Something
Happens When We Share a Meal
Sermon preached by Rev. Patricia Farris
August 6, 2006
Scripture:
John 6:24-35
It’s
wonderful to see you following some time away for vacation and study.
It’s especially meaningful for me that, as we gather again together
today for this time of worship and sacrament, we share this morning
in the Lord’s Supper, this meal that so powerfully connects
us to God and to one another.
Our vacation time this year was punctuated by some day trips in the
area, several projects on the house, rest, reading and wonderful meals,
one of the true delights of time off! We had special dinners for our
25th wedding anniversary and for a family birthday and with a friend
visiting all the way from Australia. We enjoyed several leisurely
dinners with friends. We relished Dodger dogs at Dodger Stadium and
a picnic made most special by music under the stars at the Hollywood
Bowl.
I
hope that you have all enjoyed some wonderful, relaxed time this summer
at table fellowship. Something very special happens whenever we humans
eat together. Love and friendship and food get all mixed together.
And the things we hunger for—nourishment and acceptance, satisfaction
and love, strength and assurance—all these hungers are satisfied
at a good meal at table with friends and loved ones. The great food-writer
M.F.K. Fisher once put it this way: “It seems to me that our
three basic needs, for food, and security and love, are so mixed and
mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without
the others. So it happens when I write of hunger, I am really writing
about love and the hunger for it.”
I
think something like this is going on in the story we hear this morning
from John’s Gospel. The crowds had experienced the miracle of
the loaves and the fishes as you explored last week with Brad, and
now they’re clamoring after Jesus for more. The disciples had
gone to look for Jesus; the crowds were looking for Jesus. But he
says to them all: “You are looking for me not because you saw
signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for
the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
The people wanted more bread and Jesus begins now to point them to
the Bread of Life, to that which satisfies the hungry heart as well
as the hungry belly. He knew that they were hungry, as Fisher put
it, for food and for security and for love, and amazingly, Jesus begins
to teach them that God will satisfy all three through him.
(continued...)
"Something
Happens When We Share a Meal" by Rev. Patricia Farris, August 6,
2006
One way this happens is through this holy meal, this sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper. How brilliant Jesus was to leave us with this way
to always remember all that he means to us. How compassionate of him
to recognize all three hungers, for food, security and love, and satisfy
them all in a holy meal that has become our sacrament. For it’s
all here. The actual bread that reminds us to share our food with others
and the bread of life we receive, that which feeds our hearts and souls,
reminds us to reach out and feed the hungry hearts of all God’s
people.
This
sacrament is much like all the special meals we experience. It draws
us in because of our hungers. We long for food. We long for fellowship.
We long for camaraderie, shared stories and laughter. We are drawn to
the table and we are fed. If in last week’s story, the miracle
of the loaves and fishes, we were shown that God’s feeding and
nourishing generosity is for all, today’s story brings it home.
You see, in God’s economy, in God’s banquet of life, if
there’s enough to feed 5000, there’s enough to feed me.
We are drawn to the table and we will each be fed. Whatever the hunger
inside today, physical, emotional, spiritual, we will be fed.
All
we have to do, Jesus says, is to believe. And luckily, we know from
John Wesley, that that doesn’t mean that we have to have it all
figured out before we come. It doesn’t mean that we have to pretend
to fathom the depth of this holy mystery. And it sure doesn’t
mean, he assured us, that we have to be perfect before we can come.
Just the opposite. We just have to be hungry. We just have to go ahead
and come because we long for God’s grace to work in us. And whether
we’re totally convinced of this astonishing gift or whether we’re
just willing to open our hearts enough to give it a try, Wesley knew
that in Christ Jesus God’s grace will for sure meet us here at
this table and feed our hungry hearts and our hungry souls.
The
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, tells this story from his
own journey of faith. “[Some] years ago, I was visiting a [Christian]
Orthodox monastery, and was taken to see one of the smaller and older
chapels. It was a place intensely full of the memory and reality of
prayer. The monk showing me around pulled the curtain from in front
of the sanctuary, and inside was a plain altar and one simple picture
of Jesus, darkened and rather undistinguished. But for some reason at
that moment it was as if the veil of the temple was torn in two: I saw
as I had never seen the simple fact of Jesus at the heart of all our
words and worship, behind the curtain of our anxieties and our theories,
our struggles and our suspicion. Simply there; nothing anyone can do
about it, there he is as he has promised to be till the world’s
end. Nothing of value happens in the Church that does not start from
seeing him simply there in our midst…. And he says to us, ‘If
you don’t know why this matters, look for someone who does—the
child, the poor, the forgotten. Learn from them, and you will learn
from me. You will find a life’s work; and you will find rest for
your souls; you will come home; you will sit and eat.’”
(continued...)
"Something
Happens When We Share a Meal" by Rev. Patricia Farris, August
6, 2006
At
the heart of this meal is Christ Jesus, the Bread of Life. At the
heart of our renewal and our transformation is Christ Jesus, the life
of the world. Here we are home. Here we sit and eat. And there is
enough for each of us and there is enough for us all.
This
meal draws us in, hungering and thirsting for the bread of life and
the living cup that is Christ Jesus. And then, this meal sends us
out, curiously satisfied and not quite the same as when we came. Because,
as we already know, it’s about us, and it’s about much
more than us.
It’s about each of us and it’s about all God’s children.
This meal feeds us and it feeds the 5000. And that makes all the difference
in the world, in this world. Or, at least, it should.
Something
happens when we share the Bread of Life. We see that we are all God’s
sons and daughters, that we are all connected as brothers and sisters.
Another great teacher of the church, Martin Luther, believed that
having shared this meal together we actually become part of one another.
That, by eating the same bread, we become one. We become part of one
another. The needs of the other become our own. The welfare of the
other becomes our own—needs for food, for security and for love.
As one writer has said, “We are no longer content to live with
full bellies and empty minds.”
And
so, we engage with the issues of our day in order that the image of
God might be manifest in all. When Christians pray for one another,
when we look after one another, when we protest poverty and hunger
anywhere, when we decry the destruction of war, we do so because,
on some level, we have been changed by this meal. It has made us one
with Christ and one with each other. For, in this meal, God is making
us one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all
the world.
In
these summer days in our world of violence and bloodshed, of ancient
angers and competing dreams, of turmoil and upheaval, how the world
needs us to be this bread, this living bread…a voice of reason
and compassion, a voice of tolerance and understanding. How the world
needs us to be people of love and of peace. How the world needs us
to become the Bread of Life for all the hungers of God’s people
and God’s world, people fed with love that we might become bread
for the world.
Feed
us now, O God, and use us to work your will in this world. Feed us
with your life, fire us with your love, confront us with your justice,
and make us one in the body of Christ.
Amen.
Notes:
Archbishop of Canterbury, Enthronement Sermon, Canterbury Cathedral,
27 February 2003.
©Patricia
Farris , 2006. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
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