Broken Promises: A Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent

Grace, peace, and mercy are yours from the Triune God. Amen.

 

A couple of weeks ago, Liz preached on the concept of trust and how easy it is to lose trust in others, causing us to turn inward, trusting only in ourselves. From my experience, the fastest route to broken trust is through broken promises.

 

Have you ever had something promised to you, only to have it taken away? A job or a promotion, perhaps? Or maybe a raise at work?

 

One person lying to another is a form of a broken promise. Like a promise to show up at an event for you, maybe a birthday party or a celebratory dinner, only to not show up at all.

 

How do these broken promises make you feel?

 

One of my favorite shows in my teen years was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. In one episode, Will’s dad, who had abandoned him when he was little, came back into his life and made all sorts of promises to take Will with him on the road (he was a truck driver) and telling Will they’d be together again. Despite warnings from Uncle Phil, Will was super excited his dad had come for him and was ready to hit the road. Not really unexpected to the audience, Will’s dad snuck out on him just as he had done when he was a little boy, breaking Will’s heart all over again.

 

I have done a lot of reading over the past few years on Indigenous and Settler history, relationships, and reconciliation. The book I’m currently reading is called “52 Ways to Reconcile.” If you want to hear more about it, feel free to ask me later. But in one chapter, it reminded me that the treaties signed all those years ago were based on promises – promises to exchange land for things like cash, blankets, clothing, community schools, and farm equipment. All that conversation is for another time. My point is that just as easily as those promises were made (noting that the Indigenous people couldn’t read the documents put before them), those promises were broken, and most remain broken to this day.

 

These are just a couple of examples of how easy it is to break a promise. Sometimes it feels like we have become quite calloused to the problem of broken promises. Our default tends to be an expectation that promises will be broken. Words come cheap. It is so easy to blurt out a promise, but it is harder to keep that promise.

 

In our reading today, our main man Peter seems to be struggling with things that were easy to say and hard to do. The night started off well, twelve friends gathered around a table, sharing a meal. Celebrating the Passover, as one does. Maybe telling stories about everything that happened over the last while. You know, just relaxing and taking a load off. And then Jesus decided that now was the time to get serious. First, he institutes the Lord’s Supper, and then he says, “You will all fall away because of me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’”

 

Jesus reveals to his group of friends that he knows they will scatter from him when things get hard. He already identified Judas as a betrayer and declares that the rest of them are about to do the same thing – desert their teacher. Peter would have none of it, and he let Jesus know it. “No way will I ever leave you,” he says. Jesus insists, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter jumps in and promises he’d never do that. “I promise. I pinky swear. I’m going anywhere. No matter what!” The rest of the guys are nodding their heads in agreement.

 

Well, we know how the rest of that story goes, don’t we? In fear for his life, watching what was happening to Jesus, and terrified the same would happen to him, not once, not twice, but three times Peter denies his association with Jesus. He had made a promise to Jesus to never abandon him, and yet, when the moment came, when he felt the threat of danger and suffering, he folded and collapsed. He forgot his promise. He knew it, too. As soon as that cock crowed, “he went out and wept bitterly.”

 

So easy was it for him to throw out the promise to stay at Jesus’ side, but when times got hard, Peter chose to keep a distance and to deny his relationship with Jesus. The other 10 weren’t any better. When Jesus needed his people the most, they weren’t there for him. Twelve broken promises.

 

Luther teaches that when Peter three times denied Jesus it was no mere backsliding, but it was the rejection of Christ and the death of faith. There in the courtyard, with the denial echoing off the hard walls, Peter was lost. If we read a little further on, we know that there’s hope for Peter. He turns to Jesus who then forgives him and even restores Peter’s place in the group.

 

While Judas’ story is a lesson on broken trust, Peter’s story warns us of the problem of broken promises. He warns us about the problem of words quickly and idly spoken that prove difficult and costly to keep. Peter shows us what it’s like to break a promise.

