Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Winton Boyd on April 6
Text at end of sermon

As a kid, I hated green olives. The first time I remember enjoying them was in 2003. I was traveling with a group of 9 students from the UW campus ministry, The Crossing in Israel’s Arab/Palestinian region. Our group of 10 and about 20 college students from the technical college at Mar Elias Educational Institute in Ibillin Israel were traveling on a bus towards the dead sea. It was the first day of our 3-day “field trip” together – to get to know each other, to see part of the country, and to build relationships. We stopped for a picnic at a state park somewhere in the middle of the country. All sorts of traditional Palestinian food camp out of boxes, bags, and coolers. Most of it I had never seen before. Then came the green olives. A number 10 can – the big industrial size can. Someone used a pocketknife to open it and it was just set on the table. As one who didn’t like green olives, I thought, “wow, these people like their olives.” During the next 30-45 minutes– between conversations, throwing a frisbee, laughing, and looking across the countryside- students kept returning to the can. Finally I thought, “I’m here, I might as well try one.”

To this day, I not only love green olives, I can’t eat one without remember that day, those amazing and courageous people, and their constant struggle for dignity. I can’t eat a green olive without saying a prayer for people. I don’t know if I have come to love green olives for their taste, although I do enjoy them – or for their meaning.

Don’t all of us have such connections with food? Soul food? Womb food? Comfort food? Grandmas favorite recipe? A dish from our younger years? Foods we ate on our travels? Don’t we have connections rise up in our hearts because of food?

We say our mom, grandmother, aunt, or grandfather made the “best” brownies, pies, prime rib, green beans, Thanksgiving turkey, etc – and that may or may not be actually true. Grandma’s hot fudge recipe might have come from the back of the Hershey’s chocolate sauce can. Mom’s pies might have used canned peaches. The turkey may have been dry and tasteless.

What is true is that the memory of eating and sharing of food has a deep and profound power in our lives. The memories of sharing food, eating around a table, sitting with certain people – are part of our deep spiritual psyche, part of the way we are connected to something larger in the world – a larger family, a larger sense of time and place, a larger sense of our own evolution as a person –from childhood through adulthood.

As I was writing this sermon, one memorable meal in the home of my youth came to mind. When I was a young teenager, we hosted a young man from somewhere in Pennsylvania who was part of the singing group called Up With People. He stayed with us for two weeks and to thank us asked if he could serve us his “soul food”. This young man, Mike, was seeking “invite” us into his table, into his heart – by offering us a meal of his own making.

I remembered this meal being a Pennsylvania Dutch dish called Fried Tomato Gravy something, so I emailed my sister Perrin to see if she had more vivid memories of this particular ‘soul food.” You will enjoy her response:

“I will do my best (to describe the meal), but I have tried to block out that memory. In my humble opinion, it looked as if someone threw up on the plate. If I remember correctly- he fried up tons of tomatoes and added flour, milk etc to make gravy out of it. It was grayish white with chunks of tomatoes- hence the barf look. The ”dutch part” I think was that you poured the gravy over a piece of toast slathered with molasses…

If this reveals our sense of God’s grace- I am missing something because that is not how I remember it in the least- maybe that is why I am a clown and you are a minister.”

She continued:
“One of the most powerful memories for me was Mike’s enthusiasm whiie I was feeling complete and total disgust. I remember the table (with 7 kids and 2 parents) being unusually quiet. Being raised with some manners, we all ate quietly since we didn’t know how to react in a positive way.

You need to know that Dad and Randy reached sainthood in my mind that day as they both in complete politeness and generousity of spirit went back for seconds.”

Eating mishaps notwithstanding, most of us have collected a whole refrigerator, recipe box, or cupboard full of memories, connections, prayers, and hopes. Just as the pictures on our frig tell of some of our connections to family and friends and travels – so too in powerful and multi-sensory ways what is inside the frig and the cupboard speaks to the grace and hope in our lives.

