The Sacramental Dinner Bell

Food is basic – necessary for survival.  Call me whatever you want but don’t call me late for dinner.

It is unconscionable that the civilized world stands by as famine stalks Gaza and Sudan – where just in Sudan three fourths of a million are on the verge of starvation.  And the world sits idly by.  Especially, when virtually all food shortage is the result of wars, mismanagement and government indifference. 

Food is one of those areas in life where we can be most critical.  At Pilgrim Place, our retirement community, if the string beans are undercooked there will be a flood of comments from the residents – at least one from me! 

Some foods do not please and there’s no getting around it.  My brother Tom could not abide Brussels sprouts.  With me it was liver and onions.  If I was quiet, when my parents’ attention was directed elsewhere, I could slip most of that in small pieces to our dog Skippy who waited expectantly at my seat.

One night as dinner was concluded, Tom still had five or six Brussels sprouts on his plate.  He placed a napkin over them and proceeded to take his plate off the table, something he never did.  As Dad looked up from the evening paper, he reached over a hand and whisked that napkin off Tom’s plate.

“Sit down,” he commanded.  “You’re going to finish those.” 

As Dad went back to his paper Tom mulled his options.  Then a flash of inspiration.  Maybe these horrible things might taste better if he put them in his glass of lemonade.  Nah, that didn’t improve them.  Well, what about some ketchup.  That always made food taste better.  By this time, Dad had lost his patience.  “Tom, you’re going to eat those…NOW!”

Tom tried to choak one down, gagging and sputtering lemonade all over.  He was soon in tears when Mom, the peacemaker, came over.  She got Dad to agree to let him dump the concoction if he would eat just one.  And promise to never do that again.  I was sure glad that I didn’t mind eating my Brussels sprouts.

In scripture, food is symbolic of the goodness that God intends for all.  It is what the end-time feast is all about, a metaphor for God’s bounty that all are invited to share in on the Last Day.  “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”[1]  All the stuff I now can’t eat due to my renal diet I’ll be able to indulge in.  And…I’ve already notified St. Peter that if there’s no beer, I’m not going.

Again, this week’s passage from John’s gospel brings to mind the Eucharistic feast.  I consider this sacrament as Christ’s invitation to all the sit at the Table of God’s Free Bounty when the dinner bell is rung.  That wafer is the sacramental token of God’s desire that all are welcome to partake in the riches of creation.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Food is a metaphor of God’s graciousness, the whole shebang – God’s will that all are satiated with the entire goodness of creation.  As we, the Church, — Christ’s Body — cooperate with the Spirit to bring this vision to reality, we are Christ present to our neighbors.  It might not be much – a few tomatoes, some peaches and apricots – but it shall suffice when offered up with all the other food that’s donated and distributed every Wednesday at St. John’s.

Unfortunately, this is not how the real world works within our economic system.  If one examines that word, “economy,” it comes from two Greek words – “oikos,” meaning house and “nemean,” meaning to manage. 

In the teachings of Jesus, there is about those left to manage affairs for an owner who is away — just as we are given responsibility to manage our affairs in the physical absence of the Lord.  And how are such managers to be judged? – not on the Last Day but now, in the daily grind of our economic system?  I like to think the standard to which they are held is how the wealth of the household is distributed equitably to all.  Especially the “least of these.”

Now, if we had a manager who was responsible for say, one hundred souls, and say only two of them ended up with 90 percent of all the goodies.  And forty of them had virtually nothing, or near nothing — how would we rate that manager?  If half of them had untended illnesses and never saw a doctor or health care professional, how long should that manager remain in charge?  If sixty percent went to underfunded schools or mostly missed classes, would you keep paying that manager?  If ten members of that household actually had to live on the streets, or were sold into servitude because the manager refused to provide for their essential care, would you keep that manager?  Does this regime the look like the Beloved Community of the Jesus Movement? 

“You’re FIRED!!!” would the end of that operation.

Indeed, you would say that manager ought to be relieved of his or her position and, if not cast into the outer darkness with the mournful whaling and the gnashing of teeth — he or she at least ought to be compelled to live in a tent city on Wilshire Blvd. or some Skid Row among those suffering is the result of the neglect this manager has wrought.  And maybe after a bit of eternity, we might hope that this derelict manager would have developed a little compassion for the cast aside.

