Here is the sermon I praught from this past Sunday. At some time, I might dive into the things going through my mind while writing, but for now, I will just say it was a wonderful Sunday. My parents have been in North Carolina visiting, and it has been great playing tourist with them, as well as to just sit at the table and share a meal together.
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| Here is the church, there is the steeple... |
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| Open the doors, and see all the people! (Well, ok, one person...) |
As we continue our summer series, Gerunds of
Faith: Christian Practices worth Practicing, most of the practices we have
looked at have hit home in my own personal experience. In hearing the sermons on thanking, welcoming,
working, resting, and singing, I could think of practical ways to better
nurture and develop these practices in my Christian life, for the sake of
developing a deeper relationship with God.
And then
comes eating.
Thinking
about eating as a Christian practice can make one anxious. This isn’t to say we
can’t or don’t see, taste, and feel the sacred that comes in gathering around
tables;
The sacred is there, whether the feast is an
elaborately set table of bread and wine or a worn picnic table at a camp with
numerous 2nd graders feasting on animal crackers and watermelon. We
recognize there is something holy about coming together, blessings and breaking
bread.
But
thinking of eating as a Christian practice can fit into the gray of the world;
eating isn’t something so special or so unique for just “us”
Christians. As author Sara Miles puts
it, “food is what people have in common, and it is precisely common”1.
To break
bread and share in communion is one thing, but what does eating as a Christian
practice demand we practice? How does our eating fit into the
picture the world sees as Christendom?
My mind is flooded in rapid fire succession of
questions such as:
·
How do we “seriously” look at eating through
the lens of a spiritual practice combined with our discipline, or lack there of
regarding food.
·
1 Miles, Sara. Take
this Bread. New York: The Random
House, 2007. p
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How does animal cruelty, eco-sustainability,
vegetarianism, and food scarcity fit within the discussion of eating as a
spiritual practice or does it even play a part?
·
Does engaging in this practice really
mean we should say a grace before every meal? Even the one consumed in the car in between
sport practices and music lessons to the one where are all gathered around the
table at home?
·
How does scripture play a role within this
Christian practice? Do we take the Old Testament food laws seriously? I’m not
sure if I’m ready to say goodbye to bacon…
While these questions seem a bit silly to some,
all are similar thoughts that come to the mind of many when asked to consider eating
as a Christian practice.
What is it about eating that makes it seem
different than the other practices we have looked at? Eating is not some mysterious concept; it happens
quite often within the Bible. Is it the
fact the eating is often something we do without thinking? In the most animalistic nature, we feel we
are hungry, and if we are so able, we respond: we eat. In Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating,
Theologian Norman Wirzba reminds the reader that “eating is no idle or trifling
activity…for any creature to live, countless seen and unseen others must die, ….. eating is the daily reminder of our own need
and mortality”2
This
reminder of our own need to eat and our own mortality is illustrated in our
reading from Deuteronomy this morning.
The chosen people of God are on the cusp of being done with the
lifestyle of wandering; they are soon to be home. The good and promised land flowing with milk
and honey is in their near future. This portion of the text gives them a
commandment –to remember as they continue on their journey:
Don’t
forget about the God who didn’t forget about you when you felt the real pains
of hunger, the God who went above and beyond providing not just bread of the
earth, לֶחֶם for you, but provided manna מָן – heavenly sustenance - for all of you, despite your whining
and disobedience. These people didn’t
have to meet any criteria in order to receive these provisions. God provided despite it all.
2 Wirzba, Norman. Food
and Faith: A Theology of Eating.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011
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What God asks of them as they
enter their new land, the good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs
and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and
barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and
honey, a land where they may eat bread without scarcity, where they will lack
nothing –
All God
asks of them is to remember- remember how God provided – how their clothes
didn’t fall of their backs, how they avoided swollen feet. Keep God’s commandments, walk in God’s ways
and fear the Lord. God asks of the
people that when they eat their fill, do it in remembrance of me.
