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In my
weekly phone call to Rhinelander, Wisconsin—a call that puts
me in touch with my dad, a call that keeps a family connected
across the miles—my dad told me something that stuck with me
for the rest of week. He told me Miss Sorensen is sick. He
told me it is cancer. He told me it is serious. He told me
time is short. And that has stuck with me all week. You see,
Miss Sorensen is one of those people in my journey who has
made a difference. She is one of those people who in no small
way have helped me get where I am today. Miss Sorensen was my
fifth grade teacher, and twenty-three years later, the very
mention of her name brings back fond memories.
Miss
Sorensen was a tough teacher. She was no softy. She made us
fifth graders work. She cared enough to set the standard high
enough to make fifth graders work to reach beyond where they
had reached before. Truth be told, I do not think it was until
graduate school that I worked so hard for a teacher. Miss
Sorensen brought out the best in us. And while she was tough,
not one of us ever doubted that she cared. Miss Sorensen would
listen. She would laugh. It was from Miss Sorensen that I
developed my voracious appetite for reading. Books like A
Wrinkle in Time, James and the Giant Peach and Little
House on the Prairie were all first introduced to me by
this tough angel of the fifth grade classroom at Curran
Elementary. She made us write our own stories, unleashing our
young imaginations to dream of faraway lands and colorful
characters. Then she would have us read them to the class as
if we were published authors. She made a difference. She
helped make me the person I am today. Miss Sorensen was my
fifth grade teacher.
But
at the end of the day, I think I remember so much of fifth
grade (more than any other year of school I have ever had)
because I remember the teacher. And most importantly, I
remember how she treated us. I guess it is true what they say,
“Long after they have forgotten what you taught them, they
will remember how you treated them.” Hats off to the Miss
Sorensens of the world—those teachers who dedicated
themselves to walking alongside the children and youth of our
communities, challenging them to reach higher than they
reached before, dig deeper than they have ever dug, and dream
dreams of who they might become and how they can impact the
world. To borrow a line from Simon and Garfunkle, “Here’s
to you, Miss Sorensen, Jesus loves you more than you will
know.” (And so do I.)
This week,
as my memories have been brought back to classroom at Curran
Elementary School in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, I am reminded of
the truth of Sir Thomas More’s assertion in the film, A
Man for All Seasons. “Teaching is a noble profession,”
he said. And he was right. So I wonder, who are the teachers
on your journey who have made a difference in your life? I
imagine that most of us, without much trouble, can think of at
least one teacher who impacted our life—who saw something in
us we did not yet see in ourselves and helped us become the
people we are today. Teachers. The world needs teachers, and
whether the forum for their teaching is the classroom, Sunday
school room, training room, locker room or board room, good
teachers can influence people for life. Good teachers can
change the course of history. There is no doubt about it, the
world needs good teachers.
And
that is precisely where this week’s journey through the
Great Commission will take us. It calls on us to be teachers.
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have
commanded you…” To
live into our call to both be disciples and to make
disciples, we need to be both students and teachers. When Jesus chose his original disciples, we are told they were chosen for
two reasons. One,
“to be with him.” And second, “to be sent out.” “To
be with him” focuses on the disciple as learner. “To be
sent out” focuses on the disciple as teacher. Obviously, the
two need to go together. You can only teach what you have been
taught. Imagine being called upon to teach a class in physics
if you have not devoted yourself to studying physics before.
Imagine teaching a class on automotive repair if you have
never popped the hood of a car. The same is true of our call
to live into and out of the call of the Great
Commission. In order to make disciples, we must first be
disciples. In order to teach others about Jesus, we must first
be taught about him, we must be taught by him.
It
is true that we can only teach what we have been taught. We
must be students as well as teachers.
But let us not be confused and think that before we
teach others about our faith, we have to be experts. Just
because we don’t know everything there is to know about God,
Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the church, faith, mission and other
finer points of theology does not mean we do not have
something we can share. As my wife, who is teaching for the
first time at the Wayne State School of Social Work, will
attest, when it comes to teaching, you just need to keep one
chapter ahead of your students. We are not called to be
experts, but we are called to be students. Think about it.
Tonight, at the end of this service, you will be one chapter
ahead of somebody else out there and you’ll have something
to teach.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them everything
I have commanded you.” Teaching them. Did you know that of
all the titles people call Jesus in the scriptures, it is
“teacher” that is the most common? More than any
other—more than Savior, more than Son of God, more than the
Christ—Jesus seems to be commonly understood as
“teacher” to his earliest followers. At least thirty times
in the four Gospels, Jesus is called teacher. Jesus came to
teach. To teach us about God, about ourselves and about how we
are to live in the world.
But
at the end of the day, it is not so much what Jesus taught but
how he taught that impacted the world. Jesus lived the lessons
he wanted to convey to people. He became the sermon he wanted
people to hear. He didn’t just preach on forgiveness, he
lived it out, crying out from the cross: “Father forgive
them, for they know not what they do.” He did not just
preach on simplicity, he lived it, owning nothing more than
the clothes on his back. Jesus lived his teachings, he
embodied them. He did not just preach about justice for the
poor, but when he saw that folks were being ripped off by the
powerful, he turned over some tables. We are called to teach
like that, as well—to take the lessons we learn in worship,
study and prayer, and live them out in our communities.
