Lent4-2003

“ Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten .”

I have seen the famous painting by the French Post-Impressionist, Georges Seurat , in person at the Chicago Institute of Art. A Sunday on La Grande Latte. His method, called “ pointillism ,” was to place dots of color on the canvas, many points of many colors creating a soft effect in hazy detail. Close up, the image breaks into tiny dots of color. When you fall back to observe the painting, the images of people standing by the shores of a city lake emerge from the colored dots: ladies with parasols, little dogs, a man reclining on his elbows, everyone looking out at the water on the left. There is something surrealistic about this painting: the dots float on the canvas, fragments of color, and seem almost accidentally to form the images.

Seurat, in his strange painting style, was anticipating the developments of future imaging: half-tone color printing and television three-color matrix imaging . These techniques create images by first breaking the picture into its color components and individual dots of color, ink or light, then the dots combine to portray a larger complete image on the screen or page of a newspaper.

The United States of America is made up of the torn fragments of the peoples of many lands, languages and cultures. Our bright, confusing flag of stripes and stars is evidence of the complexity of even our first Americans. These folks had come mostly from Europe in search of freedom from oppression. Many of them had been oppressed by church and state in their former countries, and now were pioneer members of religious enclaves here. Ironically the Baptists, Congregationalists, Puritans, Quakers, and Anglicans who left England to get away from each other joined hands and hearts here in this new land where they might weave the fabric of a new society. Today that society is comprised from every people group on the face of the earth, fragments torn by strife from another world, finding a place in the rich tapestry of the New World.

I attended the Nowrooz celebration this year at Azad's Martial Arts Academy . Master Azad is Persian and his annual party welcomes the Persian New Year, always at the Spring Equinox, with music, food and symbols of the birth of spring. Every Nowrooz , Persians bury the hatchet, so to speak, and all former troubles with anyone else is laid aside and forgotten. It's a new day . That's what Nowrooz means: new day. This colorful gathering brings the various Persians from this region to recognize their heritage together with quite a few Amricayee , like myself, who just love the customs, people, and great food. America is a Seurat painting of many such colorful dots of culture that interplay to make a larger image. The ideal of America, not yet fully realized, is to see a completed image of mankind, at peace with itself, inspired and empowered by God, shining its light to the world.

Jesus stood before a great host of people out in the countryside, teaching them the ways of God and the coming Kingdom. He sensed their growing restlessness: hunger was beginning to get the best of them and their attention waivered. He looked out at them and asked his Apostles, “Where can we buy bread so that these can eat?” The question baffled them, seeing the great number of folk who were gathered. Impossible . Andrew mentioned a boy's small lunch of five barley loaves, a couple of dried fish, but even as he said it he withdrew it, saying: “What is that among so many?” Jesus, undaunted, ordered everyone to be seated.

Then he took that little lunch, blessed it, broke the bread and cracked the dry fish in halves, and then ordered the disciples to distribute the food to the 5,000 as far as it might go. Everyone saw the miracle . This little cache of food became more and more as it was passed along. In their very hands the bread was multiplied. As it was torn, it grew. As it was broken up, it became one miracle and all the people knew who Jesus was.

And that wasn't the end of it. Jesus noticed that there was left over food. He ordered that the remaining bread and fish be gathered up and saved, that none be lost. Everybody was full and couldn't eat another bite. Five loaves had become a meal for 5,000 and now the remnants were gathered into twelve baskets, brimming with broken bread fragments. Bits and pieces came together to make more than there was at the start. Until that bread had been broken , the people could not have eaten and the miracle could not have happened.

One of my favorite examples of the musical treasure this church holds in safekeeping is Hymn 195. This is our oldest hymn, by far. It is dated early 2 nd Century, in its original Greek, from the Didache , a manuscript teaching on church life. It is meant to be a prayer of consecration for an early church. Let me read it for you now.

Father, we thank thee who hast planted Thy holy Name within our hearts. Knowledge and faith and life immortal Jesus thy Son to us imparts. Thou, Lord, didst make all for thy pleasure, Didst give man food for all his days, Giving in Christ the Bread eternal; Thine is the power, be thine the praise.

