Food, Glorious Food

Texts: John 6:1-21, 2 Kings 4:42-44, Psalm 145:10-19

Last month marked the eighth anniversary of Faith Kitchen [Faith’s community meal program]. On that day eight years ago, three folks from Faith and one guest sat at the table where we now serve Sunday coffee hour. At the next meal a month later, on July 26, there were no guests. But within six months Faith Kitchen was serving 30 people at each meal.

Since then, about 9,000 people have come for meals and over 150 different helpers have bought, prepared, cooked, and served food for dinner. Four different worshipping congregations have helped regularly. Folks from Temple Beth Shalom and from Calvary have been essential Faith Kitchen leaders. Food comes mostly from the Greater Boston Food Bank plus contributions from Carberry’s at first and now HiRise Bakery. Meals have been donated by local restaurants, especially East Coast Grill and recently Oleana. The food is almost always great and there is always plenty of it. The goal of Faith Kitchen is “no one leaves hungry, no food goes to waste.”

Why do we do this? Why do all these people gather twice a month to spend time feeding people they don’t know? (Or that they don’t know for long, because many guests come back over and over.) Why does the church, why does Faith, spend money, time, prayers, and energy feeding strangers?

Partly we do it because our faith calls us to do it. We read in the Bible that the people of God feed one another. We hear in the Gospel of Matthew that feeding hungry people is like feeding God. We see that Jesus fed the crowds rather than sending them away, and that Elisha did the same before him. We know that Abraham fed the strangers who were God in disguise. We know that Jesus told his disciple Peter to feed Jesus’ sheep. People of the book feed other people. That’s the rule.

Partly we do it because it is a fun activity. It provides camaraderie. Faith Kitchen is full of crazy chaos, and it is always an adventure to see what will happen between 5:00 p.m. when people gather and 6:30 when people eat. A month ago we had a fire in the stove and had to call the fire department. They threatened to condemn the stove temporarily. Instead of serving fifty pounds of prime codfish filets, we’d would have been serving sushi. Fortunately, the damage was minor and they gave us the OK to cook. Last week, as if to compensate, the ovens refused to light. One day last year we expected fifty people for a cookout; instead 100 people showed up. You never know.

Partly we do it because the people are good company. The gathering at Faith Kitchen includes the guests who come to eat as well as those who come to cook. There are Faith Kitchen regulars who have been coming for years. And at every meal there are some new folks. The ones who are talkative have stories to tell. Some help out with the cooking and cleanup. The cooks sit and eat with the guests. It is a community of people brought together through food. And also through their affection for and interest in each other.

But mostly we do it because it because it is a natural pleasure to feed people. Or to put it a different way, to feed people is to praise God.

All your works praise you, begins the psalm reading for today. God is powerful and splendid and glorious and everlasting, sings the psalm writer. God lifts up those who have fallen and is always nearby. Fine and grand words, these. But when it comes time to be specific and personal, the psalm sings: You give to all creatures food in due season. You open your hand and satisfy the needs of every creature. Food comes first.

Chris Schlesinger, the owner of East Coast Grill, stood some months ago watching the folks at Faith Kitchen eat. He had just made everyone steaks on grill and mixed grilled vegetables. He had provided a bounteous meal. And looking around at all the tables, he said “I just love to watch people eat.” He is in the right business. He loves to feed people.

But we are all in the feeding business. God feeds God’s creatures, says the psalm. There is a satisfying pleasure in the words of the psalm. Partly the pleasure comes from knowing that as creatures we will be cared for. And partly it comes from knowing that God loves to watch people eat. This psalm understands that God takes pleasure in giving us good things, good food. And that we, made in God’s image, being God’s children, have inherited that pleasure.

To eat is to constantly be thankful. But to feed others to constantly praise God. Eating reminds us of both our hunger and the goodness of creation. But feeding others reminds us of God’s abundance.

We feed others whether we have a lot or a little. Sometimes we have a lot, like the man who brings the prophet Elisha twenty loaves of bread and and a sack of newly harvested grain. Sometimes we have next to nothing, like the few people who could only scrape together five loaves of bread and two fish to give Jesus. Hospitality requires that you feed others before you feed yourself. But strangely, doing so is not a chore. It is a pleasure. Partly it is just the pleasure we get from watching creatures eat; when I was growing up I used to love feeding the horses. And partly it is pure generosity; it always makes us feel richer to give to others more than it does to get things for ourselves.

