Prove It

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 6, 2006
The 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Prove It
John 6:24-35
Ephesians 4:1-16

It’s August already.
The newspapers sag under the weight of
back-to-school advertisements.
Many of you may be planning to head directly to stores
following worship on this last day of the state sales tax holiday.
The stores were crowded this past week
as people shopped for vacation,
or tried to get a jump on back-to-school purchases;
many simply went to escape the heat.

August is supposed to be a deserted and quiet month
as summer comes to an end,
but I always think of August as a crowded month,
as swarms of people head to the beach, or the mountains,
or just to malls and stores.
Pat and I have been encouraged to join the crowds
at the County Fair when it opens up on Friday.

I will let you in on a little secret:
if you want to escape the crowds,
there is a place where you can go:
a place where you can spread out,
relax, not feel crushed or rushed,
a place where you can even find a prime parking place:
Church!
Yes, during the month of August, church is one of the few places
you can go where you are not likely to find crowds,
at least not the kinds of crowds we see in September,
or at Christmas, or Easter.

The word “crowd” really is one that has no place in the church.
We are never a crowd, even on those days
when we have to bring extra chairs into the Sanctuary.
No church can ever be crowded,
not this church, not even the biggest mega-church.
Because in church, we are always a community;
In church, we are only a community.

The difference is not semantic -- not just words.
We are a community
because we live in communion with one another;
we live in a communal relationship with one another
as disciples of Jesus Christ.
This has been true since the first converts gathered together
and shared everything, as Luke wrote in the Acts of the Apostles:
“All who believed were together and had all things in common…”
(Acts 2:44)

The word communal comes from a Latin word that means
“fellowship”, “to be connected; “commonality”.
We are communal because we share a common life,
built on our common faith.
We live communally even if we live divergent lives.
We live in communion with one another
because we are the church,
the Body of Christ,
each of us called here by the Holy Spirit,
each of us bringing our unique gifts
given us by the Holy Spirit;
Each of us essential to the Body.

Becoming community doesn’t just happen, of course.
It takes work on the part of every member of the Body:
every one of us gathered together.
That’s what Paul was trying to encourage the Ephesians
to understand through his letter.
Listen again to his words: “…we must grow up in every way
in 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 for love.”
(Ephesians 4:15-16)
It’s a rather wordy way of saying we must be communal
in order to build the Body of Christ.

As Jesus walked the dry, dusty roads of Judea,
Samaria, and Galilee preaching the gospel,
crowds followed him everywhere.
Yet, none of the crowds was a community.
The crowd in our lesson,
the one that followed Jesus across the Sea of Galilee
to Capernaum, was just that: a crowd, not a community.
They had been a community for a brief moment
as they sat on the grass on the hillside
and ate their fill of bread and fish,
but they didn’t know it, and they didn’t get it.
The bonds of community disappeared
as soon as their stomachs began to rumble
and grumble again with hunger.

Jesus confronted them with what they were really after:
“You just want more bread for your bellies –
that is the only reason you have any interest in me.
That’s the only reason you came after me.”
No one in the crowd denied it;
“Prove it” was their response to Jesus
when he said he could and would feed them.
“Show us a sign”, they demanded.
“Fill our bellies and then we will believe”…
at least until tomorrow, when we grow hungry again.
This was no community;
this was just a crowd of hungry people
looking for a short cut to the next meal.

But Jesus was not born in human flesh to cater dinner;
he came to build community,
to rebuild the community of God,
to call back into community
all God’s children who had strayed so far away.

The living Christ is still at work here and now
calling us to community
building community, in this church
and churches throughout the world.
Jesus calls us, and then he feeds us,
feeds us with God’s love and mercy,
feeds us in such a way
that we will never know hunger again.

Our Lord invites us here and now to his table,
this communion table,
to share in the meal that he has prepared for us.
A meal that will fill us,
satisfying even our deepest hunger.

Come to this table says our Lord,
He speaks to each of us: “Come to my table”
We are invited to sit at our Lord’s table
to be fed,
to be renewed,
to be refreshed,
to be transformed,
to be lifted up into the very presence of Christ.
to commune with Christ,
as we commune with one another,
even as we commune with all the saints.

People will come from east and west,
and from north and south
and sit at table in the kingdom of God,
the Community of Christ scattered throughout the world
people of different races, cultures, backgrounds, ages,
yet, all of us sitting at the same table.
We will all be fed.
The hunger that gnaws at each of us in a thousand different ways
taken away,
seemingly by a tiny morsel of bread and a drop of wine,
but in reality by the love of God that is Jesus Christ.

“I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,
and whoever believes in me, will never be thirsty.”
If you want proof, just come to this table.
Then you will know that this is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
AMEN