Manuscript
for sermon delivered at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Southfield, MI
29
July 2012
Scriptures:
John 6:1-21; Proverbs 30:5-9
There’s
this song I grew up with at summer camp & in church, you may recall the
words.
We
are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,
We
are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,
And
we pray that all unity may one day be restored.
And
they’ll know we are Christians by our lunch,
by our lunch,
Yes,
they’ll know we are Christians by our lunch.
Now,
we know that the song which I learned in the 1970s says that they will know we
are Christians by our love. But in this
feeding-of-five-thousand Sunday-School-staple-of-a-scripture, Jesus and his
disciples show their love by giving
the people lunch.
In
her book Jesus Freak, Sara Miles
breaks down the miracle this way by writing: “Jesus consistently chose
unconventional table fellowship as the sign of God’s kingdom. And so faced with
a crowd of five thousand, he drives home the message he’s been preaching…by
inviting everyone to share a meal on the spot. Do this, says Jesus, and you’ll
taste what life in the kingdom of God is like.”
Covenant
family, Reverend Quincy, Mom and Dad, thank you for inviting me to share this
pulpit. Covenant family, do you know what the Kingdom tastes like? Some people
have said that heaven is like a church service that never ends. But I say
heaven is more like the potluck after church. Did you taste the strawberries
& shortcake Jeff prepared two Sundays ago? Now that’s what heaven tastes
like if you ask me. All that & whipped cream on top, too.
In
today’s world, this Jesus of the Gospels, don’t you know, is, for better or
worse, a pop culture guru of a God—and he is also a culinary genius. This Bible
is a story book, a rule book, a poetry book, a prophetic book, a teaching book,
but it can also be a cookbook. Mary Fairchild has compiled a list of over sixty
foods found in scripture. We could make a lot of meals with that, with foods
like venison & lamb, leeks & lentils, apples & almonds, pistachios
& pomegranates, made tasty with spices such as cumin & coriander.
Jesus
& his practice of open table fellowship reflect a man that we know not only
as carpenter but also as a caterer, a savior but also a server, a shaman but
also a chef. Jesus doesn’t just multiply manna for others, He also likes to get
his own grub on, so much that they called him a glutton who sometimes forgot to
wash up before meals. Or as one my seminary professors loves to say: He is
always eating—or being eaten. Yes indeed, they’ll know we are Christians by our
lunch.
Because
the feeding miracle is so foundational to our faith, its familiarity might
breed forgetfulness or our failing to fully grasp its generous gravity & moral
audacity. At the core of this story comes primary human hunger, the singularity
of an appetite for God & the salvation aspects of a simple meal, epitomized
& symbolized not just at the Lord’s Supper but present every time we break
bread. Watch what Jesus does: He doesn’t just take less & convert it to
more; he doesn’t just satisfy a craving with just enough but returns with far
too much, infinite lunch to fill cosmic doggy bags, leftovers forever and ever
amen.
This
epic dinner party is economic as well as gastronomic. Generous Jesus surpasses our
scenarios of surplus & scarcity, of saturation & starvation. This isn’t
charity; it’s far beyond measure or logic like infinite sunshine, like the
wind, the water, & the air. As much as some of our peers would like to
politicize Jesus as a proponent of corporate capitalism on the one hand or
state socialism on the other, He won’t fit in those boxes. This isn’t Keynesian
economics but the Jesusian gift economy where his supply always exceeds our
demands.
As
much as we may like, we cannot retroactively impose our practicality on His
prodigality. This bounty & excess do not compute. Today, Jesus would
probably make an atrocious financial advisor, but in his ledger He always makes
divine profits from our deficits. We don’t need Jesus to fix our imperfect
system, rather we need to promote & participate in his perfect kingdom.
Where every Sunday is potluck Sunday. And they’ll know we are Christians by our
lunch.
While
it’s clear that this no austerity gospel, let’s not confuse it with the
ever-popular prosperity gospel. Here, the Proverbs passage is instructive. While
our God provides in excess, the believer needs less. The believer needs just
enough & has been known to fast or abstain when appropriate. Today’s Old
Testament scripture teaches us that too much comfort breeds complacency breeds
a contented contempt. By the same token, too little creates a covetous lack
that leads to theft.
The
world presents an either/or dichotomy to which our God answers both/and. When
the world gives us two choices & says pick one, God shows a third,
uncharted way. But whatever God gives, always give thanks. Or as St. Teresa of
Avila said: If God gives me partridge, I eat partridge; if God gives me
porridge, I eat porridge. When we eat with gratitude, God is the one that we
will meet. But it’s not a news flash that in our world not everyone eats. Not
everyone gets invited to the feast. Too many in our world still worship greed,
and as a collective humanity, we fail to meet every need.
World
hunger remains reality. Drought & debt & agribusiness complicate an
already devastating situation made worse by the increasing population of an
already crowded planet. According to faith-based advocates Bread for the World,
“925 million people are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from
hunger-related causes.” “15 percent of people in the United States live in
poverty. More than one in five children live in households that struggle to put
food on the table.”
In
his book of provocative parables called The
Orthodox Heretic, postmodern theologian Peter Rollins inverts our miracle
story as dark a 21st century dystopia. The disciples and Jesus have
a feast for themselves, excluding everyone else. Rollins pens horrible parody:
Jesus and his friends ate like kings in full view of the starving
people. But what was
truly amazing, what was miraculous about this meal, was that when they had finished the massive banquet there were not even enough crumbs left to fill a starving person’s hand.
truly amazing, what was miraculous about this meal, was that when they had finished the massive banquet there were not even enough crumbs left to fill a starving person’s hand.
Of
course Rollins isn’t really talking about Jesus—but about us. He is not
criticizing our missions or tithes, our charity or our service, but our
lifestyle of mindless plenty in a world forgetful of its own poverty, and in
that, he is more prophet than heretic. Even if we downsize our desires to a proportional
global portion, we can still live within God’s good abundance, just not at the
expense of the rest of God’s children.
According
to renowned food & justice author Francis Moore Lappe: “Hunger is a
people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power.” In the case of global
food justice, power that starves rather than saves is sin. We can call it
economics, plaster over it with political platitudes, but it’s our collective
social sin, plain as day.
Jesus
calls us to repent & teaches us another way to be, a new way to love, a
better way to eat. Imagine the smells coming from a kitchen when you come home
hungry to a healthy meal. Imagine the world healed from the sins of greed &
power that make hunger possible. Imagine the satisfaction of growing &
preparing food for the people you love. Imagine the taste of heaven.
Small &
large real life food miracles occur. Take the urban gardening movement that
seeds hope amid the sometimes hopeless despair we see in Detroit. Not far from
where I lived while attending Wayne State University in the early 1990s, a
flourishing community garden now fills an abandoned lot that was once frequented
by the desperate, the addicted, & the lonely. People of God plant gardens
to grow food where junkies used to shoot smack & smoke crack because we
follow a God who always has our back. We can be the miracle that we wish to see
in our neighborhoods & in our world. We are called to bring the bread of heaven
in future miracles, feeding the 7 billion, one meal at a time.
If
they are to know us by our love, then surely they’ll also know we are
Christians by our lunch. May it be
so. Amen.
Truly so.
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