But mostly when we give to others first, it reminds us that we can expect God’s continuing blessing. There will be enough for us, too. It reminds us that God is the source of all things.

People hear the stories we just heard about Elisha and Jesus, and it bothers them. How did that fish-multiplying thing work? Did people secretly add food that they originally held back when the disciples were collecting donation? Did new bread magically pop up in the baskets when no one was looking? Was it a miracle of physics or a miracle of sociology? But these stories are not about God’s magic. They are amplified examples of what God does all the time, which is to give all creatures the things needed to sustain life. This is not theology, really. We are constructed to live on what God provides. It is a blessing, for sure. But it is a greater blessing is that we love it so.

This Tuesday at Faith Kitchen we are having rolled sole filets stuffed with lobster and crab, salad, and fresh-baked bread from the HiRise bread company. Ice cream for dessert. Like all Faith Kitchen meals, this is a lot like stone soup. Gather people together. See what’s in the pantry that someone has given us. Figure out who is there to help and what skills and temperaments they bring. Mix and cook.

Then everyone sits down to eat. We say a prayer of thanksgiving. Then we serve the meal, praising God all the while.

I Shall Not Want. I Wish.

Text: Psalm 23
Other texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Mark 6:30-34

George Orwell’s classic novel, Animal Farm, was in the news the past couple of days. That’s because Amazon.com had suddenly and without notice or explanation deleted that book from all the Kindle ebook readers in the world. They also removed another Orwell classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both these books deal with how pathological and repressive societies develop. And how easily. (Some people find Amazon’s actions ironic.)

In Animal Farm the barnyard animals find themselves in control of a farm without a farmer. The story is about many things. One of those things is what might happen when people find themselves without political and moral guidance. The animals long for leadership in the face of uncertainty. Yet false leaders emerge. The result is evil chaos. The good of the community is betrayed, and people suffer.

This is not a new story. The prophet Jeremiah spoke out against kings who were not kingly, shepherds who abandoned their sheep as Jeremiah puts it. In the end, God gets fed up and intervenes, tossing all the phonies out. Though he says “woe to the shepherds,” it would have been clear then and it seems clear to us now that God is talking about rulers, not shepherds, and people, not sheep.

People need guidance. This need seems built into us. Discussions of politics and the best form of governance are serious. How can we live so that our safety and happiness, as it says in the Declaration of Independence, can most likely be assured. In the end, the arguments become theological. Are human beings basically good or basically evil? How are freedom and obedience related? And in the end, in whom do we put our trust?

Today’s psalm is the twenty-third. The best-known passage in the Bible, someone has called it. Though often read at funerals, it is about life rather than death. And it is especially about in whom we trust for safety and happiness.

It answers the question right off the bat, in the very first words: The Lord is my shepherd. In these words we have a small and complete theology. God, people, and the relationship between the two. It is a capsule summary of the story of the Bible. Let’s look closer.

The Lord. This is an unfortunate translation. The word “lord” in English comes from nobility. A lord is a male member of the ruling class. A lord is privileged and powerful. The word has little or nothing to do with God.

The word does not appear here in the twenty-third psalm. What does appear here is the name of God. God has a name. God’s name appears a lot in the Bible (about 6,800 times), but out of respect for God and for the commandment not to use God’s name in vain, most Jews and many others including Christians do not mention God’s name out loud. When the Hebrew characters for God’s name appear in the Bible, most English translations instead put the word Lord. Sometimes they put the word in small caps, so you can tell it means God’s name and not a reference to nobility. The Bible that is in the pews here does that. And if you look at the 23rd psalm, you’ll see that it says is my shepherd.

As an aside: in the New Testament the word Lord is a Greek word that means “sir.” Kyrios. There are lots of sirs in the New Testament, but again, this is not a religious word. When people call Jesus Lord, they are showing him respect, not much different than if you were to call someone sir. Jesus was a sir, but not all sirs where the son of God. We need to remember that the English word Lord has become a religious word, but that it was not especially so when the Bible was written.