Is it any wonder that a good number of the younger generation have given up on the capitalist system?  Their beef?  All it’s done is saddled them with massive amounts of student debt, mainly because the uber rich have refused to support public colleges the way they were previously compelled to under a tax code when they paid their fair share. 

When I went to a community college, I think my tuition didn’t amount to much more than $25 a unit – no longer the case.  Even at public colleges, our students end up graduating with $30,000 to $40,000 in student loan debt.  Hundreds of thousands if they go on to graduate school.

Jorge Reiger, in his book, Christ and Empire,[2] takes the analysis of the disparity further than H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture by noting that most theology is done in the context of a comfortable middle-class culture.  If we are going to look at the context from a comfortable, highly educated standpoint, that’s not the group Jesus was interested in.  The “Least of These” was his focus.  We must ask, what does it mean to do theology from the bottom?   Yes, Jesus was interested in the well to do, but only in that they might develop a heart for those at the bottom, the dregs of the empire’s economic and political system.  How often are we are that rich, young man, woman, sent empty away?

The emphasis on the importance of food enough to satisfy all is a stand-in for God’s will that all have enough of life’s goodies to flourish.  Not only are we talking about freedom from hunger, but the freedom for each woman and man to be fully alive, to reach their full potential.  It’s about being fed with the freedom to have decent work at a living wage.  The freedom to have political agency.  The freedom to love whom you love.  It’s about the freedom to have decent housing in a safe community.  The freedom to learn and go as far as your talent and effort will take you.  In short, to thrive.  St. Ignatius proclaimed, “The Glory of God is a man [a woman] fully alive.”  That means, not only us middle class folks but especially those at the bottom the heap.  The heavenly dinner bell is rung for those who hunger, not for the well satiated.

At my favorite bookstore in Charleston, West Virginia, this past week, I came across a new biography of Harriet Tubman by Tiya Miles.  In her new work, Night Flyer, Dr. Miles centers her story in the context of Harriet’s spirituality and African traditions.  Harriet Tubman rang that heavenly dinner bell loud and clear for those would escape the brutality of their enslavement.  Her’s is a theology from the bottom.  Freedom was the nourishment she served up.

Though Harriet never learned to read, she was deeply immersed in the fabric of the Christian story.   In her work, God was a reality providing comfort, assurance and guidance.  Immersed in a patriarchal society wed to the institution of slavery and domination, she developed a countercultural belief centered on freedom and liberation.

“God set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength to my limbs; He meant that I should be free.”[3]  She followed that North Star, the apogee of the Drinking Gourd,[4] to lead her to her own freedom, and would by it, lead hundreds of others out of the yoke of bondage to their own freedom.  This notion of freedom “stemmed from her lived experience, moral intuition, critical inquiry, cultural learning, religious feeling and environmental surroundings.”[5]  That call to liberation was Harriet’s dinner bell ringing.

Would that the Church learn from Harriet Tubman and realize that if we are to be faithful to the vision of the Jesus Movement, we too must stand against the norms of a society that leaves far too many in the dust.  Ours must be a countercultural stance.  As Christ’s option is for the poor, so must ours be as well. As managers in the Jesus Movement our task is clear.  The poet spells it out: “We are simply asked to make gentle this bruised world.  To be compassionate of all, including one’s self.  Then in the time left over to repeat the ancient tale and go the way of God’s foolish ones.”[6]  May it be so.  Amen.

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[1] Isaiah 25: 6, NRSV.

[2] Joerg Rieger, Christ & Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (Minneapolis, MN, Fortress Press, 2007).  H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).

[3] Tiya Miles, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (New York: Penguin Press, 2024), xviii.

[4] the constellation we now call the Big Dipper.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked” as set to music by Jim Strathdee, “Light of the World,” Caliche Records, Ridgecrest, CA, 1982. Words copyright 1976 by Peter Byrne, S.J. Music by Jim Strathdee, copyright 1981. 

August 18, 2024
13 Pentecost, Proper 15

Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34: 9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58