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The Rev. Christopher Brdlik
October 21, 2007 --- Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Dr. Reginald Fuller, my professor of New Testament at Virginia Seminary, died earlier this year. He was a notable figure in the world of biblical scholarship, and of course important to me in my development as a Christian and a priest. Dr. Fuller was British, small and slight in stature, and always dressed in a tweed jacket and tie. He and his wife Ilse, who was German, were known for walking their little dog, Philo, around the seminary campus. He took particular joy in noting the bumper stickers on students’ cars. One he liked had the message, “Read the Bible. It’ll scare the hell out of you.” He and Ilse would pause and comment on that one every time they passed it. (Eventually I think they got one for the back of their Volvo.) 

Theologically Dr. Fuller was devoted to the Eucharist, both as a principal symbol and as a major means of the Christian faith. He believed that in the communion meal we bound ourselves to each other, and, through our prayers, bound ourselves to God. The Eucharist transcended the dimensions of time and space, making Christians of any day present in the Upper Room with the disciples and the Lord at the Last Supper. And, through its immanence, the Eucharist opened for us the power of Resurrection, the presence in our lives of the dynamic Risen Christ. Faithfulness in Holy Communion, according to Reginald Fuller, led to the growth of the faith of the individual Christian. So, though he was blessed with typical English reserve, he also approached the Eucharist with something like gusto, with enthusiasm. 

One time in a lecture he commented on the words of Christ’s imperative in the prayer of the consecration. Jesus directed the disciples (and us), “Take. Eat.” Two short commands, simple enough in English. But behind those words were Greek verbs of unusual power: “Lambete. Phagete.”   “Take, eat,” he said, could be better translated as “grab, chew.” And in the lecture hall he gave us a comical demonstration: He grabbed, and he chewed (chewing hard, as if crunching down on it). 

Now I used to sit in the same pew in seminary chapel as Dr. Fuller. So I know he did not actually grab the wafer off the paten and crunch it loudly at the altar. But his scholarship in the word study of the Greek roots of the prayer illustrated the gusto he believed with which Christians should approach communion. In music you’d call it “con brio,” with enthusiasm, a good and great spirit. According to Reginald Fuller, that’s how we grow in the Faith: Take. Eat. Grab and Chew. 

There are so many seeds for growth that help us develop as Christians when we tend and water them faithfully. Communion is one; prayer is another. Luke prefaced today’s parable (Luke 18:1-8a) by saying Jesus told it for one important point: Followers of Christ are to pray always and not lose heart. In other words, grab and chew. Prayer is not intended to be an adult version of a wish list to Santa Claus. Instead prayer orients us, changes our view, toward understanding the meaning of life’s events specifically as we grow to accept God’s presence in those events. I’m talking about events both good and bad here, the triumphs mixed with the tragedies, all set within the routines of everyday life. God is present in all of these. Prayer helps us grow in understanding. God is ultimately reliable, always present, always loving. 

The problem we have in life is that on frequent occasions our conception of time is not aligned with God. The Lord’s actions seem delayed. The immediacy we experience in a crisis is not met with immediate response or miraculous intervention. Or so it seems. Because the truth is, God is always there, always loving, though seemingly obscured sometimes from our sense of presence. This is what prayer does: Orients us toward understanding that God’s loving justice will ultimately prevail. 

So it is with the widow in Jesus’ parable. She is not a sympathetic character, but a nag and a pest. Yet she has one spiritual quality that Jesus approves of: She is persistent in prayer. Even when faced with a delay in justice caused by an unjust judge and by a bureaucratic system, she does not give up; she does not lose heart. She grabs, and chews. Being faithful in prayer develops her spirit and brings her to taste the sweet rewards of justice. Take. Eat. 

Another seed for growth helping us to develop as Christians is faithfulness in stewardship. I need to mention that today. The Christian movement started out with nothing: A handful of disciples, none with any wealth, some even known for doubt. But from this tiny seed grew and developed a mature enterprise that circles the world preaching love and compassion. Individual stewardship works the same way. It starts with something small, just the size of a seed. But if planted and tended faithfully, it grows into a remarkable harvest. I don’t know where you are in your stages of growth. In fact, considering all of us here today, some are developed and mature, others just starting to sprout. But when the seed of stewardship is tended faithfully, the Christian steward grows.  

Few things are more critical for spiritual development in an age of affluence and material diversion than learning how to release and let go of the temptations of money. Our possessions should not possess us. The lesson to be learned here is that, in the ultimate measure of life, it is not having wealth that matters, it is how one uses one’s wealth that truly counts. So grab on to the issue of stewardship. Chew over the implications of abundance in your life. Are you generous, or grasping? Help the seed already planted in you grow, through your faithful stewardship. 

So three seeds for growth this morning, three opportunities for spiritual development: faithfulness in communion, persistence in prayer, generosity in stewardship. Lambete, phagete. Take, eat. Grab, chew. With gusto.

© copyright 2007, Christopher Brdlik

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