Sunday Eucharist 8:30 a.m. - Spoken Word 10:00 a.m. - Music & Live Stream
Sunday Eucharist 8:30 a.m. - Spoken Word 10:00 a.m. - Music & Live Stream
April 14, 2024
Christ the King-Epiphany Church
Third Sunday of Easter
Luke 24:36b-48
If you think that this morning’s gospel from Luke sounds an awful lot like last week’s from John, you are correct. Both stories happen on Easter evening. Both include Jesus appearing to the disciples and bidding them peace. Both involve Jesus showing them his wounds to verify his identity. And both have Jesus offering an invitation to touch him to prove that he is really real. Their differences, though, are significant. This morning’s reading doesn’t mention Thomas nor the detail of the locked doors, but it does have another interesting detail: in Luke, Jesus asks for something to eat! And the disciples give him a piece of fish . . . which he then eats!
Truth be told, it’s not the only reference to Jesus sharing food with the disciples after the resurrection. Earlier in this same chapter in Luke’s gospel, Jesus had supper with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, although they don’t recognize him. But it was when he blessed and broke the bread – when he prepared to share a meal with them – that they realized who he was. In John’s gospel, there’s another Easter story of Jesus eating fish, but in John, the encounter happens on a beach along the Sea of Galilee, where he himself cooks it and serves them breakfast. Another meal. While I suspect that Jesus’ eating and preparing food probably does have a lot to do with showing that he’s really real – flesh and blood just like us because, after all, ghosts don’t eat – still, I wonder if there’s more to it.
I wonder if Jesus’ meals with the disciples after Easter are related to the truth that food is love. You’ve heard that expression, I’m sure. It acknowledges that feeding people is an important way that we show love. From infancy, food = love. An infant’s experience of food is intertwined with being held, being touched, hearing the mother’s voice, feeling her warmth – in short, an infant experiences food and love as one event. And let’s face it – we all need both food and love all of our lives, not just as babies. Sharing food strengthens our relationships with one another. Why do you think cake is served at a kid’s birthday party? It’s not for nutrition. It’s to celebrate together, and thus by celebrating together, to build friendships. Why do you think friends and neighbors bring us chicken soup when we’re sick? It’s not for the medicinal value of the soup. It’s to communicate caring. Why do so many dates involve going out to eat? It’s not because there’s no other way to enjoy someone’s company. Dates involve food because eating together (and the ensuing conversation) cements our relationships. Funerals are followed by lunches, not because mourners are particularly hungry, but because by sharing a meal together, community is reinforced. Food = love. And love = community. And it strikes me that these stories about Jesus carry the same message. I suspect he wanted to share meals with the disciples to bind them together in love. So when Jesus shows up in the midst of his disciples and asks for fish (or breaks bread at table in Emmaus or serves breakfast along the Sea of Galilee), I wonder if he isn’t trying to make a point about how important eating together is because it builds community. I wonder if Jesus isn’t trying to prepare his friends for how to stick together after he ascends into heaven.
Eating and drinking together still keeps followers of Jesus together to this day. And while, of course, Buffy’s brownies and coffee do have a way of bonding us together, I’m not really referring to coffee hour. I’m talking about the particular meal that we share every Sunday in this place – the holy meal – because sharing the Lord’s Supper with one another binds us together in a way that nothing else I know can. By sharing in Christ’s body and blood, we are formed into a community that not only cares for and takes care of itself, but also cares for and takes care of the world. We come to this table to be fed – we leave it to feed the world. Food is love.
And just like food is love, here’s another saying about food that I believe has theological significance: we are what we eat. By following Christ and by sharing in his supper – and sharing in him – we become what we eat – the body of Christ. When we eat the holy supper together, we are formed into a community that heals, that seeks justice, and puts God’s love into action. When we leave the table and go back into the world, that’s when our mission of healing and justice and love begins. And it is when our focus is outward on the world that our ties to one another become the strongest because we are bound by the purpose of following Jesus.
We’ve got a precious gift in this community: genuine relationships with God and one another, made possible by the love of Christ. We enjoy one another’s company – that’s obvious to anyone who walks through our doors. But the church is about more than satisfying our own relational needs. We’ve got something in this community that I believe people need – all people: a sense of peace made possible by our sharing in the body and blood of Christ. We’ve got something in this community that others long for: a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of belonging in and to the body of Christ. The church, the body of Christ, exists for the sake of true community, not just here within these walls, but throughout the world.
St. Augustine, a fourth century bishop in North Africa, put it this way in an Easter sermon: “You are the body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken; you are to be blessed, broken, and distributed; that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of the eternal charity,” or said another way, vehicles of God’s love. You are food, and you are love, and you are true community, and you are the way that Jesus has chosen to expand his community outward and draw more and more people into his love. We are what we eat.
When you come to this table today, do so remembering that food is love. And this holy and life-giving food is God’s holy and life-giving love for you. And when you leave this table, do so remembering that we are what we eat. We are Christ, blessed, broken, and shared with a hungry world.
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