Back to the psalm. Let’s pretend that God’s name is Fred. Then the 23rd psalm would start, “Fred is my shepherd.” I don’t mean to be flippant here. But I want you to see how different it might be to refer to God your shepherd by name rather than by God’s title or position. This is not just some god you are talking about, but this particular God whom you call by name. It is a different thing.

The Lord is my shepherd. The relationship between me and God is ambiguous here. The ambiguity is perhaps in all our dealings with God. Is this psalm mostly about me or is it mostly about God? That is, am I singing this psalm because I am so blessed, or am I singing it because God is so great? Is this me-centered or God-centered? Are we saying, let me tell you about me, I have a shepherd: it is God. Or are we saying, let me tell you about God: I am in God’s flock.

Who is doing the hiring here? Who takes the lead in our relationship with God? Are we the suitor, the caller, the agent, the petitioner? Or are we the pursued, the called, the patient, and the obedient ones?

It is like the story that I’m sure you know about the dog and cat. The dog says, my owner feeds me and shelters me and takes care of me when I am sick and plays with me. My owner must be god. The cat says, me owner feeds me and shelters me and takes care of me when I am sick and plays with me. I must be God.

Theologically the question is: are we blessed because of something about us or because of something about God?

The Lord is my shepherd. A shepherd was and still is a lowly occupation. Not one that required great power or management skills. In fact, this verse is almost an oxymoron. Lords are great. Shepherds are humble. What are they doing in the same sentence?

A shepherd is not an owner. A shepherd is not a boss. A shepherd is not a president: no shepherd is elected by the sheep. The shepherd is not one of the sheep with an advanced degree. The shepherd is not an attorney or admiral or spokesperson. Yet the shepherd is the Biblical metaphor for king. And that is because the proper role of kings, like the role of shepherds, is to ensure the life and safety of the sheep. A king’s job is to serve the people, just as a shepherd’s job is to serve the sheep. When God speaks so angrily in Jeremiah, it is because the kings have not attended to the people, it says, and the people have suffered. They are dismayed, and fearful, and lost.

In the 23rd psalm, God the shepherd provides all that is necessary for life. Pastures full of food for the hungry, clear water for the thirsty. Rest for the weary. The right paths on which the shepherd guides us keep us safe.

This psalm is intensely comforting because it is a picture of complete dependence on God and complete trust in God. The writer of this psalm seems to be happy and safe. We who are so often anxious and fearful in spite of everything envy the writer. We who are so full of sometimes desperate longing really long for being free of want. The Lord is my shepherd, the psalm says. I lack nothing.

This sounds so comforting yet so not the way things seem to work. Pasture and water and rest sound bucolic but fantastically inadequate. The world is competitive. Wolves roam about, sometimes in sheep’s clothing. Our rulers are human, after all, and some are pretty good and some not so good, but none are perfect.

In the end, God pursues us: surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. The writer is being pursued by God, the words say. The action starts with the shepherd. It is God who gathers the sheep, it says in Jeremiah. It is not the sheep who call on God. It is God who calls them into God’s house, as a good parent calls his or her children home. It is God who sees the sheep need help, and comes to help them. In the Gospel reading, it is Jesus who sees that the people are without a shepherd, and has compassion for them.

The story of this psalm is the story of human longing. We long for a good shepherd to attend to us. To love us, really. We long for peace and happiness and safety. In spite of all our riches and skills and knowledge, we know from experience that we will not find this on our own. We long for a guide we can trust. Who is trustworthy.

The story of the Bible is the story of our search for that faithful guide. And of our fretful hope that God is that good shepherd. And of our prayers that that good shepherd will patiently search for us until we are found.

Nothing

Text: Mark 6:1-13

There is a kind of story that comes in many versions. They all go something like this:

On a stormy night / [on] a moonless night / a winter night,

an old man / a crippled woman / a starving child

comes to a monastery / [comes to] a country inn / the home of a rich man / a farmhouse / the church

and asks for money / [asks] for food / for a place to sleep / for help for a friend.

But he is treated poorly / [he is] locked out / spit upon / turned away.

Finally he comes to a place where

they welcome him / [they] feed him a warm meal / give him a place to sleep / go with him to help / give him from their own meager belongings.

