Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from July 23, 2006

“Finding Our Way”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Ephesians 2:11-22

In Boston to present at a conference, the late afternoon hour found my colleague and I eager to relax over dinner and get caught up on the events of our lives.  We headed out into the brisk November evening recapping our workshops and lectures hoping that we would stumble across a restaurant that would appeal to both of us.  Around us, people leaned in to the wind and hurried to their destinations.  The sidewalk was dotted with people setting up for the night on steam grates begging for change as we passed by.

When we were approached directly by a young woman asking for coffee money, my colleague declined to give it to her.  Instead, he invited her to have dinner with us.  I’m not sure who was more surprised:  the woman or I.  After some convincing, she agreed to join us.  My colleague’s hospitality clearly irritated the restaurant staff and drew the disdain of other diners.  Over the next hour-and-a-half or so with the wonderful meal, we learned about each other’s lives, shared pieces of our story and, finally, parted company under a November starry sky.  Her name was Brenda.  Ten years later, I still see her face.  I still pray for her and for her two children.  I give thanks for a moment in time that turned some social expectation in my brain upside down in a way that I probably never would have done on my own.

We don’t stop and think a whole lot about it.  There is a ritual around food that defines the way things should be.  For the most part, we eat with people we know.  When we go into a restaurant, we don’t pull up a chair at a table and join someone for dinner.  We’ve been taught to use the right fork, to put our napkin in our lap, to chew with our mouths closed, and not to stand up and reach across the table to grab whatever we want.

Well, biblical times were really not any different.  In fact, food rituals in first-century Palestine were probably more important then than now.  Mark, as a gospel writer, cites more instances of Jesus getting into trouble around accepted meal and food choices than any other gospel writer.  Biblical scholars who disagree on just about everything else agree that one of the most controversial things about the Jesus movement was their table fellowship.  In the story of feeding the 5,000, Jesus breaks just about all the rules considering who should eat with who, what they should eat, and when they should eat it.

As is often the case, the disciples are the flashpoints for Jesus’ teaching moment.  It’s been a long day.  They’re far from town.  They’ve come to this deserted place to rest.  They have not gotten a moment’s rest.  Enough is enough!  They say to Jesus with such a great line, “Send them away.”  You have to appreciate that.  “Send them away.”  It’s not that the disciples were unsympathetic to their hunger (or maybe, a little bit).  Mostly, they were just tired.  The social custom of the time indicated that people should go off with their own kin and either go home and fix their own dinner or, basically, find someone to mooch off of.  The concept of potluck suppers had not yet caught on in religious circles.

It was a deserted place also of some significance because deserted places in the ancient world were considered places of chaos.  In a place of chaos, it was impossible to pay attention to all the rules that attended to the preparing of a meal to ensure that the requirements of ritual purity were met.  So to choose such a location to feed people was a direct insult and a huge challenge to ritual purity laws.  No doubt, when word of Jesus’ actions reached the authorities of the day, they would be furious.

So the disciples quickly get the message that “Send them away” is probably not going to work.  Five loaves of bread and two fish later, the disciples find themselves with the next funny part of the story which is “Tell them to sit down.”  5,000 people.  “Tell them to sit down.”  No p.a. system.  “Tell them to sit down.”  In groups of fifty or a hundred, if you please.  Sharing a meal with 5,000 strangers was unheard of in the ancient world.  Slave and free, male and female, Greek and Hebrew—for all of these people to sit down together and eat a meal brought down some very old walls, the lines drawn by tradition and time, by social propriety and prejudice were erased in a prayer, a basket of bread and a couple of fish.

In Judean society, food and feasting delineated core beliefs and values that helped to hold the community together.  Laws and traditions around food not only strengthened social relationships but also said something about what people believe to be holy.  The whole idea of clean and unclean is defined in dietary laws.  It did a lot to separate the Jews from everyone else.  It occasions fellowship and did a variety of things but mostly, it separated Jews from non-Jews.  The Jews didn’t really care about that.  (It’s part of what got Jesus into trouble.)

Becoming followers of Jesus meant erasing lines that had been in place for a long, long time and learning to say “we” instead of “us and them”.  It continued to be a challenge to the disciples.  But you can hardly underestimate the power of eating a meal together. 

I remember the first potluck supper in the Parish Hall after eighteen months of construction.  We gathered together as a huge crowd.  Many of you were there.  There was food, fun, laughter.  We delighted in each other’s company.  There was lively conversation and a great sense of joy at finally being together again.  Something crucially important was added back to our community life that night because something happens when you gather together for a meal that doesn’t happen in nice chit-chat during coffee hour, or before or after a committee meeting.  It creates solidarity.  It strengthens and renews relationships.  It creates an opportunity for a quality of conversation that doesn’t happen any other way.

Jesus knew that eating together is a very intimate thing.  That’s one reason why we do it with someone that we know.  It’s part of what made my colleague’s invitation to Brenda so startling.  Meal time usually pre-supposes a kind of intimacy not usually shared with strangers.   Most of us do not go out into the street and round up people to sit at our dinner table and chat about the events of the day.  Although, I am not so sure that, maybe, it might be a good idea from time to time.  Even if we were wolfing down a burger and fries at the local fastfood restaurant, most of us won’t sit down at the table where there’s someone else even if it’s the only seat left in the place.

Think about what you do when you invite people to your home for dinner.  We fuss.  We pick out a menu.  We cook.  We set the table a particular way.  We choose the foods with care.  We welcome people into our home with gladness of heart.  In our home, when we welcome guests, we hold hands around the table and say a blessing that begins, “Thank you for the hands that we hold”, an acknowledgement that we are blessed by the people who come to share the company and fellowship at our table.

Eating together is a very intimate thing.  For Jesus to initiate that kind of intimacy in a group of strangers set a new standard for human relationships.  Ephesians picks up the theme when Paul reminds the young church that Jesus was all about bringing down walls and helping people to hold hands across their differences and finding ways to stand together in a new covenant that was born of Christ’s blood.

It’s hard to know what happened with those five little loaves of bread and two dried fish and how they came to feed all those people.  Did everyone kick in what they had hidden in their tunics?  Did Jesus actually cause it to increase to feed all those people?  I don’t know and I’m not really all that sure that it matters.

What does matter is that this event becomes the symbol of the new order Jesus ushers in, a society where there are no insiders or outsiders, where abundance and need are balanced, and everyone learns to share, where no one goes hungry because everyone is of equal value.  While the disciples were saying, “Send them away”, Jesus saw them as sheep without a shepherd and had compassion.  In such a place and in such a time, even places of chaos become holy.  No land is deemed unacceptable.  No person is left alone without food or fellowship. 

Sarah Dylan Breuer writes, “At Jesus’ table, all are invited to join the feast.  Jesus ate with prostitutes and Pharisees treating them with equal dignity.  We are called to do the same.  Personally, the only reason that I want a memorial marker is so that I can have as my epitaph, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend to tax collectors and sinners.’  Jesus had that reputation because he was known for being completely indiscriminate about with whom he ate, even to the point of sitting down with over 5,000 people in a spontaneous meal and I hope that my own practice of fellowship gives me that same reputation.” 

It may be something to aspire to—to be known as one who will sit at a table with just about everyone in the name of Jesus Christ.  May it be so as we journey onwards.  Amen.