This sermon was preached for Sunday, July 28, 2024 for the tenth Sunday after Pentecost. The texts for this Sunday were: Psalm 14, Ephesians 3:14-21, and John 6:1-21.
I have a lot of dear friends who are mothers to newborns right now - I celebrated FIVE new babies born to close friends in this past year alone. So I've been thinking a lot lately about the fraught history of how we feed babies. Excuse me while I recount a tiny slice of the history of American breastfeeding here - while acknowledging that it's history many of you may have lived through in very intimate ways.
In the 1960s and 1970s, most American babies were not breastfed. As little as 22% of American infants born in 1972 were breastfed. This all had to do with the advent of good baby formula, but as solid scientific evidence about the benefits of breastfeeding and breastmilk emerged, governments began to enact policies to counteract the decline in breastfeeding. In 1991, the year I was born, the World Health Organization and UNICEF launched a highly successful worldwide campaign to educate new mothers about the benefits of nursing. One of the most famous slogans to emerge from that campaign was “Breast is best.” And it worked! Now the vast majority of American infants - 83% of babies born in 2019 - start breastfeeding from birth.
One of the narratives that came out of this movement - helped along by well-meaning organizations like La Leche League - was the whole image of the breastfeeding Madonna and child as the most natural thing in the whole world and the notion that all mothers can naturally produce enough good milk for their baby if they just learn to do it correctly. Now that is some mothers’ experience. But it wasn’t mine.
Because of all this emphasis and education, I was surprised to find breastfeeding to be really difficult, incredibly frustrating, and pretty painful. I felt like I tried everything and still failed at it. My attempts to exclusively breastfeed my first child stretched me - and him - to our limits. When I finally switched to pumping at four months and then gradually changed to formula at six, the resulting feeling of failure - of not feeling like enough for my baby - tore me apart. Wasn’t being a good mother all about doing what was best for my child, no matter the pain, no matter the cost?
Now, watching so many of my friends go through similar experiences, I know that I wasn’t alone. I know that many, many mothers choose to feed their babies with pumped breastmilk or formula for a whole host of very good reasons. I also know that many of those same mothers also feel overwhelmed by a cascade of judgment and shame, whether real and imagined, internal and external, that surrounds the decision to turn to other ways of nourishing your baby.
There’s a new movement now, though, called "Fed is Best." It’s all about supporting mothers so that above all that babies are simply well fed, whether by bottle or by breast or with formula. It’s also about educating people that what’s best for babies are mentally healthy parents, too - well-slept and well-supported moms and dads.
The voices around me, like my own mother and my husband, that reminded me that I am my best mother when I take care of myself were so, so vital. I needed them because our society's glorification of self-sacrifice, especially of mothers, is so, so loud. We honor mothers for putting their own needs last. We expect parents to do everything and anything for their children no matter the cost. But we can go too far in our rhetoric. And as Christians, we need to acknowledge how the church’s glorification of self-sacrifice undergirds it all.
We’re here, gathered around this table today because Jesus feeds us with his own body. You know, tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of the so-called Philadelphia Eleven - the brave American women who defied the church to be ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church. One of the arguments against ordaining women, which is still lobbied against us today, is the assertion that women can’t stand "in persona Christi,” can’t properly represent Christ at the altar. There are so many holes in that argument that I can’t even begin to get into here, but I do want to point out this: in a profound way, a nursing mother can embody Jesus even better than the rest of us can. In fact, connections between nursing mothers, Jesus, and God go way back - as far as the Bible but also Christian writings like Anselm of Canterbury's canticle from the 11th century, “A Song of Christ Goodness,” that explicitly depicts Jesus as a nursing mother who feeds us with her milk. This is my body, given for you.
But we’re really much more used to connecting the imagery of the Eucharist with the accounts of the Last Supper in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke - and therefore with Jesus’ death. All our Eucharist prayers contain the “words of institution” something along the lines of: on the night before he died for us, Jesus took bread…
Recounting it that way, the bread becomes Jesus’ broken body. A symbol of Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross. We remember and revere how Jesus gave everything for us. We love and honor him for it.
What’s super interesting about the Gospel of John, though, is that even though the Fourth Gospel’s retelling of Jesus’ last meal doesn’t have the words of institution. There’s no moment where Jesus breaks the bread and says "this is my body" or lifts the cup and says "this is my blood," not in this Gospel. Instead, we get stories of Jesus teaching his followers throughout his ministry: I am the bread of life. This is the Eucharistic moment in the Gospel of John: Jesus taking five small loaves of bread, giving thanks, breaking them, and sharing it with five thousand people.
Jesus being bread for all is not about death then, but about life. I am the bread of life. This moment reminds us that Jesus doesn’t just save us through his death. He saves us through his birth and life and ministry, too.
Jesus can give us all that we need and still walk around and keep on healing and teaching and loving. Everyone ate until they were satisfied and there was still plenty left over - twelve baskets full.
Which makes us look back at that self-sacrifice moment on the cross in a new way, too. Part of the point is that Jesus - God - would do anything for us - give anything for us, including his only Son, his very life - but the other whole part of the point is that death is not death to him. Death cannot hold Jesus. He comes back to show us he is alive, scarred but not wounded, whole and well. There is plenty Jesus left over.
There's good reasons to celebrate the martyrs who died for the continuation and survival of the Christian faith and the institutional church. But I also wonder if we should balance out the stories of the heroes who gave everything with the behind-the-scenes heroes of the church who know how to give without exhausting themselves. The ones who know when to say yes, and also when to say no. When to step up and when to step back. When to serve the beautiful, well-planned, homemade, three-course church potluck and when to open up the bag of chips and a package of store-bought cookies because what matters most is that no one is alone and no one is hungry and no one has worked themselves to the point of exhaustion.
Church should not feel like a place where you give and give until there is nothing left over. We are our best church and our best Jesus followers when we aren't stretched to our limits and exhausting ourselves to breaking point. What would it look like to draw our vision of church from this moment here, on the hillside, where one boy’s lunch becomes everyone well-fed? Where sharing what you brought, where giving what God gave you, feeds you, too?
Fed is best means the one you serve is well-fed, but you’re well-fed, too.
This week, I formally announced to the parish that I will be leaving you soon, in September, to take a part-time rectorship in the Eastern Diocese. As I discerned what my next steps would be, I grounded myself in the conviction that God has called me to three equally sacred covenantal vocations: priesthood, motherhood, and marriage. Because all three vocations come from the same God, I knew that there must be a way to balance all three so that no one vocation is sacrificed for any other - but also that I myself am not sacrificed either.
My prayer for St. Mark’s own discernment in the weeks to come is that you are guided by this vision of spiritual nourishment, too. That you remember that fed is best. When we put incredibly high expectations on ourselves about what church should be - full pews, tons of kids programs, stellar music, fantastic sermons, and impactful ministries - when we assume that it all should come naturally if we just figure out how to do it correctly, we can stretch ourselves to the limit, tear ourselves up in the process. We can forget that the most important thing is that everyone who arrives at this table receives a bit of bread, a whole lot of Jesus, and the good news they need to keep on keeping on.
God is the burning bush that is not consumed. God is the crucified that does not stay dead. Jesus gave his life - but there was more left over. He came back to say - I am here, alive, with you. My way is the way of life and rest and abundance.
Today and every Sunday, may we all be well-fed.
Amen.
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