This first verse speaks of how God has planted His Name in us, and as He gives us food for all our lives, He has given us Christ to be our everlasting Bread, the Bread of Life. Thus, He is worthy of our praises. Now the second verse.

Watch o'er thy Church, O Lord, in mercy, Save it from evil, guard is still, Perfect it in thy love, unite it, Cleansed and conformed unto thy will. As grain once scattered on the hillsides, Was in this broken bread made one, So from all lands thy Church be gathered into thy kingdom by thy Son. Amen.

This is a profound thought. Grain is scattered on hillsides. No longer the great basket of seeds weighed out together in many pounds of rich grain, but individual seeds thrown to the wind and landing wherever the sower has cast it away. It must be scattered, or the crop will not come in . Then the harvest, and the husks are broken off of the hard grain, and the grain is broken again to make flour. The flour comes together in a loaf. A new loaf is such a lovely thing, hot from the oven. Smell it, run your hand over its rich brown skin, pick it up and weigh it in your hand, anticipate its flavor . But you can't have any, not unless you are willing to break it up . The bread is broken, then in its basket it is passed down the dinner table. Each of us takes a fragment in our hands and eats it with pleasure. Our fellowship of food joins us in a brotherhood. Even more so, when we partake of the broken fragments of the bread of Holy Communion we are united with Christ in His Body, by partaking of His Body, and in His Body we become One. Not just one people group together, but from all lands the Church comes into One Kingdom, through the broken fragments of the bread of life, Jesus Christ.

Unless that bread is broken, no one may partake of the meal. Unless Christ's Body was broken on the Cross, not one of us might sit at the feast in heaven with the Lamb of God and partake of eternal food. He had to be broken for us. The breaking of His life and the individual partaking of that Sacrament is what makes us One. Today another fragment is added to the Body of Jesus Christ, Mary Ashley (a Baptism).

In the early Church, a bishop stood to celebrate the Eucharist at the altar, bringing bread together from the people of the Body who brought it up to be blessed. He and his priests gathered over this bread sacrifice, laid their hands over it together and recited Christ's words at the Last Supper: “Take, eat. This is my Body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” A portion of that bread was then set aside while the people came up to eat the Body and Blood of Christ. The fragments that were saved were sent out from that cathedral church to the smaller congregations in lesser cities and towns that were associated with that bishop and major city, the diocese or see . Upon the occasion of their next gathering, the priests of these small groups would also consecrate bread and wine. But into the chalice of wine, that fragment of bread from the bishop's Mass was dropped, signifying a unity of the Body of believers, all one communion, one body, one faith.

In our Eucharist, we retain a commemoration of that act. When the priest speaks Christ's words over the Bread, he acts out what Jesus said, breaking the large priest's host in his hands as he says, “…he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave it to his disciples.” At a later point, the priest says another quiet prayer and breaks that bread again, getting a little triangular corner of it in his fingers. When he says: “The Peace of the Lord be always with you,” he traces three crosses over the chalice with the fragment and then drops it into the wine. A broken piece of bread thus signifies our unity with our bishop, and through the bishop with the whole Body of Christ throughout the world, across the centuries, even to that gathering of astonished Apostles at the Last Supper, who had seen the miracle of the loaves and fishes happen right in their own hands.

We are fragments, mere fragments of the family of man. My heritage stems back to the lands of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, France and Germany. I am a Northern European mutt. My son has the broken fragments of all of that, and a good half of pure Persian from his mother. The woven strands of many families come together to make each of us rich tapestries of rare and wonderful design, each different, each beautiful, each a creation of God. But the material God uses in the miracles of these last days is the material He created long ago. Even the Body of Jesus Christ was made from the broken off substance of His human mother . We are all fragments, bits and pieces of this and that, having a history going back all the way to the Garden world and man's first fall. A false unity was broken up by God at Babel , in that same land where our soldiers fight to topple a dictator this morning. False unity helps no one. True unity of mankind can be found in only one place, only one Person. True unity of mankind is only to be found in the broken fragments of the Bread of Life, the Body of Jesus Christ, God in flesh, broken for you and me, broken to make us one with Him and one with each other. PFH+