‎"Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and orginal in your work."
-Gustave Flaubert







Thursday, March 15, 2012

Sermon based on Matthew 14:13-21

Jesus knew the transformative power of a meal.
He knew how intimately connected the link was
between food and fellowship and the kingdom of God.

The joy of God’s presence
came upon the crowds that day
in the sharing of supper together.
Not only did Jesus have compassion
for the crowds and heal their sick,
but he goes beyond expectations and offers the crowds
friendship and hospitality in the form of a feast.

Think of the hundreds of ways
in which we use food in order to connect
with friends and family.
We arrange our lives around food-
whether it’s dinner together as a family,
meeting a coworker for lunch,
or the simple joy of meeting a close friend for supper.
Our bonds with each other are structured
around the meals we eat together.
The smells and tastes and satisfaction
we gain from a great meal
is interwoven with the sense of intimacy we share
with those we love and care about.
Meals strengthen the bonds we share with one another.

And food even helps us connect with strangers.
Think of how the meals we eat
cause us to interact with strangers.
My wife and I sometimes eat at
a little breakfast place in Madison.
And I mean ‘little.’
The building itself is tiny
and throngs of people pack the place on the weekends
and it’s hard to move around.
It’s so small, in fact,
that you have to sit with other diners.
There are no private tables.

I’m not used to this.
I like to have the privacy of my own table,
away from everyone else.
Yet, sitting with other diners forces you to enter into
conversation with people you normally wouldn’t talk to.
It allows you to get to know them.
And the delicious taste of the food is so enjoyable
that it sparks something from within
that opens you up to fellowship
with people you’ve never met before.
So the delight of food opens us to others
in ways that would otherwise be closed.

Our central aspect of worship together
takes place in the form of a meal.
At this table we celebrate
Christ’s real presence in the bread and wine.
The Eucharist is the place of radical hospitality.
In it we are offered a glimpse of the kingdom to come.
We literally taste the transformative power of Christ in bread and wine,
and participate in fellowship with him and each other.
Transformation happens within the context of a meal.

And there are other tables here at church
that are signs of Christ’s hospitality.
After worship on Sundays
I’ve noticed that you serve
doughnuts and coffee in the hallway.
And I like doughnuts.
If you ever want to find me after worship on Sunday,
you need look no further
than the doughnut and coffee table in back.
I find the doughnuts so creamy and so delicious
that I am often tempted to take two,
and sometimes I even try to take a second doughnut,
but my wife stops me,
so I only have one doughnut.

But this is an important ministry at Lake Edge.
By offering food for each other
and for the visitors in your midst,
you show the hospitality of Christ.
My wife and I have gotten to know
some of you better through conversation
over a doughnut and coffee.
And we are grateful for it.
Food opens pockets of space
for fellowship, hospitality and transformation to occur.


One of my favorite movies, Babette’s Feast,
shows how fellowship and a great meal
can transform lives.
The movie is set in the nineteenth century
and tells the story of a French woman, Babette,
who comes into the lives of two sisters
living in a rural community in Denmark.
Babette is a refugee who has fled to Denmark
and works as a servant for the sisters.
The sisters’ father was the founder
of a strict, pious Lutheran sect
and the congregation flourished while he was alive.
But the movie takes place many decades later
when the sisters are old,
the father has died,
and the congregation has dwindled
to a few embittered parishioners.

Babette works for the sisters for fourteen years as a servant,
but she finds out that she has won
10,000 francs in a lottery in France.
But instead of going back to France,
she spends her entire winnings
on a feast for the sisters and the small congregation.

The congregation is bitter and cranky
and they hold many petty grudges and resentments
towards one another.
And being a strict community,
they are suspicious
of the feast that Babette has planned.
They have always eaten rather bland food,
and they think there is something rather sinful
about indulging the appetite
in such a sensuous and exotic meal.
But they decide to go ahead and eat the meal,
but they promise one another
that they will not enjoy it.


Some of the characters in the movie have regrets.
An old general comes back to the village for this feast
and sees for the first time in many years
one of the sisters whom he loved.
One of the most poignant scenes of the movie
shows him getting dressed for dinner
and looking into a mirror.
He is old and melancholy
and dressed pompously in his uniform.
But in the mirror he sees his younger self
in the reflection staring back at him-
a reflection of him when he was a young officer.
He had his arms crossed,
and looked so stubborn and ambitious.
I don’t remember what exactly the actor said,
but his eyes were mournful
as he looked at his younger self.

‘What for?’ he seemed to be saying
as he looked back at that young man.
‘What for?’
He was in deep regret
for the way his life turned out.
The old general had achieved the success
he desired in life,
but at a great cost.
He lost a life with the woman that he loved.

At the dinner Babette serves dish after sumptuous dish-
thin pancakes and caviar,
quail smothered with delicious sauces.
Wine and champaign and chesses and cakes.
The actors’ faces magically light up
after each bite of food.
As the meal progresses,
grudges melt away.
Petty rivalries are dismissed.
Resentments are overcome.
The General stands up
and delivers a moving speech.
He says that “mercy is infinite,”
and declares that “righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another
and the love of Christ will illuminate the world.”
In the feast fellowship happens.
Transformation happens.
The dinner guests come to not even regret the past,
seeing their lives in the larger,
more magnificent framework of God’s grace.

I like to think that this is what Jesus had in mind
in the feeding of the crowds.
He wasn’t just going to cure people of sickness
and send them away.
He was going to transform them
through the power of a meal together.
It was not just a meal,
but a feast that transcended itself,
developing higher and wider
and lower and deeper circles
of friendship and fellowship.
The kingdom of God was happening
in that meal between
Jesus and the disciples and the people.

And the miracle happens today.
The Holy Spirit works in the spaces between the meal-
in fellowship with one another,
in the actual smell and taste of the food,
in laughter and friendship and grace.
All these elements of a meal come together
and transformation happens through them.

So when we offer hospitality to one another
and to the stranger through the sharing of a meal,
remember that it is not just a meal we share.
We are sharing the hospitality, love and presence of Christ.
And as we hunger this Lenten season
for the presence and righteousness of God,
let us recognize the mysterious presence of Christ
among us in our shared meals.
Trust in the One who transforms
our merger scraps of bread and fish
into something much larger
than we could ever hope for or imagine.