Taste of God Part 2 - Sensing God through Our Worship The First Mennonite Church July 24, 2016 I d like to start us off this morning by suggesting that we think about food. How s that for a start to Sunday morning? I d like you to take a moment and think about your favourite meal? What is the one single food that when you taste it, when you smell it, you just get filled with a sense of joy; a sense of satisfaction; your mouth begins to water. What is that one food or that one meal that just lifts you off of your feet when you enjoy it? What does it smell like? What sort of aroma does it bring to mind? Does that smell remind you of anything? What does it taste like? What are some words that you would use to describe the way it tastes? Is this a comfort food for when you are experiencing low points of sadness? Is this a food that you treat yourself to when something special has happened? I enjoy a lot of different foods; but I think if you asked my family, they would tell you that my all-time favourite food is Shepherd s Pie. Has anyone here ever sampled Shepherd s Pie before? Ground beef, mixed with peas, sometimes some onions, and covered with a thick layer of mashed potatoes. Some of you may be saying, Mmm some of you may be trying to hold back your disgust. When some of us go to a restaurant to enjoy a meal, it s like we re going to church. It is a religious experience for some of us to hit that buffet. We get all charismatic and Pentecostal suddenly; crying Oh God, this is so good. Raising our hands in the air to exclaim about how good the food was. Some of us really enjoy our sense of taste. Regardless of how charismatic you get, when you go out to eat, there s one thing we can say is universally shared by all humanity across cultures, and languages: we get hungry. Hunger is the universal human experience. Some of us don t have enough to eat and we starve. Others of us have so much food, we don t know what to do with it all. But if you put all of us in the same situation, hunger will be the one universal we can all count on experiencing. Today, we are wrapping up our series Sensing God Through Our Worship. So far we ve looked at the senses of sight, hearing, and touch; and that leaves two more right? Smell and taste.
I leave on vacation next week. I will be away until August 8 th ; and so I need to wrap up this series this week, so this morning, you get a two for one. You get two senses for the price of one: smell and taste. Of all of our senses, smell is probably the one that we experience the most diversity on. One smell might be tremendously pleasant and relaxing for some of us. In another person, that same smell could create an allergic reaction. In still another person, it might cause them to have to leave the room. So unfortunately, I have nothing for you to necessarily smell this morning. I did not want to risk the possibility that in my desire to create a worshipful experience, I mightactually force some of you to leave the room. But we can certainly talk about a couple of things concerning smell. Many people use particular scents in order to create a feeling of being close to God; or the sense of entering into another space that is different from our day-to-day space. Our Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox brothers and sisters have a long tradition of using censers to burn an incense or a perfume of some sort. You may have seen the image before of a priest walking down the aisle of a church waving this censer held on a long chain; waving it back and forth and diffusing an aroma throughout the church. Your sense of smell has more power than any other one of your senses to evoke and recall particular memories. Things that you smell can instantly take you right back to re-living particular experiences both good and bad. Your olfactory bulb that runs right from the inside of your nose along to the bottom of your brain is connected to your limbic system, the system of nerves and networks that controls basic emotions such as fear, pleasure, anger, and certain drives such as hunger, sex, caring for your offspring) and through that limbic system, your olfactory bulb is connected to your amygdala and your hippocampus. Your amygdala plays a role in memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. Your hippocampus is where you store all of your long and short-term memory information. Interestingly, neither your sight, hearing, or touch, run through your amygdala or hippocampus; and neuroscientists say this is likely why smell has such particular power to evoke, revive, and remind us of particular memories. Our sense of smell has a unique power to control our memories of things. In 2 Cor. 2: 14-15, Paul says, thanks be to God, who made us captives and leads us along in Christ s triumphal procession. Now wherever we go, he uses us to
tell others about the Lord and to spread the Good News like a sweet perfume. Our lives are like a fragrance presented by Christ to God. Paul is suggesting here that the Good News is like a sweet perfume. It s like a fragrance that makes us breathe deep and say, aaah. By the same token, Paul suggests that our lives are supposed to be the same way. The life of the church is called to like a fragrance that makes people say aaaah. I want some of that. That smells good. I think I d like a taste of that. The Good News and the life of the church are called to be a smell that evokes good, pleasant memories of deliciousness, joy, and being well-fed. So how are we doing at that? Are we as a church leaving people with a sense of Aaah? Or are we leaving people with a sense of a bad Robert DeNiro impression? Does anyone know the actor Robert Deniro? Do you know how they say to do a Robert DeNiro impression? You have to look as if you re looking at a bad soup on a menu. Are we leaving people with a memory that smells good and attractive? Or are we leaving them with a smell that says, Don t order that off of the menu. Because aroma is also highly linked to our survival instincts. If that smells bad, it likely means that there is something unhealthy about it. Are we leaving people with an aroma of hostility, quarrelling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, division, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in our own little group, and envy? Or are we leaving people with an aroma of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? In the Psalm that we read earlier this morning, David says, Taste and see that the Lord is good! Jesus spends a lot of time comparing himself to food. It s quite curious really. He refers to himself as living water. He connects his flesh to the bread of communion, and his blood to the wine of communion. In John 6, he refers to himself as the bread of life. I have often wondered if the reason that Jesus uses so many food metaphors to describe himself is because food is what we all need. As I mentioned earlier, hunger is the shared and universal human experience, and Jesus seems to suggest that there is something about him that is as universal and common to us all as hunger. In fact, listen to what Jesus says about himself in John 6. He says that he is the true bread from heaven. The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. (John 6: 32-33, NLT). No one who ever comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never
