Sermon August 3, 2008

12^th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13 RCL)

Isaiah 55:1-5, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21

Rich readings today with a common theme - meals.....or, more accurately, banquets. Isaiah tells the Israelites who have returned from exile with nothing to face a devastated Jerusalem that, in God's world, their anguish can be transformed into joy - that they are to come to the banquet even if they have no way of paying for it, that, in fact, it is only because they are destitute that they are invited!

The Psalmist says: "The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season."

And, of course, the Gospel reading talks about he great meal in the deserted place. Do you know how many times and in how many gospels this story of feeding is told? Six times in all four gospels! So this was clearly an absolutely central story for the Early Church.

I want you to put aside any thoughts of the "how"! One of the dangers with the way the miracle stories have been presented is just that: as miracles - a sort of magical understanding that requires nothing of us except awe....and an uncomfortable feeling that this isn't somehow real! Most scholars believe that the crowd had small amounts of food with them, and what happened that day was that they shared what they brought. That says something pretty remarkable about community, but nothing about a magical "something out of nothing".

So we have a community meal, blessed and shared - it's not hard to see the connection to what we're doing here, is it?! There's taking, blessing, breaking, sharing - the four actions of the Eucharist.

The Early Church saw in these meals the origins of the Eucharist just as much as they did in the Last Supper and the post-resurrection appearances. This is one of the precursors of Eucharist, this is one of the first (but not the first) sacred meals.

But actually there are two banquets in today's gospel: Herod's and Jesus'. In a sense this is a tale of two meals. Look at the contrasts:

• Herod's banquet takes place in an atmosphere of arrogance and scheming and ends with a murder - of John. Jesus feels compassion for the needs of the crowd and healed the sick.
• Herod's banquet is at a royal palace. Jesus meal is in a deserted place.
• Both Herod and Jesus issue commands, but the former is death-dealing, while the latter is life-giving.

That juxtaposition is obviously intentional: different hungers fed and a very different experience of power and of community. And the latter - Jesus' meal - is tied to the former - Herod's meal, by sorrow.

It's not a new sorrow, either. All is not well at this moment for Jesus - his own people have "taken offense" at him - which is why he ends up teaching in parables we've been looking at over the last three weeks - the Sower, the Wheat and Darnel, and the Mustard Weed - in the first place.

Almost immediately thereafter Jesus is dealt another huge blow: he hears that his mentor, the man he followed, the person who he was a disciple of - John the Baptist - has been brutally murdered by Herod. It was not only at Lazarus' grave that Jesus wept, I suspect.

Is it any surprise that Jesus seeks solitude? He gets in a boat to find it - goes across the lake and "heads for the hills", heads out into a deserted place.

Not for long! Crowds follow - 10,000 if you count everyone Matthew mentions.

I remember when Rachel and I saw "Shindler's List", a movie which is, among other things, a very realistic portrayal of the incredibly inhuman brutality of the Nazi concentration camps. Then we did what we had planned to do after the movie - go out to a restaurant to eat.

Big mistake! After such an intense, heart-wrenching movie we were virtually speechless. Who wants to eat when you're mourning?

So here's Jesus wanting solitude and quiet and, instead, faced with a massive crowd. I think it's fair to say that Jesus faces a crisis at this moment - he's tempted to despair. From somewhere he finds the resources to teach. But it is the meal that saves him.

This, then, is one of the markers of this feeding story - compassion; a willingness to lay aside the deep pain of loss that Jesus must have been feeling, to lay aside his fear and, instead - even out of anguish - to turn his attention to all the people present and to let them embrace him through the meal.

And here's the link with the Hebrew Scripture reading. Remember how it begins? "you that have no money, come, buy and eat." Isaiah has just proclaimed to a defeated and dispirited people - still in exile, both physically and emotionally - their return and the great celebration that will follow as certainly as night follows day. They have nothing, he says, but with God's largesse nothing is required but a willingness to "come...and eat." Out of anguish comes celebration if we journey with God.

In the Gospel Jesus, his disciples, and the vast crowd are exiled to a remote place. Jesus himself is deeply sad. Then the disciples, Matthew reminds us, tell Jesus they have nothing. Jesus says, "it doesn't matter" with God's largesse nothing is required but a willingness to "come...and eat." Out of anguish comes celebration if we journey with God.

There are so many very profound truths here:

• Here is the promise for anyone caught up in that cycle of 21st century consumerism who is - as Isaiah so aptly observed - "spending.....money for that which is not bread, and.....labor for that which does not satisfy": a community and a gift from God that is wholesome and fulfilling and joyful.
• Here is the promise that we can be saved from ourselves through the great meal
• Here is the promise to anyone living in exile - literal, emotional, psychological - that beyond our wildest dreams, at the end of our darkest journeys, in the time we are most hollow and empty, there stands God at the head of the banquet table, ready to embrace us, to welcome us home, and to feed us with food that lasts - manna from heaven.

And there's also a challenge. As the Eucharistic community - the Body of Christ - we are not only recipients of this gift, we are also called to be vehicles for it.

How we are vehicles is a question that we are always in the process of trying to answer. But what we seek to convey is not open to question: bread that does feed, labor that does satisfy through the new community of the redeemed - not just to think but to do, not just to speak but to act on behalf of those who are still exiled, still lost, still grieving, still alone.

This is what it means to come and share at the table, to have a foretaste of the great banquet supper of the lamb. Amen.