10:30 am, Sun, April 23, 2023 - JGWhite / FBCA
(Ps 116:5-14; Lk 24:13-35)
Today we begin a series of Sundays
I’m calling Earth Days. Following ‘Earth Day,’ yesterday, we will pay
attention to our life in creation, with our Creator. We have begun with the
simple theme of food and drink, the basics of life.
Our sacred scriptures are filled
with eating and drinking, sowing and reaping crops, and ritual sacrifices of
food. The story of our Faith is filled with stories of breaking bread, and of growing
it, and sharing it. Here is one example, a parable, a Bible parable, but a
parable you might not know, even though we are Bible scholars. 😉
Listen to me now.
Give me your
closest attention.
Do farmers plow and plow and do nothing but plow?
Or harrow and
harrow and do nothing but harrow?
After they’ve prepared the ground, don’t they plant?
Don’t they
scatter dill and spread cumin,
Plant wheat and barley in the fields
and [spelt] along the borders?
They know exactly what to do and when to do it.
Their God is
their teacher.
And at the harvest, the delicate herbs and spices,
the dill and
cumin, are treated delicately.
On the other hand, wheat is threshed and milled, but still
not endlessly.
The farmer knows
how to treat each kind of grain.
He’s learned it all from God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
who knows
everything about when and how and where.
That’s from the end of Isaiah
chapter 28. You might think of better-known parables about food. Stories Jesus
told, and stories told about Jesus.
Like the that poignant tale we
read today, of that big resurrection day, when a couple lesser-known disciples
were walking to a village outside Jerusalem, met up with a fellow traveler, and
told him all about what had happened, what had happened to Jesus. Then the
three of them stop for the night. He took bread, blessed and broke it, and
gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he
vanished from their sight. It was Jesus. When did they know He was
with them? When they ‘broke bread together.’
The sharing of food is the
sharing of fellowship with the Spirit of Jesus. A prime time for us to know God
is mealtime. We have a God who eats with us. No wonder we say ‘grace’ at meals.
We have an unseen Guest. Or, perhaps, we are the guests of God at
earth’s table, every single day. Daily, some strawberries appear. No wonder the
Jews have Passover, which is a ritual meal of simple foods. No wonder we Christians
have Holy Communion, which is a ritual meal of simple foods.
Of course, food is not just a
symbol or a tool to point to things spiritual. The food and drink that sustain
life are important to God, as much as they are important to us. From the
ancient Hebrew instructions to leave crops in the fields for the orphan and the
widow and the foreigner, to the many prayers for rain and for harvest in times
of drought, the roots of our Faith run deeply into farming & gathering &
food preparation.
The story of Jesus the Messiah is
the story of God who joins creation, who becomes Someone hungry for food and
thirsty for water. Christ is our great connection with the Divine, and Christ
was a physical being, a human, to make that connection. God’s work of making
relationships right is, in part, so that everyone gets food. ‘The Kingdom of
God is a Party.’ Does Jesus not illustrate this with His miracles of feeding
thousands?
And no wonder fasting is such a
powerful spiritual practice. It is a very practical, physical activity. It is
used across many religious traditions. For us, it keeps us knowing we do not
live by bread alone. And yet, we do die without food or drink. Fasting keeps us
in touch with what it is like to be hungry. If you are like me, and your
stomach never goes empty and growls, you need an occasional experience of what
hunger actually feels like!
No wonder we see the kosher diet
in ancient Judaism, which may seem so strange to us today. So many foods are
not to be eaten – even touched! – in order for people be holy, a special people,
set apart for God. Think about it: food is so central to the life and
religion of the Hebrews… and Christians.
No wonder we see in the Bible
God’s ‘preferential option for the poor,’ as it is called. If God has any
favourites, it is the poor and needy, hungry and thirsty. I always think of
Mary’s words when she celebrated the news that she was to birth the Messiah: [God]
has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
(Lk 1:53) That’s some of God’s best work. And ours too.
So, no wonder we have a designated
‘benevolent’ budget, and a benevolent committee. No wonder we cooperate with
others in Amherst in the Xmas Cheer program: enough food to eat is not
enough, there should be food for celebration also! No wonder that our little
start at offering a ‘warming centre’ each Monday soon became mostly about
sharing good food. No wonder we support what Canadian Baptists used to call
‘The Sharing Way,’ which is our relief and development work around the world,
getting food to places of famine and war and natural disaster, getting wells
drilled and water purified.
Yesterday, April 22, was Earth
Day, the 54th annual Earth Day. But, if every day should be
‘earth day,’ then today and tomorrow we can be trained by the God of the earth
to do food better than before. We know the troubles of hunger in our
populated world: the situation is disastrous in many places. And I’m just
talking about hungry people. What about the plants and animals of the
world? How much rain forest is destroyed so people can grow palm trees for the palm
oil in our crackers? How much fossil fuel is used to bring us grapes from Chile
in the winter, and so. many. other. products? We even call them ‘products,’ as
if these are all produced just for us. Like the term we have for tending our
own lands and waters: department of natural resources. Resources? The trees and
fishes are more than resources for our use. But I am getting ahead of
myself. My Earth Sunday for Living Things is next week, April 30.
A dear friend told me this story,
once. A number of years ago she was working part-time in Halifax, and would
sometimes pack her breakfast to eat early, down at Point Pleasant Park. One early morning, she parked her car – just
about no one else around – and went off to eat the bread and cheese and fruit
she’d thrown together.
A stranger approached her. A rough looking man. He… he was begging. He wanted some money, for a coffee or
whatever.
My friend was nervous. She was a 70 year old woman, alone in the
early morning there. But, she bravely
told him, “I don’t have any money to give you, but I have a bit of breakfast
here, & I will share.”
The man looked at her, then went
off quickly without saying anything, towards a nearby building. “Was he gone?” the woman wondered. “Did he go off to bring some friends back
with him?” She sat down at a picnic
table and started to open up her breakfast.
My friend told me, with tears,
what she saw next. She saw the man
coming back… to her table. He had gone
to the bathroom. He had combed his
hair. He had washed his face, and his
hands. Done up his shirt, for breakfast.
He sat down and shared breakfast with my friend.
In one of His stories, Jesus said,
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you
welcomed me…” (Mtt 25:34-5)
Every way food is shared, every
time bread is broken, may these be times to know and be known by God.
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