Edible Words

In Jeremiah 9:7 God promises to refine and test us, his people. One area of purification that God's people needed in Jeremiah's day was to know the difference between a superficial peace with each other and a heartfelt peace. On the surface they were at peace. They said nice things to each other. But below the surface they were boiling, looking for ways to trip each other up, seeking revenge for past wrongs and hurts. And as we still sin, this church will need purifying in this way just as much as God's people did in Jeremiah's day.

What do rainbows and the bread and wine that we will share today have in common? From a biblical point of view, two things.

First, they are signs to us of God's covenants with his people. Rainbows are signs of God's promise never again to use water to destroy all living things. The bread and the wine are the sign of God's promise to forgive the sins of those who eat and drink trusting in Christ's death for their sin.

Lev 9:24: "And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces."

Aaron offers the prescribed sacrifices. God signifies his acceptance of the sacrifice by eating it - fire comes out and consumes the sacrifice.

Lev 10:1-2: "Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord."

In his first preface to communion in the book of common prayer, Thomas Cranmer writes this about the communion meal: "...[it] being so divine and comfortable a thing to them who receive it worthily, and so dangerous to them that will presume to receive it unworthily"

It might seem strange to us today that eating bread and drinking wine could be divine and comfortable for some people and dangerous for others. How are we to be worthy to eat?

In the middle of the Garden of Eden were two trees; the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Each tree identified by name. Each name carrying with it a promise of God. God's will was for Adam and Eve to receive His gift of eternal life by trusting His word and so to eat the fruit of the tree to which that promise was attached. But they did not trust God. Adam and Eve chose to go their own way and disobey God, they ate from the tree from which God said "do not eat".

In the middle of the Garden of Eden were two trees; the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God gave names to these two trees to reveal to Adam what would be his should he eat their fruit. Eat the fruit of the tree of life and eternal life was his. Eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the knowledge of good and evil was his. By naming the trees, God formed the first sacrament, attaching his word, his promises, by naming the plain fruit of the trees.

Those of you who have had children, or who know children, will know that they go through various stages in their early years. There's learning to crawl. Then learning to walk. Learning to talk comes some time around then, although that doesn't happen all at once. First, there are noises that vaguely resemble certain words we use every day, but you can't be sure if you've heard correctly. Then there are single words: mummy, daddy, pudding, bath. Then those words get strung together in twos and threes: more pudding. Then you get short sentences. And at some point, most children go through the stage of asking: "Why?" To everything. And the chances are that your answers will be replied to with another why, and another one, until you get pushed back so far you just don't know the answers any more.