Antidote

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

August 3, 2008

Text: Matthew 14: 13-21

It is remarkable how many times in the Bible divine visitations happen over a meal.

Abraham sat at the door of his tent at the Oaks of Mamre in the heat of the day; he looked up to see three men standing in front of him. He runs from his tent, bows before them. He offers them water to wash their feet, invites them to sit under the shade of the trees and rest; and he tells Sarah and the servants to prepare a feast. Abraham knows that these three represent the Lord ---he calls them, collectively, ‘Lord’--- and they have been sent for a reason. It is in the course of the meal that Abraham and Sarah are told again that they will have a son, that Abraham heard it right the first time. (Genesis 18)

The people of Israel are slaves in Egypt and God has them prepare a meal of roasted lamb, unleavened bread and bitter herbs----a meal they are to eat in haste, with sandals on their feet and their loins girded; and with staffs in their hands, ready to travel. God would pass them over when he brings judgment, and lead them through the Sea to freedom. This becomes the meal which they were commanded to observe at the annual festival of Passover forever as a sign of God’s liberating presence with them.
 
And we know that Jesus sat down to eat with outcasts, to their amazement, and to the consternation of the religious authorities. Sharing a meal was a sign of hospitality and of acceptance----signals of God’s presence in him.
 
So when Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time, he gathered for the Passover meal with his friends. In the course of the meal, he offered the words that are so much a part of our life: “Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you…..This is my blood, shed for you….”

Why meals?

God is everywhere: in the silence of bedrooms, the noise of the battlefield, in the car as we drive along insulated from the heat and the fumes, and when we are with others only in body, with our digital devices ----in other words, when we are by ourselves. Oddly, we are more connected than ever through the various media, and yet we can be alone in any crowd.
 

Some have told me that they prefer to get their religion from TV or go online to get their inspiration from God. I suppose there are those can feel a part of a TV ministry for years and never once be asked to gather for a meal with the others who are watching.

In airport bookstores, one can find many books which tell us fifty ways to find God, or to be the real you, or to be happy----without speaking at all of getting together with others for a in- the-flesh conversation like the Lord’s Supper, “this central Christian way of knowing the presence of God.”

Most of the time, we are regarded by others as consumers, clients, or audience, not as members of a unified koinonia, sharing word and meal together. Most of the time we are hardly more in relationship than fellow occupants of an elevator or an airplane, or spectators at a game or a concert.

The Lord knows we need times apart from the madding crowd (even Jesus did).

But here is the catch: We also hunger for community, for belonging. As a friend once told me, “I have a church-shaped void within me.”

Deep within, as people who want to believe in God, there is a hunger to be in God’s presence with others who care about us. As one wrote recently, “You don’t Google a person or a faith tradition. You live with it. You keep faith with it, and sometimes you break up with it.” (Christian Century Article)

Martin Marty wrote that “Jesus Christ exists as, and not merely in, congregations.” Perhaps it is not metaphorical to say that we are the (flesh and blood) body of Christ!

I can tell you that when I serve Holy Communion to persons who cannot come to church anymore, they are not celebrating privately: they have you in mind, you in this room. It is as if the altar rail is stretched out to them, into their living rooms, or their kitchen tables or their hospital beds.

Like the 5000 people whom Jesus and his disciples fed, we only have a little bread and a little wine or juice. And yet we know that God nourishes our souls here, that Christ is truly present as we eat and drink in fellowship with others. We call it Holy Communion not only because we commune with God individually, but because we commune with God together.

In the first century AD, other religious groups gathered regularly also to eat what they considered heavenly food offered to their gods. They believed that each person achieved personal immortality by gulping down as much heavenly food as possible. “Each ate for him or her self.” (This reminds me of a few pot-luck suppers when we ran out of food toward the back of the line-----but I won’t elaborate or judge!)

But for followers of The Way (as the Book of Acts calls the church), the Lord’s Supper demonstrates what we want to say: we act out what William James called our “commanding vision.” In the kingdom of God, all will be fed---with bread (the necessities of life) and with the bread of life (God’s love in Jesus Christ). And we signify that the world is not whole and God will not be pleased until this is so!  This not a tribal meal but a feast of hope for the whole world as God will have it be.

Howard Clinebell, an early pastoral counselor, put it this way: “It is easier to act your way into a new way of feeling than to feel your way into a new way of acting.” The Lord’s Supper makes conspicuous who we really are and are meant to be. In this fellowship, we reach out for help and we find a hand. We hear someone say, “This burden is too heavy for me; can you help?” And we do. We are not in this life by ourselves. Here we see that we are in this life together with the Risen Crucified One.

We leap over our boundaries of age, nationality, race, ethnicity, ideological leaning, political parties, and gender and all of the other distinctions that come to mind. We are experienced and novices, those with failures everyone knows about and those with hidden sins. Here “we ‘make believe’ that we are not really strangers but brothers and sisters. We see a vision of life beyond the imprisonment of today’s facts.” (Willimon)

We are the sometimes unwitting consumers of the poisons of alienation, loneliness, hatred, guilt, fear, anxiety, and amusements focused on catastrophes and battles. We gulp it down because we are almost never out of reach of some media or another which reads our minds and knows what will grab our attention and convince that we cannot live without whatever they are selling. And we and our children and grandchildren are influenced every day to believe that we are cut off from the wisdom of the ages, fated to make ourselves into somebody important all by ourselves; and that there is nothing more important serving ourselves above all.

At this table, we enact and receive the antidote for such poison. We say and act out this truth: “This is not the way the world is supposed to be. There is a new way. Here, let us show you God’s way to God’s future.”

Let us pray:

“As the grains of wheat, once scattered on the hills, are gathered into one to become our bread, so may all your people from all the ends of earth, be gathered into one in you.”

(Marty Haugen, Cassette Tape, “Feast of Celebration.”)

Recommended resources:

Martin Marty, The Lord’s Supper
William Willimon, Worship as Pastoral Care
Garret Keizer, “Reasons to Join: In Defense of Organized Religion,” Christian Century, April 22, 2008.