Loading...One of the great pleasures in life, I think, is the dinner party.
Fancy: seven courses with more silverware than you can imagine.
Simple: “comfort” foods brought together at a potluck.
Indoor/Outdoor
Large party/intimate dinner for two
or, anything in between.
Celebrating holidays, weddings, birthdays, retirement, or just that fact that it’s – say – Tuesday!
Of course, churches know all about food and community.
Nothing like a church potluck dinner to build community--
Like today’s picnic!
And, we gather around this feast table to be fed.
~~~~~~~
Listen to the description of this dinner party: (re-read Proverbs 9)
Wisdom -- part of God’s own self, that,
according to the previous chapter in Proverbs,
has been around since BEFORE the world and all in it were created --
sets a table.
She throws open her mansion.
She cooks up a big spread – the tables are laden, even groaning.
She brings up the best wines from the cellar.
And, she invites guests to come and feast.
Her guest list doesn’t include the ones who’ve already been fed,
or the elite in town.
She invites the “simple” and those without “sense” – the ordinary folk –
to come and fill up on God’s wisdom and goodness,
to feast on all that is offered.
If you think about it, though, for a moment,
that invitation really is for everyone.
After all, what’s human wisdom compared to God’s wisdom?
Put that way, we’re all invited to this feast table.
~~~~~~~~
This meal that Wisdom spreads
is one of many meals throughout the Old and New Testaments.
The sumptuous feast spread on a groaning table is a common image used to convey God’s abundance and God’s gift of grace:
Exodus 19 – Passover
Isaiah 25 – “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.”
Psalm 23 – “You prepare a table before me.”
Esther
Jesus eating with outcasts, and with his disciples – so, many parables told
John 6
All of these feast stories – and more you may have though of – are poignant for a people who’ve experienced famine, starvation, and subsistence farming,
for people who’ve been enslaved and exiled,
for people who struggle to live from day to day,
for people who know hunger and food insecurity.
They are also sustenance for those hungry – not just for food –
but for God,
for relationship, and
for connection.
These meals are the bread of life
for people hungering for forgiveness and grace.
~~~~~~~~~~
Food is one of the great and powerful metaphors showing God providing for the people.
The followers of Jesus were fed by him.
Not just the disciples and their myriad meals together,
but also the hoards who’d followed him to the hillside,
who listened to him teach, and
who maybe even were touched and healed by him.
They’d gnawed on bread and picked the bones out of fish as they ate them.
They’d filled themselves on the simple, yet abundant meal.
So, when Jesus began teaching them about the bread of life from heaven,
they were beginning to make connections between physical hunger and the provisions that God gives.
But, then Jesus threw a monkey wrench into his lesson:
when he moved from talking about food literally to talking about food spiritually, they didn’t make the move with him.
They questioned his authority,
they reminded him that they knew his family and, well,
with Joseph and Mary as parents,
“you aren’t any better than us, kid!”
When he says that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood,
they were confused and may have even thought, “YECH!”
You yourselves may be sitting there thinking, “YECH!”
Indeed, these verses have been the main reason that charges of cannibalism were brought up against early Christians.
Yet, we hear Jesus use many other metaphors for himself and we don’t get hung up on them. Put aside the uncomfortableness and listen:
I am the bread of life
I am the living water
I am the light of the world
I am the gate
I am the good shepherd
I am the vine
I am the resurrection and the life.
Jesus gives us life,
not just in the food we eat but in becoming one of us,
and one with us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of my favorite movies in Phenomenon.
John Travolta plays George, a young man who suddenly and shockingly learns he has a brain tumor.
As the tumor grows
he has to reconcile himself with a sooner-than expected death.
He also helps those around him come to terms with his impending death as well.
One day, he and a young friend are silently standing at a fence looking out over the field. The boy is angry and confused because George is going to die.
George is eating an apple and tells the boy to take a bite.
When he angrily refuses to do so,
George gently tells him that the apple has energy that,
when eaten, becomes a part of the eater and gives him energy.
So, the apple doesn’t go away, but becomes a part of who you are.
For some,
being a follower of Jesus or being a part of a church community
is something done only on Sunday by coming to worship.
It’s like a coat one puts on over oneself that can be removed
when it’s no longer deemed necessary.
Being a follower doesn’t carry over into the rest of the week
and the rest of life.
But, Jesus as the bread of life form heaven,
the flesh and blood that we eat and drink,
is meant to become a part of who we are,
just like George’s apple.
Unlike George’s apple, though,
eating and drinking Jesus as the bread of life
also changes and transforms us.
The bread of life from heaven
knits us into a community of the beloved
whose warp and weft are made up of forgiveness and grace.
The bread of life from heaven
forms us into followers who live in and share
this good news of life and communion with God.
The bread of life from heaven is the feast
in which Wisdom invites us to partake.
Come to the Table
you who are ordinary folks, or without special teaching.
Come to the Table
you who are hungry and thirsty.
Come to the Table
you who are filled with questions and doubts.
Come to the Table
you who are filled with pride or shame, guilt or fear.
Come to the Table to be filled
with the bread of life from heaven.
Come to the Table to be filled
with the life of goodness and abundant love that God has for you.
Come to the Table to be filled by
and transformed by Jesus, the bread of life from heaven.
Amen
