Sermon for August 18, 2024
Readings:
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
Few things in this world can compare to the glory of a good church potluck. You might think I am being a little tongue in cheek, but this is not completely a joke. These things can be miraculous you know. Think for a second about a good church potluck. First of all, it’s basically free. You may have to pay for the food you are bringing, but for the most part you stand to get way more than you give. And I’m willing to bet that you could probably get away without bringing anything without getting the evil eye from too many folks. Second, you usually have so many types of different foods that almost everyone can find something that they like, or that they can eat. There are amazing new things to try and you always seem to end up with way more food than you need. Third, no one person is burdened with doing all the work. Fourth, everyone has the opportunity to show off their culinary skills a little if they want to, and you know folks like to do that, myself included. Fifth, you can actually enjoy the food because you don’t know how much sugar and fat is in it and there are no labels telling you if these vegetables are organic or if this beef came from a happy grassfed cow from upstate. You don’t know how many calories are in that piece of cake, you just get to eat it, and that is a beautiful thing. A good church potluck is a beautiful thing. It can be an encounter with God’s grace.
If the church had spent the last 50 years working on improving its potluck game rather than endlessly tinkering with the liturgy and trying to serve as political action committees for either the right or the left, we would be in a much different place today, and so would our nation and our world. We are in desperate need of the relationships that are formed at church potlucks. The church likes to go out and talk a good game about reconciliation and bringing people together and building up communities…well do you know what the most fundamental and basic way to bring people together is? Food. I know y’all are used to me being food-obsessed, and I know I preached last week about the importance of having a snack, but I don’t think I can overstate this. Food is a critical way that relationships are built. It is responsible for shaping families and communities. It is the magic ingredient. It is so simple that we overlook it or ignore it. If you want people to come to a church service or function, feed them. Why do you think we have the meal on Maundy Thursday? Yes, there is religious significance to it, but also, how else am I going to get folks to come to a weeknight service? The same goes for the soup and scripture series and for the children’s prayer breakfasts. Feed people and they will come. Food brings people together.
And I hasten to add here that this isn’t a gimmick or a ploy. It is simply a recognition that relationships are formed around food. We all have this basic human need to eat, but somehow when we do it together, when we eat with each other and serve food to each other, something else happens and we walk away with something more than just food in our bellies. God has the power to do more through food than just fuel our bodies.
Relationships are formed around food. It is such a common thing that I think we often fail to realize just how powerful it is. But there is power, real power in feeding people. You give them a bit of yourself. Part of you becomes a part of them, even across seemingly uncrossable barriers. I think of this, not every time, but often when I sit down to eat my favorite vegetable. Now my favorite vegetable is something that many of you probably find repulsive, because its okra. If you didn’t grow up eating okra, if you don’t know how to cook it or if you aren’t familiar with the texture, then you may not be able to stomach it. But I love it. I love the flavor of it. We used to grow it in the garden growing up, so it has always been a part of my life. My ancestors have eaten it for hundreds of years. But we know precisely where okra comes from. It comes from Africa. The reason my ancestors ate it was because slaves grew it and fed it to them. So the food that you are eating may be telling a more complicated story and may represent more relationships than you can even imagine. We are often so focused on the more obvious power dynamics in this world that we often miss or misunderstand the real power there is in feeding people.
But this is something that scripture makes clear to us over and over again. God is regularly described in scripture as one who feeds. One who feeds. THE one who feeds. The ultimate source of that which fills us and makes relationship possible. Scripture is filled with this image:
The food in the garden of eden.
The manna in the wilderness.
Psalm 23: thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
Our reading from Proverbs this morning: God’s wisdom has set herself a table and sent servants out inviting people to come and eat.
This is what God does. God feeds people. Not just in overly spiritualized and symbolic ways, but in actual concrete ways that feed the body, but do more than feed the body. What God gives us is more than just food, but it isn’t less than food. Actual food is a part of the equation. Does that make sense? What I mean to say is that I often hear Christians talking about food, real food, as if it isn’t really that important itself, but only insofar as it represents something spiritual. And I’m here to reject that way of thinking. The daily bread that I pray for every day may be more than just a mixture of flour and water, but it isn’t less than that. When we pray for daily bread we aren’t just praying to be filled spiritually. We are human beings, we need real food. You may recall that I had my jaw wired shut for six weeks a few years ago. You may recall that fondly. But let me tell you, by week two I wasn’t hoping for God to give me some nebulous form of enlightenment, I wanted real bread. Yes, I wanted all of the spiritual benefits of knowing that God was the ultimate source of my food, that’s wonderful, but I wanted the real food too. Real food matters. Feeding people real food is a powerful thing that can change their life and yours.
What is one of the first things you do when you want to have a relationship with someone? You feed them; take them out to dinner. In John’s gospel, at the end, after the Resurrection, what does Jesus tell Peter to go and do? Feed my sheep. Repeatedly, Jesus tells Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep. It is what God does. God is the one who feeds. God’s servants are called to feed too. Now, God has more than just food to offer us. Man does not live by bread alone. God offers us relationship and wisdom and life that transcends this physical world, at least the world as we understand it. But that relationship, that life, often begins with and is sustained by actual eating and the many, many relationships that are formed around the table. Any table.
It is only natural in a church like this, a church that celebrates communion every Sunday, to hear Jesus talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in the gospel this morning and think that he is referring to the Eucharist. Every week we recall Jesus saying “this is my body” and “this is my blood” over the bread and the wine, and we come forward and receive them at the altar, the holy table. We say that Jesus is spiritually present in them. So in this context, it is easy to hear this morning’s gospel and think that is what Jesus is talking about. Simply taking the host and wine of the Eucharist like some sort of medication divinely engineered to prevent death. But I think there is so much more to Jesus’s self-offering here than just what happens at the Last Supper and in the mass. In the first place, Jesus is speaking well before the Last Supper at this point in the gospel, it hasn’t happened yet. In the second place, this is John’s gospel and it doesn’t mention the bread and wine at the Last Supper at all. That comes from the other gospels. So I think Jesus is talking about more than the mass here.The Eucharist is definitely a way that God offers us his life. But I think we need to think bigger. Holy Communion is special, but can God feed us in other ways and at other meals? I think he can. I know he can. I might not be willing to hold up a casserole and say “the body of Christ,” but I do think that a relationship with God can begin around any food. It is how many people come to faith, through relationships formed over meals, and it is how many people hold on to faith during those times when God seems distant or irrelevant. The relationships and the meals keep people coming back.
Yes, I believe that Jesus is present in the bread and wine that we bless at the altar, but that meal reminds me that in a different way, at different tables and with different food and different people, Jesus feeds us and offers us his life and his body at other meals too. Especially at Church potlucks. Now we just have to have more of them, and invite others to come.
Inwardly Digest 