 

We are often too quick to judge poor Peter, however. Put yourself in his shoes. Have you ever missed a chance to witness with bold confidence to the truth of God? Have you ever been part of a conversation when you wanted to make your faith clear, but somehow you just couldn’t find the words, so you simply chose to remain silent? Have you ever decided it was easier to not let the people around you now that you are Christian? Have you ever seen someone in need and averted your eyes? Our promise to Jesus might not look quite the same as Peter’s but we are just as likely to break our promise to him as Peter did. We are, after all, simply human.

 

But, as with Peter, we know that in these lowest of times, we can look to Jesus for forgiveness and restoration. In Jesus, we are forgiven for our slip-ups and are given strength to try and keep our promises to the best of our ability. Jesus’ grace and forgiveness is ours forever. The work we need to do in our lives is to be aware of throwing around the words “I promise”. Our task is to take that strength that Jesus gives us and put action behind promises made – whether to ourselves or to others. Our responsibility is to avoid empty promises, knowing how we feel when it happens to us. Here, in our community of faith, we can hold ourselves accountable to each other knowing that even if we slip up, even if we break our promises, Jesus will always restore our place in the group.

 

Amen.

Breaking Bread: A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent

Grace, peace, and mercy are yours from the Triune God. Amen.

 

Is there anything quite as wonderful as the smell of freshly baked bread? The ingredients are so simple – yeast, flour, eggs, butter, water, salt – but the smell when it comes out of the oven is heavenly. And what could be better than eating fresh hot bread? Eating bread easy but baking bread is a difficult skill to master. Variances in flour type, in water temperature, and in the humidity outside can all affect the outcome of a loaf. Bakers commit their entire lives to perfecting that perfect loaf of bread. When I first moved here, I bought all the ingredients to make bread, thinking it would be cheaper that buying bread. I still have yet to gather the courage to try!

 

Bread is both incredibly simple and infinitely complex. Terms like “daily bread” and “bread winner” and “breaking bread” are so woven into our vernacular that we forget they refer to actual, literal loaves that nourish us and that taste delicious too. So simple, so earthly, the extraordinary taste of fresh bread that provides the ordinary staple in the diet of so many people. Eating bread can be both a profoundly earthly and profoundly heavenly experience. That taste is exponentially greater when eaten while in the company of others and deeply felt when it is absent.

 

Throughout the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, Jesus has been saying that he is the bread of life; that he provides the only food which truly nourishes; that he gives us his own self, his own flesh and blood, to sustain us on our journey; and that we are actually to eat his flesh and blood in order to abide in him. These are, indeed, hard words, hard to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus feeds five thousand plus, and compares this windfall to the manna the Israelites had received centuries before when they wandered the wilderness. Manna was God’s way of looking after the people of Israel. They received the blessing every day until they finally reached the land of promise. Then Jesus has a very long monologue about bread of life, which starts out nicely but ends with the command to eat his body and drink his blood.

 

It’s frightening and messy. To think that we should have life at the expense of another human being. These words are tantamount to cannibalism as Jesus’ followers reason it, and completely unacceptable in any reasonable, moral system of thinking. What Jesus was asking was a stark breaking of the Law. His listeners are offended by Jesus’ audacity. He is declaring himself to be manna, the “bread of life”. Just as manna gave life in the wilderness, so also Jesus gives life.

 

Although the crowd was initially enthusiastic about the idea of Jesus as one like Moses who could provide this miraculous bread, they reject the identification of Jesus with manna. They are rejecting him for who he is: the true bread from heaven whose death he claims will be grounds for establishing “eternal life” for them. And they begin to walk away. They begin to desert him. These aren’t people who have just joined him for the day. These were not mere hangers-on and band-waggoners who walked away. Note that John calls these folks not simply "the crowds," as in earlier passages, but rather "disciples." They were real followers who had probably been around for a while.

 

The people in today's reading who now desert Jesus are precisely those who had, in fact, believed in Jesus, those who had followed him and had given up much to do so. But his words became too muddled and too offensive for most of his followers. It got hard, they got tired of waiting for everything Jesus said would happen to happen, they didn’t like what he was preaching, so they left. They gave up and went home. A chapter that started with a huge crowd, ended with only twelve still willing to stick around, and even then, one of them is destined to betray him. The community that has been gathering around Jesus is beginning to break.

