Homily | 🍞 Passing the bread (A farewell homily)

10th Sunday After Pentecost

Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos, CA

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Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come, buy, and eat. Come, buy wine and milk. Without money. Without price.

What a strange way to run a market, right? No cash register. No worrying about the budget. Isaiah’s God lays out this giant spread of the good stuff. And then, before you can reach for your wallet, he tears the price tag off.

I’m thinking about this right now, because trying to make a good goodbye is exactly when we start reaching for the ledger.

We start to tally it up. Almost three years of Jonas... Was it a good run? Did I get my money’s worth? Did I say thank you enough? Did he?

This parish made me a pastor, which is a high honor and a kind word. But I’ve always been uncomfy with what the title literally means. Pastor means shepherd. And in a season like this, “The shepherd is leaving” sounds a lot like “The feast is leaving.”

“When he’s gone, does the food stop?”

But here’s how I see it...
I was never REALLY the shepherd.

At best, I’m a sheep who can sometimes point at the real Shepherd where the other sheep can’t. But I’m not the Shepherd.

Sure, I dress the part: the robe, the priestly poncho, the divinity degree.

But what I really am is a waiter. I carry bread from a kitchen I didn’t build to a table I didn’t set, and I set it down in front of you. That’s the whole job.

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But back to Jesus, whose world is caving in in the gospel scene. He’s just gotten word that his cousin John has been killed. Beheaded, actually, which is a rough way to go. (Thanks for letting me off easy, CLC. I digress!)

It speaks volumes that even God, in Jesus, needs to grieve. To maybe shake his fist at the sky and bawl, I dunno.

But crowds are crowds, and they find him. Five thousand of them. Hangry and demanding his help.

He had no noise-cancelling headphones, unfortunately. No ‘Do Not Disturb’ setting on his phone. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted FOR HIM.

The disciples run the math first. Five loaves, two fish, for thousands? Doesn’t compute; there isn’t enough. But Jesus, heartbroken and exhausted, ignores the math and feeds them until nobody can finish their plate.

That’s the God we’re dealing with. The one who, on the worst day, still over-caters.

So hear me, church.

You are not losing the feast. Yes, you’re losing the guy who passed the bread for a while. And that’s real.

But the bread stays. The Host stays. The real Shepherd was here long before I was.

I didn’t bring the grace of God to Aptos in the trunk of my car. It was already here. Thick as the June fog. Here in every saint we’ve laid to rest from this room. And here in each of you now.

These last few weeks, so many of you have wrapped my family up in meals, cards, hugs in the narthex, prayers.

But you didn’t switch that on for me. It’s who you are, week after week. Someone lands in the hospital, you show up. Someone new walks through those doors, and your welcome is warm and unforced.

By the world’s math — the disciples’ math — that makes no sense. But you set a place for people who can’t pay you back. You feed each other for no good reason at all.

This is a sacrament of Isaiah’s free feast, made visible. You carry the image of a God who spreads a table and tears the price tag off. Sure, you stray. We all do. But the pattern in you is inescapable, like gravity.

But, though the feast will go on, let me just say: I’m going to miss you. This part stings, and it’s supposed to. Like the band Nazareth said so prophetically back in the year of our Lord 1974: ‘Love Hurts’

You let me into your homes, your hospital rooms, the gravesides of the people you love — some of the hardest hours of your lives. You trusted a green over-enthusiastic first-call pastor with holy, sacred things. You have no idea what that’s done for me. And I’m forever thankful.

I think of Jesus in that boat, grieving and celebrating a feast in the same afternoon. We all get to do a little of both today.

You’ll soon get a new waiter; someone better than me at some things, worse at others, and, thanks be to God, entirely beside the point.

And if you want proof this feast was never mine to give or take away, look no further than baby Ace, who we baptize today.

Ace is a few weeks old. He’s done exactly nothing to earn this. He can’t hold up his own head yet, let alone his end of a covenant. In a few minutes we’ll pour water over him and tell him he belongs to God, without money or price. The water does nothing new to him; it says out loud what’s already true: Ace is God’s own beloved, forever no matter what labels the world hands him later. Our job as church is to remind him of this when he doubts it.

He’s not choosing this baptism. He’s being chosen. That’s how parental love works. We don’t wait for our kids to consent to our love before we love them. We just love them. Before their first breath. And what they do with that love is up to them. Well, that’s how God’s love works. It’s how baptism works. A love that precedes our own consent.

But the hardest thing for us is to accept our own acceptance into God’s embrace. We want to consent and sign off on it. But all we can really do is accept it.

Ace’s dad, Miles, first came through our doors alongside AJ, as his helper. And now he and Daniella and their family are here for this blessing. That’s how the feast works: you come in one door, for one reason, and grace quietly sets another place. You think there’s just a little fish and bread. And quietly, God multiplies everything.

Here’s what I know: next Sunday, and every Sunday after, this room will be full of Christ. Sometimes in bread broken and wine poured out. Sometimes in nothing fancier than the Word read aloud and a hymn sung slightly off-key.

Those loaves Jesus broke on the worst day of his life were pointing down the road to another day: a hill, a cross, his own body broken and handed around. The same hands that fed five thousand were opened with nails and gave everything away.

And remember that ledger this sermon started with? We can all set it down. The account is settled. God didn’t wave the bill away, he paid it himself.

On that cross he condemned no one. He opened his arms as if to say: even the worst of what we could throw at Him can’t stop his love for us. That’s the baptismal promise lived to its fullest extent.

That’s the real feast. God’s own body — the God who grieved and loved and lost — given for you, and for me, in our grieving and our loving and our losing.

So before anyone heads for the patio, come to this table and receive the fullness of God. Without money. Without price.

And then, yes, there’s brisket and ribs after the liturgy. (Non-meat options too, of course!) A small echo of the endless feast.

I will say, I’ve got no grand speeches left. I’m all goodbye’d out. But there’s plenty of room in the tank for hugs.

But before that lunch, come to this meal. Everyone who thirsts. The price tag’s been ripped off and the invitation stands: Come and eat.

Amen.