Carla
Pratt Keyes makes this connection with the Deuteronomy story3:
“Those forty years were a time in
their lives when the people could not secure food for themselves. They couldn’t find it, couldn’t grow it, were
in great need of it. Then, in a snap,
manna appeared all over the ground. SNAP
is the name of a Food Assistance Program in the US – but the Israelites did
even less than Americans must do to qualify – less as in nothing. When
they woke each day it was there – fields of manna. God gave it freely; all the people had to do
was harvest it…God asks them to remember: this food also will be a gift they do
not earn.”
Keyes
continues by quoting Wendell Berry from “The Gift of Good Land” saying:
“The good land…is not given as a
reward. It is made clear that the people
chosen for this gift do not deserve it, for they are a ‘stiff-necked people’
who have been wicked and faithless. To such a people such a gift can be given
only as a moral predicament: having failed to deserve it beforehand, they must
prove worthy of it afterwards; they must use it well, or they will not
continue long in it.”
“They
must use it well.”
If we,
who are actively participating in God’s creation are, as Norman Wirzba says, to
“affirm creation as a delectable gift, and as a divinely ordered membership of
interdependent need and suffering and help’, aren’t we too called to “use it
well”? Is this what shifts eating from the mundane and necessity into a
spiritual practice that draws our soul closer to the life Christ would have us
lead?
3“Eat” A paper
presented to the 2013 gathering of The Moveable Feast. Carla
Pratt Keyes
4 Wendell
Berry, “The Gift of Good Land, “ Flourish Magazine, Fall 2009
http://flourishonline.org/2011/04/wendell-berry-gift-of-good-land/
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We live in a food-saturated
culture: the food industry spends billions of dollars vying for our decision on
what we eat to be in their favor. News
reports regarding latest research on what’s good for you or what’s bad for you
can be found on the daily; restaurants try to out-do, out-bargain,
out-advertise the others in the hopes that our eating routine will include them. What does it mean to practice eating in the
hope that this practice would indeed
“help us to attend to the work of grace in our lives and our times….”
(Marjorie Thompson) – how do we “use it
well”?
Does it mean as Christians and as the church we
counteract the messages that surround food?
That we refuse to use food as a tool in implementing power over
others? Does it mean we look at food
labels and see who and what we are supporting through our simple staple purchases?
Does it mean as Christians and as the church
we don’t just remember those who are physically hungry, but those hungering for
companionship, peace, healing, and bring them to our table? That we remember in the words of Scottish
poet, Robert Burns, “that some have meat and cannot eat, and some have none
that want it”?
How are
we to faithfully respond to the abundant gift that has been given to us, much
like the Israelites, with no strings attached, found in God’s creation meant to
sustain all people and how are we to use it well?
Author
Sara Miles provides one example of how we are to use it well.
A self-described
“unlikely convert…raised by atheists…a blue state, secular intellectual; a
lesbian; a left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism”(xii), Sara Miles
shares her story of “an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian
conversion” through taking her first communion in her book, Take This Bread. She remembers how “eating Jesus…led me
against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined.
In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for
and become part of a body, I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all
along was what I was meant to do: feed people.” 4
Before
becoming involved as a human rights advocate and journalist in Central America,
Miles worked as a cook in New York, where she “learned that the rituals of even
the plainest or most cynically prepared dinner could carry unconscious messages
of love and comfort… [she learned] how central food is to creating human
community…what eating together around a table can do.” 5
4 Miles,
xi.
5 Miles,
23.
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This is the Christian
practice of eating. This is God
providing manna for all God’s people to share together.
This is Jesus cooking breakfast for his
disciples around a campfire. I have hundreds of stories and observations of
what eating around the table looks like.
Family dinners of crowded tables full of laughter, storytelling, and
possibly a touch of chaos. Eating with the other food service workers in the
archaic Refectory at Columbia Theological Seminary before our shift begins and
we serve our fellow peers and guests.
There are the Montreat lunches where
invitations are extended and guests are welcomed to sit, rest, and fill up on
good home cooked food, prepared with love.
