Chapel of the Cross - Spiritual Formation

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 13, 2006

A number of years ago Barbara Walters did interviews with three icons of American popular culture of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. They were Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, and Johnny Cash.

A minister in Austin Texas watched the show and noted some of the differences in how these three individuals handled themselves on the air, and what “message” was coming across as they spoke.

Johnny Carson seemed to not have been unaffected by his popularity and fame; it seemed that he came across as the typical, jaded, playboy hedonist. Everything he said communicating the fact that he was living for pleasure, but having tried everything, seen everything, he was bored and fed up with life.

Cronkite was the suave humanist - the man of the world - the philosopher of opinion. Retired and wealthy and commentator emeritus, his general message was that of a commentator on events, a few personal insights, but very limited personal commitment. “He seemed to be saying, That’s the way it is.” Not much you can do about life - “That’s the way it is.”

Carson and Cronkite, the funny man and the newsman, both 20th Century pop culture icons, never admitted to serious flaws, serious needs, yet they seemed to speak for so many in their careers. Neither mentioned God or a need for God.

That is why when Walters interviewed Johnny Cash, the entertainer; he seemed a bit out of place with these other two pop icons.

Cash admitted to his background of alcoholism and drug addiction, and the fact that his behavior had virtually destroyed himself and his marriage - wrecked his life. And as perhaps only Johnny Cash might say, He said that he had “found Jesus,” which gave him a hope and a peace that he had not known.

His eyes were clear, and he did not have to be the funny man or the philosopher; he could speak the truth of being found by Jesus with simplicity and peace.

He did not seem like a person who is still hungry, still dissatisfied, restless in spirit; but rather that he had found something of substance, a food, that actually puts away hunger.

It has become a kind of hobby for me to watch how popular culture responds when a person has the gall to mention on national television that they believe in God or in Jesus Christ. There is generally the long pause as the interviewer or reporter has to take a moment to “reframe” the question or the moment.

It seems that one candid moment like that, a Johnny Cash completely derailing an interview by bringing up how he “found Jesus,” watching the psychological scramble that results, seems to me preaches more sermons that all the tele-evangelists in the world; that random moment where in life we answer the question, “Where do you get your bread?”

“Where do you get your bread?”

On what is your heart feeding? Day in, day out.
It seems that we sometimes create a lifestyle where we work hard to eat healthy food, good food, and exercise our bodies, and then we save the empty calories for our minds, and our hearts.

“I am the bread of life . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven . . . whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”

Jesus becomes bread for us so that we might take all that he taught, all that he said and felt, and all that his body suffered, all that his body experienced in being raised from the dead, he becomes bread for us so that we take all of this into our hearts, our minds, our own bodies, and digest it, make it part of us, so that we might be part of him.
When we do this, we are told that we will live forever.

One of the great spiritual writers and spiritual directors of the Anglican faith was Evelyn Underhill. She once said that “some people seem to think that the spiritual life is a peculiar condition mainly supported by ice cream and corrected headache powders. But the solid norm of the spiritual life should be like that of the natural life: a matter of oatmeal, bread and butter, and cut of meat off the joint.”

What she is saying is that our life in God is not merely the dessert for a life well-lived; no, our life in God is the meat and three, it is the stuff, it is the bread. And it is sustained by the simple acts of self-discipline and routine that marks the other aspects of our lives. Your being here today is one of them. The bread and wine we share at the altar is one of them. Bible study, prayer, fellowship, and sharing our bread with the poor, they are all the meat and potatoes of a life in God.

I promise, the dessert will not be far behind, and trust me, it is so much more than ice cream.

The bread that Jesus becomes for us can and will change our lives; it can and will change our world. There are some words from our Eucharistic Prayer C that I would like to share with you; words that you might want to bring to the altar with you today, and any day, when you find yourself hunger for a bread that brings life, when you have had enough of empty calories.

Please turn with me to page 372 in the BCP, page 372. Join me in reading the first paragraph: Lord God of our Fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .
“Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the Bread.”