And it turns out—that he is Jesus!

The point of these stories is that it is not so easy to recognize God when God is in the ordinary—ordinary things or people or events. It seems that we like our God to be big, bold, powerful, awesome, and mysterious. Not so much small, humble. Not too close up.

When the Gospel story that we just heard appears in Mark, Jesus had already performed miracles of healing. He had taught crowds in the countryside. He had cured a woman who could not stop bleeding and restored life to little girl whom all thought was dead. He had cast out many demons.

Then he came home.

The townspeople are of two minds about Jesus’ homecoming. They have heard of his teaching and healings. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him?” they ask themselves. “What deeds of power are being done by his hands!” They don’t deny that Jesus has been successful. They don’t deny the news of his power and wisdom. It is not that they don’t believe he has done these deeds. It is that they cannot reconcile the deeds with the man they know.

Jesus was just a carpenter. On the social scale of the times, about as low as you could get. Unlike even subsistence farmers, carpenters had no land. It was a lowly and low-class occupation.

And yet, this low-class man, son of Mary, had abandoned his family. He had gone off to teach like an educated man. He had gone off curing like a prophet. He put on airs. He gathered a group of followers. The townspeople don’t know what to make of him.

The ordinary familiarity of Jesus trips them up. It is not, in spite of the way the text is translated, that they are offended by Jesus. It is that they cannot see through to Jesus. It is that the power of God in Jesus is obscured for them by the plain, simple, poverty-stricken human ordinariness of the man they all know. He is hidden from them.

Clothing is intended partly to protect us. But its functions just as much to disguise us and portray us in a particular way that we choose. What we wear tells people about us. And all the trappings of our lives are like that. It is nearly impossible for people to know us really. What we own, what we do for a living, where we live, where we come from are opaque layers that people use to figure us out. Sometimes this is aggravating. (Jesus is aggravated by it.) But mostly this is what we hope for. (It is not what Jesus hoped for.)

Right after Jesus finds that his hometown friends cannot see the person that the rest of the world sees, Jesus sends out his disciples to heal people. He sends them out with almost nothing. He ordered them to take nothing except a staff. No food, no luggage, no money. The least amount of clothing possible: a pair of sandals and a tunic. Close to naked as possible. No, no, no, no, no, no, it says in Mark. Six times: no. Nothing.

Everything we carry with us is aggravating. Even when it is great. Everything is its own problem. Clothes require washing and storing, books require shelving and getting rid of, cars require repairs and worries. Things we love lead us anticipate their loss or theft or damage. Things, for all their wonder, are a pain.

But we like to be able to hide behind the things we carry. It takes a lot of time and care to do so. To keep secrets from one another, or particular others. To be careful that we reveal only the right things to the right people. To not expose ourselves and thus become vulnerable. To keep track of who knows us in what way. And to clean up the messes when the boundaries of knowledge we have set up fail and things break loose.

Jesus sends his disciples out with nothing so that they can focus on the task at hand. Which is first of all to free people from demons and to heal them. And which is second of all to give others—people who have houses and food and some things—give others a chance to welcome the disciples and to care for them.

And Jesus sends his disciples out with nothing so that they may be seen without prejudice. So that, to put it another way, they may be transparent to God. So that they may be known as only the people they are and the deeds they do.

And Jesus sends his disciples out with nothing two by two, because it is too hard and too scary to go out naked into the world by yourself.

The things behind which we hide are opaque. So that while we protect our selves we also blind ourselves. And the less we reveal, the less we see. Until, at the end, we hide from everyone and are able see nothing.

The more we spend time looking into the mirror the less we see of God. The townspeople do not see God in Jesus because they are preoccupied with their status and are unwilling to honor Jesus. How will they ever recognize God? They—we—are often enough like the people in those stories who cannot see God standing right in front of them.

Today [baptized child] was baptized into the body of Christ. The church has been called to care for her, to help her to learn to proclaim Christ through word and deed, to care for others and the world, to work for justice and peace, and to trust God in all these things.

We have all been called to help one another to do the same. We follow the way of Jesus. Who has taught us to travel light, and to keep our eyes open. And to see all that there is to see.