There are the dinners where those
who are without food are remembered by the act of putting pennies in a
jar.
It is not
about what food is provided, because we come hungering for something more.
Miles’
memoir walks through her journey of what it meant to go from being a stranger
at the Christian table to being one who was serving at the table. Starting from scratch, she began to explore
the scriptures and traditions of the church.
She
says,
“poking around in the Bible, I found clues
about my deepest questions. Salt, grain, wine, and water; figs, pigs,
fishermen, and farmers. There were
psalms about hunger and thirst, about harvests and feasting. There were stories about manna in the
wilderness and prophets fed by birds…And then in the New Testament appeared the
central, astonishing fact of Jesus, proclaiming that he himself was the bread
of heaven. “Eat my flesh and drink my blood,”
he says. [Miles continues] saying she
thought how outrageous Jesus was to the church of his time: He didn’t wash
before meals; he said the prayers incorrectly; he hung out with women,
foreigners, the despised and unclean.
Over and over, he told people not to be afraid. [Miles] liked all that, but mostly liked that
he said he was the bread and told his friends to eat him.”
Miles “couldn’t stop thinking about another
story: Jesus instructing his beloved, fallible disciple Peter exactly how to
love him: “Feed My sheep.”
Jesus asked, “Do you love me?”
Peter fussed: “Of course I love you.”
“Feed my sheep.”
Peter fussed some more.
“Do you love me?” Jesus asked again. “Then feed my sheep.”
Miles
says, “It seemed pretty clear. If I wanted to see God, I could feed people.” 6
Just as Jesus commands Peter in our Gospel
reading this morning, Miles took to heart the words: Feed my sheep. Miles opened The Food Pantry out of the very
sanctuary where she took her first communion, at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal
Church in San Francisco. Now in its
twelfth year, their mission is to increase access to food for hungry people,
and empower them to help each other. Miles
comes to recognize through serving, feeding, and eating with the homeless, the
junkies, the immigrants, the single mothers and fathers, the kids, the sick
that there was the “physicality at the heart of the story of Jesus…listening
and sautéing, talking and tasting, feeding friends and eating together: it was
a stew of words and acts and food.”
When it
comes to Christian practices, I imagine myself at times feeling like Peter; I
will willingly say I love Jesus, but it might take me three times of hearing
what Jesus asks of me to actually respond in these practices. Feed my sheep,
remember me, go, do. Eating is all these
things.
Eating
is saying grace before our meal; even if we are eating alone – remembering the
hands that planted, picked, prepared, and put it before us. Eating is not just a practice for the self,
but one to be lived out in the community and world around us. Eating as a
Christian practice is breaking bread, blessing it, and sharing it. Eating is remembering the bread of life and
cup of salvation at every invitation; not just on Sunday mornings, once a
month.
My friend from seminary is currently interning
in Durbanville, outside of Cape Town, in South Africa. We were catching up through email, and
sharing what our internships have included.
In brainstorming and sharing this sermon’s topic, Bethany shared this
insight on her internship:
Interestingly,
being on my SM, I've learned to say grace before every meal (EVERY meal) and
it's a remarkable experience. The ways we interact with one another are
so different when we've just had a communal prayer. You can't be anything
but loving when you have acknowledged the presence of God at your table... Many
of us are fortunate to not worry (for the most part) where our next meal is
coming from. Let's take the time to really be grateful for it and to
understand the weight of it.
We can
incorporate saying grace more on a regular basis, even in public – we can
remember with the gifts Gods provides for us, to “use it well” and be conscious of our wants versus our
needs. We can celebrate our own local
resources and think creatively on how to make eating local available in other
communities.
We can invite strangers to our tables.
So I
challenge you, as you leave this morning and go into the week, put your eating
into practice.
Remember
the sacred – the holy – that comes not only from blessing and breaking bread
but from sharing it. Whether it happens
today as you head to your favorite brunch or lunch spot or happens later in the
week, welcome someone at your table. As
you shop for groceries, remember to “use it well”. And as you sit down to eat, say grace.
Even in
public.
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