Table of Plenty
3 August 2014
Proper 13A
Spoken Eucharist 8:00 a.m.; Sung
Eucharist 10:00 a.m.
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland
(Oregon)
God, take away our hearts of stone,
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
Earlier in the week,
during tea after the Sewing Women at Trinity (SWAT) work, Maggie McCartney told
us of a story one of her children in elementary school. Her husband then and she were poor grad students with
kids and she had come upon a free source of yeast. So she learned how to bake bread, delicious
and fresh, and also very cheap and helpful on their grad school budget. One child came home from school looking
unhappy. “Why are we so poor we always
have to eat home made stuff? Can’t you,
just once in a while, afford to buy that wonderful light white bread the other
kids have in their brown bag lunch sandwiches?”
Thinking he had some specialty bakery item or expensive artisanal bread in mind,
she asked him more. He replied finally,
“It’s so fluffy and light, almost like cake, I think they call it WONDER
BREAD.” Maggie’s story brought back
memories to us all, of lunchbox or brownbag envy in primary school, or of
confusing poor, imitation products for the real thing.
The one thing we all
noted was that no matter how good our lunches were, we all had experienced
curiosity and even envy at the lunches brought by our classmates. Sometimes it was just a desire to be like
others and not stand out. I remember
learning to be embarrassed at my mother’s Boston Baked Bean sandwiches, no
matter how tasty they were, simply because they were so weird to my
classmates. As our curiosity was
satisfied, we learned to distinguish between good and bad lunches, what we
liked and didn’t like, and what made us sick or uncomfortable. We became picky about the contents of our
lunch boxes. We also became picky about
what kids we sat with at the lunch table.
Today’s Gospel is the
Feeding of the 5,000. The story is told
in all four Gospels, with minor differences.
All agree that Jesus fed more than 5,000 people with five small pita breads
and two small roast or dried fish. Rationalists have questioned whether such a
thing happened historically. While all
serious historical Jesus scholars agree that the historical Jesus was a gifted
faith healer (even his enemies admitted as much when they accused him of
working wonders by the power of the devil), many scholars question the
so-called nature miracles as legend-spinning efforts to explain the importance
of Jesus in the life of the believer.
Classic liberal protestant treatments of the story reduce its outward
marvelous deed of power to a more interior miracle: convincing the various
members of the crowd to share their food with each other, and so they find that
they have more than enough for all.
But such re-readings,
I think, miss the point of the story.
One of the things we know about the historical Jesus is that he was what
John Dominic Crossan called a “party animal.”
He constantly was dining and drinking with the wrong kind of
people. “He associates with drunkards,
traitors, and whores” was the common accusation leveled against him. Again, nearly all historical Jesus scholars
agree that Jesus practiced open table fellowship, sharing his table with all
and sundry, regardless of religious or purity law observance, morals, or
background. For him, sharing bread with
someone is a sign of compassion, respect, and honor, and helps us approach the
compassionate and beneficent God who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine
upon the righteous and the wicked alike. Open table fellowship, along with his
“cleansing of the temple,” was part of his criticism of the corrupt religious
leadership of his nation, with its power centered in the oppressive system of
Temple taxes and assembly-line rites, and its support of the Roman Imperium. It was ultimately what got him killed.
Open table fellowship
is what this story describes. The
religious system of the day said you are what you eat, and so you must be very,
very scrupulous about what you put in your mouth, and very, very picky about
who you share your table with. The mass
of people following Jesus here are hungry and are not all that picky. But by eating with everyone else, and eating
whatever they are given, God knows where it came from, they are trusting and
making a companion of the host and every other person at the meal. They don’t ask “is it kosher?” They don’t ask, “does it contain any food I’m
allergic to, or do not like?” Jesus
himself doesn’t ask “Is it kosher?”
Here, the host himself becomes a beggar just as much as all the guests
at the meal. And beggars can’t be
choosers.
While Matthew, Mark,
and Luke in this story simply have the disciples scrounging up the scant food,
John says the bread and fish were originally given to Jesus by a young boy who
had brought a sack lunch along with him.
When the boy offers his food, he offers what he has, and doesn’t wonder
“is it acceptable by Jesus’ standards?
Does it meet the dietary or religious demands of all those people?” No, he simply offers what he has brought for
himself to stave off hunger and gives it to Jesus when Jesus asks. Apparently, givers can’t be choosers
either. Picky tastes, either in foods
or in people, or even in table manners, are not what we need when it comes to
dining with Jesus or helping others dine with Jesus.
This actually has a
big theological impact. John, alone
among the Gospels, uses special language of the Eucharist in this story: Jesus blesses
(eucharisto) the food, makes the people sit on grass in small groups, and then distributes the food (using the word
that later Christians used to describe giving the Eucharistic elements to
believers). This is important, because
in the last supper as told by John, there is no Eucharist, and in the public
teaching of Jesus as told by John he says he is the bread of life, and that his
flesh and blood are food indeed.
What this
means for me is that the Eucharist was intended by Jesus as a sign of openness
and inclusion to all. It is clear that
he practiced open table fellowship in his ministry as a sign of God’s
love. I wonder how Jesus feels when he
sees his people putting up fences around partaking of the Eucharist. Some, stressing his words “this is my body,
this is my blood,” take the elements as holy and divine, and have sought to
protect them from “blasphemy” or “misuse” by the “wicked” or “unworthy.” They say that only those who have confessed
their sins and been absolved can commune.
Or only those who properly understand what the Eucharistic elements
are. Or only baptized Christians. Again,
I wonder how such things feel in the heart of our Savior, who meant the
sacrament as a sign of universal inclusion, not exclusion or division. Of the
two sacraments the Gospels say Jesus instituted, baptism is about us coming to
God and God’s reaction. Eucharist is
just about God’s loving welcome. I don’t
think the current canon of the Episcopal Church to offer the Eucharist to only
the baptized is warranted by what we learn of these two sacraments in
scripture. Let us welcome all, as Christ
does for all those people in that field!
This story is about
God’s abundance. I have seen again and
again in my life that God provides what we need, even when—or especially
when—we are in most fear of not having enough.
As the Stones sang, “You can’t always get what you want, but… you can
get what you need.” The key is being open to God, and not being picky. Beggars cannot be choosers, and in Christ,
givers cannot be choosers either. That’s
what Jesus is calling his disciples to when he sends them out two by two,
without any luggage or travelers’ checks, relying on the kindness of
others. He asks them to eat whatever is
set in front of them, be thankful, and not complain.
This is a spiritual
principle, not a rule. What matters is
the companionship of sharing bread, and how this reflects God’s love. We offer gluten free wafers for Eucharist
because we understand that people with celiac disease get really sick if they
eat wheat. And if they need to be a
little picky, even a lot picky, to keep their health, that’s okay. What matters is that we share. What matters is that we keep ourselves open,
and have a little of that curiosity we had in elementary school
lunchrooms. What matters is that we be inclusive,
and not exclusive. What matters is that
we thankfully recognize Gods gifts when they come. Our need
to be picky, our desire to control, grounded in our experience and biases, is
what gets in the way.
This week, I invite
us all to look for areas in our lives where we feel that we simply must be in
control, must be picky. Ask ourselves—is
this something needed? Or is it a bias? Let us further ask, does this help us include
others or does it exclude? Once we have
a sense of how our desires to control things measure up to the standard of
compassion, inclusion, and open fellowship, let us pray that we can let go of
pickiness, the desires that keep us closed and unable to be companions with
all.
In
the name of God,
Amen.
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