June 10, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Genesis 14: 18-20 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + Luke 9: 11-17
The fastest growing section of any bookstore these days is Cookbooks. There is even a 24-hour cable channel about food. At the same time, the diet and exercise industry is booming, and as a nation we face the terrible fact of child obesity, A visit to any of our schools makes it an undeniable and troubling fact. At the same time a greater proportion of our world starves. A disproportionate number of our own grandparents suffer from mal nourishment and diabetes often caused and complicated by issues of diet and food. We spend more in this nation on pet food than anyone would admit. It shames us.
On the second Sunday after celebrating the Church’s beginnings with Pentecost, we take another look at what we are as a church. Last week it was about relationships. The Trinity does not just tell us something about God. It is also about us, the church: living every moment of our lives in relationships of love. This Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is not just about God either. It is about us, the church,
continuing to live as the Body and Blood of Christ.
There are more than Ten Commandments. I heard another in today’s Gospel: “Give them some food yourselves.” Remember, our God is God who feeds. Over and over again the scriptures are filled with stories of food. The Last Supper isn’t the only food story in the Gospels. A people who believe in and make themselves obedient to that God, a people who pray daily for the will of that God to be done might be ready for a big question at judgment time: “Did you feed them?”
This Sunday set aside to honor and remember the presence of Christ and his body and blood demands that we reflect upon ourselves and what we become because of that symbol. Symbols are effective, not static signs pointing to something else. To recognize a symbol is to be changed.
This church which we are is both called to give and become food for others, because we are the presence and life of Christ who gave and became food for others. This Eucharistic gift we have is not just something to look at. It is food for us: food to nourish our growth and strengthen our resolve to be food for others. That Body was broken for us to bring forgiveness. How many more bodies have to be broken before we give it?
That Blood poured out for us was to bring us peace. How much more blood must be spilled before we choose it? Jesus believed that his body and blood would be enough.
We live in a world starved for peace and thirsty for justice. We live in a society broken and fractured by divorce and racism. A big helping of forgiveness and compassion would ease the hunger of loneliness, but it must be the forgiveness we give. Feeding as Christ commands is not a matter of countless sandwiches in brown bags. While we make the sandwiches, we must be changing the system that makes it necessary to fill the bags for people who come again and again. It is a matter of a changed heart and a changed life.
Until then we might ponder the fact that Gluttony, a deadly sin with food is a sin committed alone. Gluttons eat with their face in the plate, eating as though there would never be another meal; or as though consuming is all they are about. I remember as a child my mother and father saying time and time again at the table: “Stop talking and eat your food.” With a little Gospel wisdom, I now realize what I was learning at that family table: look into the face of another, not at your plate; talk a little more and take a little less, pass the food before you take some for yourself.
It was Eucharistic wisdom in that house. We would probably take a little less if we listened and talked with others a little more. And we would probably come to understand that in doing so we will discover the face of the God who feeds us and says again: “Give them some food yourselves.”