answer to this first question is what we hear today, Christ is the bread of life that fills us. Christ is the one who satisfies our thirst.

The answer to the second is our vocation.

The Jews (and by the way, John used the phrase “the Jews” to mean “the leadership” not “the people on the street”), these leaders begin to grumble about his claim. “How can he say ‘I came down from heaven’ if we’ve known him since he was a baby born in Jerusalem?” Their grumbling makes Bonhoeffer’s and Jinkins’ point. When the “how” question gains traction the “who” question gets lost.

When we focus on what we know and understand and try to fit everything into our understanding; we grumble, we complain and we try to fit our square pegs into God’s round holes just like the Jewish leaders in our reading did. On that day, they failed to ask “Who is this?” and instead went for “How does he make this claim?” What they don’t realize is that the answer to the first question is the answer to the second.

The answer to “who” is the answer to “how.”

In John 4 Jesus calls himself the living water. In this passage Jesus calls himself the bread of life and the drink that ends thirst. Jesus shows us all that out of something ordinary comes something extraordinary. Many didn’t understand. That’s nothing new. This was true in the day of Jesus. It was true before the day of Jesus. It is still true today. In our over-enlightened “How does it work?” world, we won’t understand as long as our understanding is shrouded in human sin.

It is only when we begin to answer the questions “Who is Christ?” and “Who does Christ want us to be?” that everything else comes into place. As Jinkins says, these questions drive all of our other questions. These are the questions we must ask if we are to have any future as the Church Christ called to be his body.

So who does Christ want us to be? Paul gives the Ephesians an answer to that question. He shows us what it means to be His body.

He reminds us not to be false with one another. He tells us this specifically means speaking the truth, but I believe this not being false means more. It means acting in truth, putting what is best for the community above what is best for the individual at the expense of our neighbor.

Not letting anger, rage, and bitterness swell and fester. It is said that bitterness is like drinking a poison hoping the intended victim falls sick. Forgiveness is the only way we can prevent letting this devil into our souls.

He calls for thieves to give up stealing and instead labor honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Now I ask what these thieves steal? Is it money? Or goods? Or time? Or hope? Regardless! People who thieve need something else to do. Does this sound a little like a “make work” project? Perhaps it does.

As for gossip, Paul commends us only to speak what is good for the community. Honestly this is one of the reasons I am beginning to hate my Facebook feed! So many people, so much rage. If it’s not one thing it’s another! Nobody is building up anything, people are only tearing down and there is so little grace to be found.

Paul finally calls us not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Now here’s the tricky part, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” What makes this tricky is that God gave everything. God gave his life. What can we give? What do we give?

I mentioned my Facebook feed a moment ago. The internet has given us something called memes. Memes are captioned cartoons, generally with a bit of sarcasm or snark. Last week I found this one on my Facebook feed and it does not have any snark. It’s an image of Pope Francis and something he said, “First you pray the hungry are fed then you feed the hungry. That’s how prayer works.”

We call on God, we call on God in Christ to work; and through the power of the Holy Spirit we become the Body of Christ to do that work. Why do this? Paul said it gloriously, “for we are all members of one another.” That’s the new deal in Jesus Christ.