 

In the original manna story, the people’s response to God’s salvation is mixed. Although they initially herald the triumph of God in the Exodus, Israel immediately begins to grumble or complain against God and Moses in the wilderness. They do not trust God to take care of them. Similarly, the group following Jesus initially receives the miraculous food and heralds Jesus as a prophet. But they also begin to grumble against Jesus following his teaching about the manna. The faith that the disciples had put into Jesus is waning and their trust in him is fading.

 

The picture John draws for us in today's Gospel is not a pretty one, but it's a pretty realistic portrait of disbelief, of disciples then and now for whom the life of faith has become too hard. But the picture also includes courage and faith. Jesus turned to his twelve, his closest group, and said, “well I guess you want to go, too?” Peter responds, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

 

Peter’s response to Jesus is not a word of despair or a statement that they will have to settle for Jesus because there is nothing else. Peter and the others who remain have been given the gift of knowing that Jesus is the one who can give genuine life. It’s not that they weren’t plagued with doubt and fear. They suffered at times from a lack of courage, and they, too, eventually deserted Jesus – and at the very time he needed them the most. The difference was that they knew where to look when things got hard. They trusted that they could look to Jesus and lean on him.

 

The words of eternal life are not always simple or easy to hear. The words of eternal life remind us that life is not always plain; solutions to our problems are not straightforward. It is exactly because the words of eternal life ring true that we cannot leave. Where would we go? Who else will tell us the truth about life? Who else has lived the truth about life so fully?

 

John’s gospel begins with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” For Christians, there is something about the Word that we cannot seem to find anywhere else. The gospel words of eternal life go straight to the soul. Each week, through listening to the Word, we're offered again and again the Word of eternal life. We're offered the chance to be encountered by Jesus and his living Word.

 

Through the speaking and hearing of the Word, Jesus' real presence is made manifest in our world, and we are pointed to the one place amid all the tumult and upset of this world and life we share that we can look to and know for sure that we will find God in Christ there for us. And through the breaking of the bread, we are able to tangibly experience Jesus’ presence.

 

When Jesus taught us to pray for “our daily bread,” he was teaching us that God wants us to depend on God for our everyday needs. “Daily bread” refers not just to food but to all that which we need for basic comfort and well-being: clothing, shelter, and other things necessary to support and continue our lives. When Jesus calls himself “the bread of life”, he is reminding us that he is something that we need in our everyday lives so that we have comfort and well-being.

 

I mentioned the feeding of the 5000 earlier. In that story, Jesus has provided physical food but uses that food to teach that he can provide spiritual food as well. He wants those who are listening to him to not just eat some bread and fish and then go home to hunger again. He wants them to develop a spiritual hunger and thirst that only he can fill. And where does he fill that spiritual hunger and thirst? Right here, at the communion table while in communion with others. Think of all the places you have taken communion, and the people whom you have taken communion alongside – people still living that you don’t see anymore, people who have died and seen only by God, people in this room, maybe even people whom you never met. Imagine all the places in which God has experienced this Eucharistic meal right alongside of you.

 

The communion that Jesus speaks of, describing himself as living bread, is something that has woven itself deeply into our life story. Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven, whose presence sustains us in every place and situation in which we find ourselves. It is in returning, again and again, for Jesus’ presence in Word and the sacrament of the Eucharist that we are conformed more and more to be like Jesus.

 

And in those times in life when challenges arise and we are not sure we have what it takes, we return again to be sustained by Jesus’ presence. And if we begin to feel unworthy of God’s love, we know that we can always return to the altar to confess and receive forgiveness. Then through Christ’s presence in the sacrament, we are once again fed for the coming week.

 

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. … This is the bread that came down from heaven … the one who eats this bread will live forever.” In the bread of life, our souls are blessed and nourished. In the bread of life, nothing is lost, not even our brokenness. In the bread of life, we are raised to eternal life. And that is good news, indeed.

 

Amen.