Tonight
our journey takes us to the Lord’s Table and the celebration
of Holy Communion. That is so appropriate, because both
learning and teaching about the Christian life, I contend that
almost everything happens right here at the communion table.
Do you remember that popular poem that said that all we ever really need
to know we learned in kindergarten? It suggested that the most
important lessons of life
were not learned at the top of the graduate school mountain,
but in the sand pile at elementary school.
Remember some of those lessons:
share
everything, play fair, don’t hit people, put things back
where you found them, flush, warm cookies and cold milk are
good for you, and live a balanced life—learn some and think
some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work
every day. There was truth in that poem, wasn’t there? It
went as far as to suggest that the world would be a different
place if all governments had as a basic policy to always put
things back where they found them and to clean up their own
messes. The premise of this is simple, but I think there is
truth in it.
I think that when it comes to our faith lives, we can say something very
similar. I think we can say with confidence, “All we really
need to know about being a Christian, we learn at the
communion table.” I suppose that sounds like a bold
statement, and at first sounds too simplistic to be true.
Everything we need to know we learn at the communion table? I
believe it. When communion is done with intention and purpose,
the very heart and the totality of the Gospel is revealed.
When communion is not done with intention, when it becomes
just something we do, when it is only ritual, then communion
does not have much to offer us (expect perhaps that strangely
delightful taste of bread dunked in grape juice).
So,
what does communion teach us?
Communion teaches us who God is. God is the bread of
life. God nourishes and sustains us. God is the cup of
salvation, overflowing with mercy and grace.
Communion
teaches us who we are. We are broken, and yet we are redeemed.
Communion teaches us to be honest about our brokenness, but
not broken by it. While we are broken by our sin, the
lifeblood of God poured out for us from the cross redeems us.
This we are re-taught every time we come to the Lord’s
Table.
Communion
also teaches about the Kingdom of God. Just as Jesus said,
“The Kingdom of God has come near,” at communion we get a
taste of it and we, too, realize that it is nearer and closer
than we could have ever imagined.
Communion
teaches us about how God is at work in the world. God
transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. At communion,
a simple loaf and a cup of grape juice become so much
more—they become our spiritual nourishment, they become the
body and blood of Christ. We learn that if God can transform
the bread and cup from the ordinary into the extraordinary,
God might do the same with us, with our church, with our
world. Through our participation in communion, we are once
again taught that God can touch the ordinary and transform it
into so much more than meets the eye.
Communion
teaches us how we are to live in the world. At the table, we
are served so that we can serve. As the communion community is
created, family is discovered and mission claimed.
God feeds us here so that we may feed others in his
name out there.
Communion’s
teachings are far-reaching. They touch the world of economics
and politics. At the table, we learn God’s economic design
for the world. Did you ever notice that at communion, there is
always enough for everybody, there is always plenty to go
around? At the communion table, everybody gets fed, nobody
takes too much and nobody goes without. How different would
the world be if we applied God’s communion principles to our
economic life? Likewise, we are taught how to resolve our
differences with each other when the bread is broken and cup
lifted. At the communion table, we are taught that we all
share in a common loaf and common humanity, and that at the
end of the day, we must come together with friends and enemies
to share the grace the tables offers. How different would the
world be if our leaders would come together on a regular basis
to break bread and realize their common humanity? At the
table, we learn the truth of what Paul wrote in his letter to
the Corinthians, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are
many, are one body, for we all partake in one loaf.”
Communion
teaches us about the nature of salvation. At the communion
table, all we can do is receive the gifts God gives. We cannot
earn them. We cannot buy them; they are not for sale.
We do not deserve them any more than anybody else
standing in line to receive what God has to give. All we can
do is receive the gifts and be thankful for them. The same is
true of salvation. We cannot earn it. We cannot buy it; it is
not for sale. We cannot say we are more deserving than anybody
standing in line waiting to receive. When it comes to
salvation, all we can do is receive it and be thankful for it.
We learn this every time we receive the bread and cup at
communion.
Communion
teaches us to embrace the mystery of our faith. It teaches
that not everything we learn is concrete or explainable. When
we come to the table, do we understand everything that is
happening? How is bread transformed into something more? Is it
just symbolic? Is it a physical transformation? I don’t
know, but my experience tells me something happens when we
gather here, tell the story, ask God to be present and then
break bread and drink from the cup.
Something happens, and even if we can’t answer every
question about it, I still know something powerful happens.
Communion helps us to embrace that same mystery in the rest of
our lives. How
did God create creation? How does God redeem broken people?
Why does God allow such suffering to exist? I do not know
every answer, but I can embrace the mystery of our faith. I
can embrace that God is active in creation. I do not need
every answer spelled out to participate in it.
That is what happens at this table.
The
Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took a loaf of
bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
“This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of
me.” In the
same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This
cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you
drink it, in remembrance of me.” Break the bread and drink
from the cup: do this in remembrance of me. If we want to
remember Jesus, then this is what we are to do: learn the
lesson of the Lord’s Table and then go forth and share it
with others.
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