April 5, 2007
Exodus 12: 1-8,11-14 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + John 13:1-15
Before we can get to Communion we must get to the point that this day is also about food. It may not be politically correct to say it, but while much of the world is starving, Americans are eating themselves to death. Latest statistics record that 60% of us are overweight. The chronic obesity of children is an alarming public health issue. Meanwhile there is a multi-million-dollar diet industry in place. It is also a fact that other than the Bible, Cookbooks are the largest selling items in our book stores. The supermarket has become a temple of excess with music, lighting, deli counters, sushi bars, coffee bars, and all kinds of visual seductions designed to prompt us to buy more than we need and especially things we should not eat. Just this week I read an article about how junk food ads are scheduled at times children watch television.
Living to eat has become the focus of much of our culture.
While eating to live is what we are about as a church.
We live in a fast-food world with a microwave beeping, grabbing a sandwich or chips on the run and eating in our cars! This is a long way from Sacramental living which is what we are called to. Sacramental living requires something else. The Table is the center of life TV tables, card table or stools that face no one or a television will not do. In Sacramental living, no one eats in a hurry. No one eats and runs. For believers, there is no running from communion. There is too little of it anyway. There is a question to be asked about a society that builds homes with huge home theaters and recreation rooms and no dining rooms.
There is no mistaking that the largest piece of furniture in this room is a table. It is in the center, and everything and everyone faces the table.
While through the passage of time it has taken on the language of sacrifice and been called an altar; from our very beginnings, it was a table around which followers of Christ gathered to eat and be nourished. The heart of our identity is this table and food we share gathered around it. It shapes us, and it forms our values and our lives. We are a people of communion. We do not eat alone, or in a rush. We do not grab a bite and run.
It is no wonder our children and young people have no respect, interest in, nor hunger for the Sacrament of the Eucharist when they know nothing of communal and family dining. The dress, the behavior, the pace all betray a collapse of Sacramental life to which this night and what it recalls puts before us.
We are in communion, with one another, with the whole church and with God through, with, and in the Body of Christ which we share in this place.
Consequently, world hunger is not a political or economic issue to be solved by diplomats or politicians. It is a moral issue to be solved by believers. We don’t gorge ourselves with our faces in the plate unaware or uninterested in those around us. That is what gluttons do. We don’t grab and run, nor do stroll in at any hour as though it were drive through or take away.
In a world that continues to hammer away at us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat. So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.
Decide tonight why are eating here? Who are you eating with? Who is hungry while you are satisfied, and why are they hungry? Communion gives life. Take. Eat. This is my Body broken for you. Take. Drink. This is the cup of my blood poured out for you. It isn’t much; but to those who live in the mystery of sacrament, it is more than enough. Inside this awesome reality we never find ourselves alone or lonely; for we will have discovered the mystery of Holy Communion.