Consecrated Food - Sermon

Sermon preached on April 22, 2007 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge

John 21:1-19
Third Sunday of Easter

Dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives on the campus of Virginia Tech this week, and always to the glory of God.

It is one of the mysteries of scripture; that it can speak to us with new meanings when the situation of our lives demands them. I believe that the Holy Spirit stands between us and the text to give us a new understanding of these eternal words. I have spent this week with the Bible in one hand, and in the other hand, along with people of all ages and faiths, I held the newspaper, not knowing how to cope with the reports from Blacksburg, Virginia. Not knowing how my heart could hold the horrible images, the names and faces of those who died, and the stories of their lives stopped short.

In the face of suffering, I believe that God is weeps with us. In the words of the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, “God’s heart is the first of all our hearts to break.” People around the country and abroad have responded with tears and heartfelt silence, and it seems to me that in doing so, we make God’s presence real. We become an incarnation of God’s word of mercy and compassion. This is true for the tragedy of the murders and suicide at Virginia Tech, and it is true for the tragedies of our own lives. I have seen the people of this church respond to each other in times of grief with the grace of God, not always knowing the perfect thing to say, because there isn’t anything to say, but simply being present with honest empathy.

As I thought and prayed for the communities at Virginia Tech and many home towns, I turned to the Bible in my other hand, to the passage for this Sunday in the season of Easter, and there I began to see what comes after the tragedy, and after the holy silence that is kept with tears. There I found the risen Jesus, and the scars that he still bore from his death reminded me that God knows the great pain of this world. There is no place so dark or so lonely that God cannot go with us, does not go with us. God was on that campus, in those classrooms, just as God is in our hospital rooms, homes, and anguished moments. The wounds remind me that this is true. We are never alone.

The risen Jesus returns to the land that killed him, to the disciples who abandoned and denied him, to a world that must have felt like it was falling apart in the way that it still often feels that it is breaking into pieces around us. And to this world, to the disciples, he offers food.

Jesus sits on the beach over a fire pit with grilled fish for these tired and hungry fishermen. “Hasn’t he risen for something more important?” we might ask. Hasn’t he come back to astound the crowds, or to put all those who turned against him in their place? Evidently not. The risen Christ is just like the man he had always been. He’s interested in giving love, not on a grand scale with fireworks, but grand love on an intimate scale in direct relationships, the kind of relationships that move our soul and change us from the inside out. He doesn’t come with proclamations, sermons, or even an “I told you so.” He comes with food.

It reminds me of all the times in my life when food has been a symbol for deep love and care, not unlike the food on the communion table which always points to something greater. I think about coming in on a cold day to hot chocolate, grilled cheese and tomato soup. I think about the smell of pancakes, my favorite, on a lazy Saturday morning. I remember when a family member had died, and I have gone to a service at a church where I have never been before, where people I have never met provide a grand meal for those of us who cannot think past the next hour. I think about when I was sick and staying home from school and mom brought chicken noodle soup at just the right temperature: comfort food, soul food. It satisfies our hunger but it also fills our heart.

Our teenagers read J.D. Salinger in school, but they only read Catcher in the Rye. I like his other stories, particularly Franny and Zooey, in which Franny comes home from college, feeling sick in body and mind, and lies weeping on the couch in the midst of a crisis of faith, refusing both food and company. Her brother Zooey calls from another line in the house and tells her “if it’s the religious life you want, you ought to know that you’re missing out on every single religious action that’s going on around this house. You don’t even have the sense to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup – which is the only kind of chicken soup [mom] ever brings to anybody.”

It seems to me that we are so often like Franny, so caught up in our own distress that we refuse the gifts of grace. We don’t see the love that is offered to us. Perhaps the gifts seem too simple, too inadequate. How God must yearn to open our eyes and our hearts to receive the boundless love that loves us just as we are, that comes to us as a gift, freely given!

It’s not difficult to receive the gifts of God. It’s simple, and yet the simplest of journeys must often pass through our own histories of feeling undeserving, unwanted, and unloved.

Having fed the disciples he pulls Peter aside. Perhaps he pulled them all aside one by one, or perhaps Peter needed special attention because his downfall, after he had strenuously pledged never to deny Jesus, had been the most heartbreaking. The three questions echo and provide a mirror for the three times that Peter had been asked, while Jesus was on trial, if he had known Jesus and followed him, and the three times that Peter had denied Jesus.

This story, more than any other, shows, once and for all, that God is not interested in getting back or getting even. God is not interested in handing down punishment. When we have done something to harm ourselves, or someone else, or something in this world, God doesn’t come to bawl us out. God comes to restore what was broken. Jesus shows up on the beach, pulls Peter aside, and asks him “do you love me?” God knows there is inside every one of us is not only the capacity to deny that God’s will is relevant to us, to deny God’s love for a fellow human being, to deny God’s mercy for ourselves, but also, inside every single one of us, the capacity to return love for the one who loves us beyond all our brokenness, our wrongs, our denials.

God doesn’t come to beat up the part of us that denies. That never does any good. I don’t think that anyone has ever become a better person because someone told them how bad they are. God comes, not to that part of ourselves, but to the part, even if it is buried way down, that loves. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks.

There is a Native American tradition, that when an adolescent had rebelled and broken the code of the tribe, rather than receiving the people’s wrath, he would be brought to the center of a large circle made up of all the people in the tribe who have always known him. One by one, they would remind him of his worth and value.

After his death, Jesus comes with the simple gift of food, consecrated, holy food, and reminds us that despite the evil in this world, the world is loved by God. All of it. All of it is loved. And Jesus sends Peter off with the message to offer the same grace. To feed God’s sheep with consecrated chicken soup, or with whatever we can provide. Will this love of God be enough to address a world that seems to be falling apart? It will, surely it will. Just as one lit candle drives all the darkness from a blackened room. As we receive and give the love of God to a broken world, we proclaim that there is something deeper than violence and loss. We proclaim the risen Christ.