• It makes perfect sense then, that Jesus’ ministry and prophecy would be centered around food.
• It is no accident then, that Jesus used food as the centerpiece of his core teaching with the disciples (the last supper).
• It is no accident that he used food in this defining post resurrection moment found in today’s text.

When he got to the critical point of passing the mantel to these uncertain, fearful, somewhat confused disciples – he used a food metaphor and a meal to imprint his most important message and his most important act of love?
• Did he not know that when he said, “every time you eat of this bread” that they would be eating of this bread every day?
• Did he not know that it would be impossible NOT to remember him every time they ate together?

In practical and spiritual ways – he understood how critical food is to our lives.

He knew that just as we need it to survive, and that we are shaped and molded by taste, smell, and memory. Both the food istelf and the community with whom we share it have powerful formational influences on our lives. Our womb food is about both food and the community (or lack thereof) we knew as children. The people who made and served us comfort food are often our spiritual mentors.

But more than that, he knew that the way we set the table, the way we manage food, the guests we invite, and the reverence we show towards food is a powerful spiritual symbol of how we embody justice, community and grace.

This road to Emmaus story is a clear reminder to his friends and to us as readers, that one of the chief ways Jesus embodied justice and kindness in his ministry was expanding the table, and breaking the rules towards who was welcome. He reminded his friends, just as he reminds us today, that the depth of our understanding of grace is revealed in our generosity and sensitivity towards food, eating together, and making the “table” open to all – especially the poor and disenfranchised.

In the foreword of the Mennonite Cookbook, “Extending the Table”, Paul Longacre recounts the time when he and his wife, Nancy Helsey were sitting under a tree and talking with Salustiano Lopez, a Toba Indian church leader. Their interest was in seeking his counsel on how their North American service organizations should work in the years ahead. They asked how, in Argentina, he would build trust with the indigenous people who did not know him. How would he build relationships with them?

Salustiano paused for a moment and said simply, “I would go and eat their food.”

Do we realize how important food is to embodying a sense of God’s justice? Bryant Terry, the founder of the youth-based, not-for profit B-Healthy says, “food justice starts from the conviction that access to healthy food is a human rights issue and that the lack of access to food in a community is an indicator of material deprivation”.

Food justice, Bryant suggests, goes beyond advocacy and direct service. It calls for organized responses to food security problems, responses that are locally driven and owned. These responses come in the form of educating ourselves at events like the upcoming Food, Faith, and Earth program on April 13, thinking about where we buy our food, what price we pay environmentally and socially for cheap food. It could come in the form of changing our diet, joining a CSA, writing letters in support of farmers and growers. It could come in the form of reading about the food industry, or watching documentaries to understand where our food comes from and how it is produced. It could come in the form of supporting resturants and grocery stories that pay a livable wage. There are hundreds of ways we can pay attention to food justice. What we remember in reading today’s text is that food justice is not peripheral to the life of Jesus, but was the core of his teaching.

Jesus, like Salustiano many centuries after him, understood that one of the greatest dangers in our spiritual life is hubris, pride. Eating another’s food, inviting another to our table – these are ways in which we keep our lives and our hearts open to the reality of poverty, of malnutrition, of injustice that many in the world live with every day.

This is the season of Eastertide, the season of living into the reality of Christ’s life and resurrection. If Holy Week was a time when the pious words of the disciples came crashing into the counter cultural and even radical nature of Jesus’ life – Easter tide is the season when we move beyond words, beyond statements of faith – into incarnational life ourselves. It is the season in which we seek to live into a spirituality of an open table.

This starts at this table – it starts as we remember the grace Jesus offered to his friends in the breaking of the bread. Because it is grace that guides and grace that we seek to bear witness to with our lives – for today’s communion we are going to have communion bread that is a bit closer to an actual meal. While eating the rolls might make our singing a bit more garbled, they will also serve to remind us that our pursuit of wholeness and justice begins with an extravagant welcome at a bountiful table.  Amen.

Text
13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles* from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad.* 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ 19He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth,* who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.* Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ 25Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah* should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us* while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’