thirst. (John 6: 35, NLT) Anyone who eats this bread will live forever, this bread is my flesh (John 6: 51, NLT). What does this even mean? No one who ever comes to me will ever be hungry again? Is this just some sort of spiritual cliché? It sounds religious and sanctimonious. But does it really mean something? I think that Jesus says that he is the bread of life which will satisfy all of our hunger. Or rather this is mine and several other theologians best guesses. What are you hungry for? I mean really look back at your life and ask yourself, Where do I spend my money? Where do I spend my time? What do I truly need in order to live? What are those things that if I m really honest with myself, I can t live without? What do I find myself constantly yearning for? For some of us, it s popularity. I can t live without being important to other people. For some of us it s control. Wealth. Power. Love. The affection of other people. The sense that my work is important. I am somebody because of my work and my accomplishments. For some of us, it s alcohol. Drugs. Pornography, Casual sexual relationships. We use each of these things to fulfill a hunger of some sort. Now, physical hunger is biologically driven right? If we don t ingest the proper nutrients, if we don t eat enough, we will die. Spiritual hunger operates much the same way. If I don t get this. If I don t have this in my life, I believe I will die. The problem is that many of the things we feed on will feel like they are fulfilling our hunger, but then they don t; and we re left spiritually hungry for more. How many of you saw the documentary, Super Size Me? Well, in this film, Morgan Spurlock tries to live on McDonald s food alone for one month. You yonger kids don t say yay yet. Three square meals a day all from Mickey D s! And if at any point, a server offered to super size his meal, he had to say, Yes! Can you imagine how that went? Well, it nearly killed him. 21 days in, Morgan began experiencing heart palpitations, depression, lethargy, headaches. His doctor likened his physical condition to that of an alcoholic attempting to drink himself to death. We seem to be spiritually hungry as a species for something in order to survive; and we use all of the different avenues of wealth, power, drugs, alcohol, to try and fulfill that hunger or put off that hunger, and it actually makes us unhealthy. It makes us
sicker. It s like eating a McDonald s meal when we actually seem to need something else, and we long for something more. Now, when we re eating these sorts of things to fulfill our spiritual hunger, we do things like harming other people, oppressing other people, or waging wars with other people; because we believe that we need these things in order to spiritually survive and we will do anything to get them. We will engage in unhealthy behaviours because we have an unhealthy spiritual diet. In Luke s Gospel, the Devil tries to tempt Jesus by saying, If you are the Son of God, change this stone into a loaf of bread. Get the quick and easy fix. Feed yourself right away. Show me how you have power. Show me how you are important. What does Jesus say in response? He quotes Deut. 8: 3, and says, People need more than bread for their life. The New American Standard Bible translates this phrase as this: man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:3, NASB) And what comes from the mouth of the Lord? Value. Love. Safety. Self-worth. I m convinced that if we dig deeply enough into our most basic needs, our most basic insecurities, they all boil down to self-worth. If I don t have that job, I won t be worth anything. If I don t have the affection of that kind of person, I won t be worth anything. If I don t have that stage of life, I won t be worth anything. We hunger for these things and they feel good at first. They seem to fill the hole, but they re not enough. Jesus claims to offer a spiritual food that truly satisfies. And I think it s this statement: You are enough. You re not defined by how you dress. You re not defined by how much money you have. You re not defined by your job. You re not defined by your popularity. You re not defined by your title. You re not defined by the approval of that person. You re defined by one thing: You are enough. This is God s daily bread to us. Good morning, do you know that you are the beloved of God? You are of ultimate value, and you don t need these other things in order to survive. You are of ultimate value to the ultimate power in the universe.
And Jesus proves this by modeling what it is like to live in that reality. He models what it means to live the life of the beloved. He heals others, he models grace and forgiveness. He refuses violence. He lays his life down on the cross. He rises again from the grave to say, Be not afraid. Do not worry. Not even the power of death can hold sway over you. Anyone who eats of this bread will live forever. Anyone who eats of this bread will never be hungry again. The Gospel of Luke says that on the night of the Passover meal in Jerusalem, Jesus took a loaf of bread, thanked God for it, broke it in pieces and gave it to his disciples saying, This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. He later took a cup of wine and said This wine is the token of God s new covenant with you to save you an agreement sealed with the blood I will pour out for you. This communion meal represents feeding on love, reconciliation, forgiveness, hope, joy, grace, compassion and strength. When we eat this meal together, we are proclaiming to the world about the bread of life, where all who come to eat are made new and whole. All who come to eat are fed. (Holding up the bread) This is the bread of joy. This is the bread of wisdom. This is the bread of hope. Gifts offered by God, through Christ, in love and tenderness. (Holding up cup) This is the cup of grace. This is the cup of compassion. This is the cup of strength. Gifts offered by God, through Christ, in love and tenderness. What are you spiritually hungry for? What do you find yourself deeply yearning for this morning? Bring this to God this morning. Taste of God and see for yourself if your hunger might be filled. Let us share and delight in these gifts to us.