Sermon, 3 June, Communion Sunday: 'Fix you'

This morning we shared in the Lord's Supper.
Below is today's sermon, with a little bit of 
Coldplay, kintsugi, Cohen, and Communion!

READING: 2 Cor. 4.5-12; Mark 2.23 - 3.6

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen

When you try your best but you don't succeed 
When you get what you want 
but not what you need 
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep 
Stuck in reverse...
When the tears come streaming down your face 
'Cause you lose something you can't replace 
When you love someone but it goes to waste 
What could it be worse?...
Lights will guide you home 
And ignite your bones 
And I will try to fix you

Lyrics from the Coldplay song ‘Fix you’.
There’s a lot that’s broken in our readings this morning.
in Mark, we hear of a man who’s broken:
in need of healing because his hand has shrivelled.
Beyond the man with the shrivelled hand, there’s a broken system.
We see this in the scene just before we meet the man in the synagogue:
the disciples, walking through a field, are hungry,
and do the most natural of things,
grab a snack on the go.
Except, that to the religious authorities, this is against the Law.
It’s bad enough to be travelling on the Sabbath,
but they should have prepared beforehand if they wanted food:
taking from the field was seen as harvesting – work...and you don’t work on the Sabbath.

Alerted to the rogue Rabbi and his ragtag followers,
the religious authorities are now ready to try and catch him out.
Arriving at the synagogue on another Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples are watched closely:
will Jesus will break the Law by healing the man?
You know the end of that story:
of course he does.
And is distressed that the ones who should understand the spirit of the Law,
have instead turned it into something soul-destroying...
in a sense, they’ve wrung the life out of it,
and by doing so, have caused it to crush the life out of others.
The Law has become a burden, not a help.

I’ve often said that the Gospel of Mark moves quickly. And here’s a case in point:
Chapter 3, verse 6 is the 79th verse in the Gospel.
And already, Jesus, in healing the man, has made enemies who
are looking to find ways to kill him.
By demonstrating that the Law was intended to be something life-giving,
by showing the religious authorities that compassion and care always come before ideology,
Jesus, the Lord of life, and Lord of the Sabbath, is marked for death:
and it will lead to his body eventually being broken upon a Cross.

But what of our other reading?
The Christians in Corinth have been in a bit of a mess.
Through Paul’s letters, we see that they’ve become a broken and fractured community:
here, the followers of Jesus – the Body of Christ – is broken.
In this second letter to the community, things seem to settling down,
and Paul is providing handy hints and helps for being a reconciled community –
reconciled in Jesus,
and reconciled to one another.
There’s been some seriously bad behaviour –
fighting at communion: please, don’t do this! –
fighting over theology – again, let’s not...
even fighting about who was the best Christian –
this, in arguments about spiritual gifts.
Paul has had his hands full, trying to untangle the mess that the
Corinthian Christians had gotten themselves into.
In all their carryings-on, they’d lost sight of Jesus,
and had lost sight of seeing Jesus in each other.
While the light of God was there in the midst, their own broken humanity
had caused it to burn dim indeed.
Caught up in their own needs,
fighting for a place at the table,
or to prove that they alone were holders of the correct doctrine,
they could no longer see the bigger picture –
that they were all equally beloved of God,
and that they were all equally meant to shine
with his light and life and love
no matter how similar or different they were to one another.

At this point in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul shares with them his struggles:
while being beloved of God is a great and wonderful gift,
it doesn’t mean life’s difficulties just disappear in a puff of magical smoke.
Sometimes, it actually gets more difficult,
especially when you’re doing your level best to avoid putting yourself above God and others –
so very human – and instead, trying to put God in first place.
But, it’s when you do put God first, that you see God’s light shine like a beacon,
showing you the path ahead.
Paul tells them that
Yes, we’re frail, we break as easily as clay jars, but, inside is a great treasure –
life in him,
life that gives us the strength to keep going, hard-pressed as we are.
Paul urges his friends in Corinth
to let God’s light shine,
to let God’s life ripple through every fibre of their being,
to let God’s love reconcile them to him and to one another,
so that, united in Him,
they show the world what God looks like.

There’s an ancient tradition in Japan, ‘kintsugi’,
which is to repair broken pots or ceramics by fusing the cracks with powdered gold or silver:
not hiding the cracks, but making them beautifully visible.
What had been broken, is now fixed.
What had no value, is now beyond price.
Held up, the light shines through the cracks –
flagging up the treasure in the clay jar.
Poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen once famously said:
'There is a crack in everything. 
That's how the light gets in.'
Each one of us holds that treasure within us:
the light of Gods love –
grace poured out upon us without limit –
God, mending our brokenness, and making something more beautiful.
Shortly, as his people, as the Body of Christ here in the Upper Clyde,
we’ll share in bread and wine:
the meal of reconciliation -
reconciliation with God,
and with one another.
The meal that reminds us that, just as God, in Christ, put us first,
so, as his friends, we are to put him at the centre and remember that:
there is the Cross, and his broken, and dismembered body...
and there is new life:
for in community, as we eat the bread and drink the wine,
we re-member him and are made whole –
a community of reconciliation and resurrection,
called to be his light in the world.

The story goes that, 
“During the bombing raids of World War II, 
thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. 
The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps 
where they received food and good care. 
But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. 
They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. 
Nothing seemed to reassure them. 
Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. 
Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. 
All through the night, the bread reminded them, ‘Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.’”[1]

As friends and followers of Jesus, today, we eat and drink –
and will be fed and nourished by the One who makes us whole, and calls us his own:
the One who is the Bread of Heaven;
the One who knows a thing or two about fixing and mending broken things and broken people;
the One whose light shines in the darkness and who will never be overcome.
The One to whom belongs all honour, and praise and glory, Amen.

[1] From the book 'Sleeping with Bread' by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn -
excellent wee book helping to work on what matters, what gives you life, etc.