I guess it’s human nature not to appreciate something until
its absence brings home to us the significance of its
presence. Before I got sick with chronic fatigue three years
ago, we used to have friends over for dinner fairly often.
Good food, good conversation, these meals were highpoints in our
week. Then came the long dark tunnel of illness, and the
simple pleasure of providing mealtime hospitality became one of many
losses to be mourned.
Now, I’m feeling
better. And as I am able to add back into my life those
things which I once took for granted, I am careful to celebrate and
appreciate each element. I’m sure that’s
why the dinner we hosted for a couple of friends this past week seemed
so miraculous.
The oppressive grip of muggy heat
we’d all been complaining about had been broken by thunder
and lightning and cleansing rain, to be replaced by that crisp clarity,
that distinctness of light and shadow, that atmospheric purity which
causes all southern Indianans to breathe deeply and rejoice when it
makes a rare summer appearance.
While the roasted vegetables and feta-stuffed chicken breasts cooked,
our guests joined us for a leisurely walk through sun-dappled paths
lined by lavender bee-balm and ten foot tall joe-pye weed with its
clouds of mauve blossoms so loved by butterflies.
Nature lovers all, just as we spoke of our concern about how few
monarchs we saw these days, one appeared in all its orange and black
glory, fluttering among the joe-pye weed blossoms. It was
that kind of evening.
As we sipped wine and continued our lively conversation over
food I had taken great pleasure in preparing and which was really quite
good, if I don’t say so myself, the light faded, candles
flickered, lightning bugs began to rise, bats circled overhead
obligingly intercepting mosquitoes, and the music of the night
creatures enfolded us. As I look back on that evening, it
sure feels like sacrament to me.
What is it about food, feeding and being fed, that becomes so easily
vehicle for spiritual presence and meaning? Next to
breathing, eating is about the most basic life-giving thing we can
do. It’s utterly primal. We arrive in
this world unable to focus our eyes, unable to escape from a predator,
but instinctively able to turn toward the warm presence of the breast
that will give us the nourishment we need to survive.
Perhaps because our very first experience with eating involves us with
another person, the act of eating in community is something which
carries for us a particular spiritual power. I’m reminded of
the time a mother in the congregation approached Jonathan about the
possibility of her six year old son being baptized, the rite of
initiation which is required in our tradition before worshippers can
come to the table for communion. Obviously feeling it was not a
sufficiently holy reason, she told Jonathan, apologetically,
“He says he wants to be able to eat with everybody
else.” Jonathan assured her that was a very
spiritual reason indeed.
When I cast about for personal experiences in which I’ve felt
the presence of the realm of God, an awful lot of them involve eating
with others. I remember when we were first married and living
in the world’s tiniest apartment, I invited everyone I could
think of to a pot-luck birthday party for Jonathan. They all
came. We were so jammed together that no one could get up to
circulate to the table where the food was. So we just passed
plates, fire brigade style, those closest to the table filling them up
and sending them out into the crowd. We had a great time, and
I think of those rooms full of friends and food when anyone mentions
the heavenly banquet.
I’m no theologian. The various theories of the
Eucharist – whether or in what manner Christ is actually
present in the bread and wine, for instance – well, they all
leave me hungry for some real food. The important point, by
my lights anyway, is that we are fed by God. The truth of
this is expressed quite clearly in our readings today.
Ezra, in our Old Testament lesson, is following a
time-honored practice among spiritual leaders: using a prayer to God as
a way of making a point to the people who are listening to
the prayer. In this case, the listeners are the descendents
of the exiled people of Israel. They have returned to their
ancestral home, but they do not know who they are. This is a community
which has lost its cultural compass, forgotten its spiritual
traditions. It is a community which is relearning what it
means to be God’s people.
Ezra re-introduces them to the God of their forbears in this way: by
praying, “…you are a God ready to forgive,
gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast
love...” And then, Ezra reminds them of their
ancestral story, God’s liberation of their forbears from
slavery in Egypt and God’s faithful care of their forbears as
they were led to the promised land. How does Ezra choose to
do this? What comes to Ezra as the most convincing way to
illustrate the commitment God has to God’s people?
Reminding them that they were nourished by God during the
journey. “You gave your good spirit to instruct
them, and did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and gave them
water for their thirst.”
This tribal memory of being given food and drink by God in the
wilderness is one of Israel’s core
stories. That is why it turns up in our psalm today, as well
as in the Old Testament lesson. This is holy food, this manna
which descends to earth from heaven. “So mortals
ate the bread of angels”, the Psalmist says. It is miraculous
food, sustenance that arrives each night unseen in the darkness and
lasts only one day before spoiling, thereby teaching the lesson we seem
to have such difficulty learning, that we can trust God to take care of
us.
The bread blessed and broken by Jesus and distributed by the disciples
in our gospel story is holy food, too. I’m petitioning for
the women and children to be included in the count of those fed and the
name of the story to be changed to “the feeding of the ten
thousand”. But, however you count them, the vast
numbers of people provided for makes it clear that something
supernatural is at work here, something that communicates to us, in
terms we understand on a primal level, the potential in God for our
most aching emptiness to be filled.
I should probably mention that 20th century Biblical scholarship, with
its kinship to the scientific method and enlightenment thinking that
was profoundly uncomfortable with the idea the miraculous, bent over
backwards to come up with rational explanations for these
stories. It was noticed, for example, that tamarind bushes in
the Middle East exude sap and that insects feed on this sap and then
leave secretions on the bushes. So, some enterprising
Biblical scholar decided this secretion must be what the ancient
Israelites called manna – nothing miraculous, perfectly
reasonable explanation -- God gave the people bug poop to eat in the
wilderness.
And the feeding of the many thousands? My favorite Biblical
scholar explanation is that lots of the people in the crowd had brought
sack lunches and, inspired by Jesus’ teachings, decided to
share their food with those who didn’t have any.
This is miraculous in its own way. But the point here is that
these are teaching stories. They are passed on to us, not so
we can pick them apart, but so that we may be astounded by the
wonderful self-giving generosity of God, who wants us to be nourished
soul-deep.
It is this awareness of God’s desire to feed us that we are
encouraged to bring to the altar. Obviously, a morsel of bread and a
sip of wine are not going to energize our bodies for very
long. But they represent another kind of feeding, the filling
of our interior selves with the living presence of God. We
eat with this in mind, and our hearts become open to the
transformational possibility of God living God’s life of love
and service in and through us.
And we do not come to the table alone. Like the ancient
Israelites in the wilderness, like the thousands by the Sea of Galilee,
we share a common meal. We eat as community. And
that community consists not only of the people to our right and our
left at the altar rail. It numbers all those unseen ones we
bring with us; all whom we are called to feed in God’s name,
the ones we love, the ones we struggle to love, the ones we do not yet
know but who will surely change us and we them.
When this Sunday was picked as the day Dallas Sare would receive for
the first time the bread and wine at communion, the choice was made
simply because it was the last Sunday before he and his family would be
moving away. No one checked the lectionary – but
look how perfect the readings are for this day which has been chosen
for Dallas’ first communion meal, chosen because, before he
had to leave, he wanted eat with the community that formed him in
Christ, the community that has borne witness to the
nourishing presence of God by loving and supporting him and his family
for many years.
It is nothing short of a miracle, the way God feeds us, nothing short
of a miracle. AMEN.