Shelf Life
Proverbs 9:1-6
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:53-59
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Anselm’s
August 20,
2000
The
gospel reading today clearly calls to our mind our community act of worship
in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist or Communion. John mentioned to me
recently that during a Lenten series you had looked at how the liturgy of
Communion had changed over the years in responses to changes in the spirituality
of the community at any given historical period. I want to mention by way
of background to what I want to say today, the three basic ways Christians
have come to understand the presence of Christ in the Sacrament of Communion.
The more Protestant understanding is as a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice.
The emphasis is on the spiritual dimension and John 6, our gospel passage
today, is often cited in support of this understanding.
The second focuses on the real presence of Christ in the elements of bread
and wine. By God’s initiative and the prayer of consecration by the priest,
the bread and wine in some manner become the Body and Blood of Christ. This
was Martin Luther’s view and it is the Roman Catholic view.
The third focuses on the real presence of Christ in the act of receiving the
bread and wine by the believer. Thomas Cramner and Richard Hooker, two of
the most famous Anglican scholars, emphasized this view.
I strongly suspect each of these three ways of understanding Christ’s
presence in represented here today in our parish community.
Let me shift to a personal level. At the beginning of 1994 I accepted a position
as the chief financial officer of a company called Chips and Technologies.
It had been a darling of Wall Street in the late 80s and very early 90s. But
it made the mistake of taking on Intel Corporation directly and attempting
to compete in making the microprocessor that is at the heart of the computer.
It’s stock price fell from 37 to 3.
When I joined the company, they had just survived two years in which 625 of
750 employees had been laid off. The operating guy who had carried out the
layoffs had just been made CEO replacing the founder. He was putting together
a team to try to save the company. I later learned that several directors
including the founder believed that Jim’s job (the new CEO) was to "turn
off the lights!"
Early in 1994, our new management team, 5 men, 2 women, went off for 2 _ days
in Arizona to develop a strategy for how we were going to try to turn the
company around. We took along with us an ex San Jose cop who had gone back
to school, got a psychology degree and was now a corporate facilitator. We
spend 2 _ days hammering out a one sentence vision statement, a two sentence
mission statement and one financial criteria by which we would decide whether
or not to exit a particular product line. That is a lot time for three sentences
and a rule that if we could not keep our product manufacturing cost below
60% we would not have enough left for sales, marketing and other expenses
plus enough profit to keep Wall Street and the stockholders happy and the
stock price rising.
The effort was successful. In one of those wild ironies God gives us to wrestle
with in our lives, the company nearly went under competing with Intel, went
down another path and was successful and then, in 1998 was acquired by Intel.
The simple ‘secret’ of the turnaround was that the 2 _ days in Arizona
were really spent in creating a team, a community. At the end we all bought
into the vision and went back and sold it to most of the rest of the employees.
In Silicon Valley, you have to work hard and be a good team to ‘enter
the game’ but then a little luck often separates the winners and the
losers. In our case some strategic blunders by our two major competitors helped
us to move from third to first in a rapidly growing market.
So what does this story have to do with our corporate act of worship in Communion?
At one level the story is analogous to the labels on the different loaves
of bread that John read to us in last week’s sermon. The manufacturers
of those loaves of bread competed for financial success in much the same manner
as we did at Chips. But those successes, to coin a poor pun, "have no
shelf life."
At another level, Chips was a team. We are part of a community that has gathered
together for two thousand years. We have a lot of ancestors in the faith.
We are one body and we believe that Christ is the bread of life. That is true
shelf life.
I am here today and on this journey toward ordination as a priest in large
part because I became a Lay Eucharistic Minister about 5 years ago. I am almost
always moved emotionally when I am offering the Cup, the blood of Christ.
Sometimes when I know the person has a particular health struggle or other
pain, I am so moved emotionally I can barely get out the words "The Blood
of Christ. Keep you in everlasting life." In those moments I know in
my heart his love and his presence are real!
In our corporate act of Communion we are also making a statement as a community
to the world. I think of Paul’s words in his letter to the Corinthians:
We preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness
to the Gentiles. What we do here today is either a stumbling block or foolishness
or even both to many in the world! We kneel at an altar railing together and
share bread and take wine from a common cup. At that level only, we
would be pretty foolish if that were all that was going on!
But we know Christ is present. How He is present exactly is probably a little
different in each of our minds. But we believe in our hearts he is because
otherwise, we would be the greatest of fools at this altar railing! Christians
have been doing this for 2000 years and making this affirmation of their faith,
so we have a lot of foolish ancestors if the world is right. Personally, I
take a lot of comfort in these ancestors in the faith
Let me see now if I can connect ancestors, communion together, and a ‘long
shelf life.’ Today, look at the little children at the altar railing
during Communion. Imagine in your mind the many others who are not here or
not at any altar railing. Bring into your mind’s eye your own grandchildren.
Then look into your heart and say, "I will to do my part to be remembered
as an ancestor of a people of hope." That is true shelf life.
AMEN.
