I want to start by just going back, for a moment, to our August lessons. As, I think, every one of our August preachers reminded us, the Gospel all during this past month was taken from the sixth Chapter of John - Jesus's reflection on the feeding of the 5,000, on God's bread of heaven, and on himself as God's bread, the bread of life.

Those readings point us to the Eucharist, this feast of life, this heavenly bread, that we eat together every Sunday, and I want to add one more thought to our reflections on the Eucharist.

The point of the Eucharist, the climax of the Eucharist, the whole reason for the Eucharist is the sharing of the bread and wine .. the eating of God's heavenly food, together. (Think: "communion")

We do four basic things in the Eucharist:

we take the bread and the wine - and it's not an accident that the collection plate is brought up at the same time - we take the fruits of the earth and the fruits of our labor and we offer them back to God (who gave them to us in the first place ...["All things come of thee, O God, and of thine own have we giving thee."])

... we TAKE the bread, and we BLESS the bread .. that's what the whole Eucharistic prayer is about .. praising God and thanking God and asking God's blessing .. then we BREAK the bread ..

FOR THE PURPOSE OF .. SHARING the bread .. as God's own self was broken open to be shared with us in the person of Jesus.

SHARING is one of the deep underlying, overarching themes of the Bible. God gives us .. everything .. and our work, in God and for God, is to continue that outpouring action by sharing what we have been given - sharing who we are and what we have with the world.

There's an African proverb: God gives, but God doesn't share. God gives human beings everything we need to flourish, but God is not the one who is supposed the "divvy up the loot." The task of "divvying up the loot" is up to us. (Paul Farmer - SSJE bulletin)

The church's Collect for Labor Day embodies that theme:

"you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives .."