We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 8
by Rachel Epp Miller
San Antonio Mennonite Church (Texas)
November 16, 2008
Isaiah 25:6-10; Psalm 34:1-10
When I think of feasts, many stories and images come to mind. I think of family gatherings where hearty conversation goes in more directions than the people present. I think of my experience of feasting with new friends in a small village in Kenya where their generosity was displayed with everything they had. I think of our annual Thanksgiving worship service where we eat together and share about God’s presence in our lives, or the Love Feast on Maundy Thursday when we together remember and reenact Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. I think of the daily routine of my friend Rosemary who had Alzheimer’s disease who would always say to me, her caregiver, after supper, “My sufficiency has been sufonsified”. I think of camping with nieces and nephews, roasting sticky marshmallows over the fire and stuffing them with Caramilk bars. But I also think of the daily reality of food—eating lunch at church while chatting with Jake or Hugo or reading the Mennonite Weekly Review, enjoying a late supper with Wendell while catching up on each other’s day, or laughing together through last night’s John Stewart episode.
One of my favorite feast-scenes from the big screen is in the movie “Chocolat.” This is the story of Vianne and her daughter Anouk who get carried into a small, tranquil, old-fashioned French town by a strong north wind. They arrive at the beginning of Lent, a season of austere discipline for the townspeople, and Vianne sets up her chocolate shop. Throughout the movie, people succumb to the temptation of chocolate, but the Count is determined to ruin Vianne and close down her shop so that life can get back to normal, when he had complete control over the town and its people.
Into the midst of the town’s growing delight in Vianne’s sensuous chocolate and the count’s desire to crack down on such behavior during the Lenten season arrives a band of river rats known to some as pirates, who put down anchor on the shores of this French town. The Count spreads the news of their immorality, and the whole town puts a ban on these strangers, but Vianne becomes good friends with Roux, one of the captains. When the priest preaches one Sunday about the evils of temptation (including both association with pirates and the temptation of chocolate), the people no longer stop and linger at Vianne’s shop. But instead of throwing up her hands in exasperation, Vianne decides to throw a feast. A select group from the town receives invitations, and she counts on her culinary secrets to melt people’s hearts. My mouth waters as I watch the scene – succulent chocolate sauces being poured over roast duck; special red chili powder being sprinkled in steaming cups of hot chocolate; cakes with intricate designs painted on their chocolaty surface. For a chocolate-lover, it is a beauty to behold!
But even more amazing is the motley crew of people gathered around the table: an old woman and her estranged grandson; a married couple who, before tasting Vianne’s chocolate, were on the brink of divorce or life-long monotony; a dog and its elderly owner who hasn’t been able to work up the courage to buy chocolate for the widow sitting next to him, even though her husband has been gone for decades; a woman, transformed by working in the chocolate shop, after being abused by her husband and seen by villagers as a compulsive thief. And as this unlikely group of people dig into their hors d’oeuvres, Roux, the river rat, the man who symbolizes for the village all immorality, walks toward the table and takes his place amidst the shocked silence. Once the shock wears off, they enjoy food and laughter around the table. When Vianne announces that there will be no dessert here tonight, the protests are loud and strong. She smiles and says, “Dessert will be served on Roux’s boat.” Again, a moment of uncomfortable silence follows, but then they all go, eating and dancing long into the night, barriers less sure, and enjoying a sense of renewed welcome and freedom.
Something significant happens when we share food together. Whether it’s a special occasion or a daily routine, gathering with friends or family or strangers around a common table celebrates the ordinary and the extraordinary, the coming together of stories, the breaking down of walls, the recognition of our common human need for sustenance—physical, emotional, spiritual sustenance. Gathering at a table is about hospitality and generosity; it’s about receptivity and humility; it’s about being strengthened and being vulnerable.
There are many table or feast stories in the Bible. Some of us are studying the book of Esther together these weeks, and in this small book alone, the word “feast” comes up as many times as in the entire Old Testament. There are many stories of Jesus gathering to feast with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, crowds of people and even the religious leaders with whom he so often disagreed. In so many of these instances, the people gathered together with Jesus are invited to be changed. Remember Zacchaeus? He welcomed Jesus into his home and his life was changed—he paid back four times what he stole from people as a tax collector. Or remember when the day had become long and the crowds were getting hungry, and so the disciples gathered food from a small boy and a miracle took place where food could be abundantly shared with surprising amounts left over? Or remember when Jesus gathered on the night of his betrayal, took the common bread and cup of Passover and transformed them into a new ritual for his disciples with new meaning based in his life, suffering, death, and resurrection? And remember one morning after Jesus’ death when his discouraged disciples had decided to return to their fishing nets? The risen Jesus met them on the shore, and they ate bread and fish together. Jesus pulled Simon Peter aside, asking Peter if his love was strong, telling him to feed and tend and feed his sheep, to walk boldly after Jesus and be forever changed.
Something happens when we come together to feast when Jesus is also invited to the table. If we think of worship as a great feast, we come together every Sunday to the table of worship, to be fed, to hold out our hands in expectation to our God who is Bread of Life. We come to taste and see that the Lord is good; to hear again the stories of our faith; to practice hospitality to the stranger; to pray for those who hunger for this bread; to speak in testimony the powerful words that shape us, that stir us to just action, that leave us changed.
Like the people of the tranquil French town, we too sometimes get lost in our rules of behavior, our lines in the sand that indicate who is welcome and who is not. And too often we lose sight of who we are, and who it is that created us. But, somewhat like Vianne, instead of raising her hands in exasperation, God invites us (this motley crew that we are) to a great feast—this deeply ordinary, yet mysteriously extraordinary feast of worship.
This feast of worship celebrates the ordinary. So much is predictable and familiar in our gathering—we hear familiar words and sing familiar songs, we see familiar faces and remember that we are community even as we welcome the stranger, we hear the Word of God and have opportunity to share with one another. We know that we’ll begin somewhere between 10:45 and 11:00 and that, whenever we end, no one will be in too great a hurry to leave this place. There’s something routine about our feast of worship—something wonderfully ordinary and known.
But something extraordinary happens at the same time when we gather at the table of worship. While we are rooted in this time and place (10:45-ish in San Antonio), we enter worship and remember that people are gathering similarly all over the globe, reading the same scripture, singing songs of praise in their own language, worshiping the same God. We enter worship and time suddenly becomes more fluid—suddenly we’re delving into the stories of the past: stories of Moses and Miriam, Peter and Paul, Mary and Elizabeth—and somehow these stories become a part of our story. Somehow by feasting on these stories of faith, our own stories come alive and are filled with meaning and draw us closer to God.
When we come to the table of worship, we’re also strengthened by visions of the future, visions of a new reality: a vision of a great feast of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear; a feast for all nations on top of God’s holy mountain where death and suffering and division will be destroyed, where our eternity will be exactly a feast of worship—never-ending praise, adoration and peace before our God. This is the very mountain that opens Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 2 as he envisions all nations streaming toward God, to learn God’s ways, to beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, never to learn war again. How can our feast of worship today be anything but extraordinary with such a vision to behold here and now and in the future? Because this, exactly, is the extraordinary thing about worship’s table: that the past and the future come together in the present and they shape us into the people of God for today.
It is at worship’s table that we are strengthened to live this new reality here and now. When we feast on prayer, singing, scripture, when we share our struggle and our joy, when we taste and see that the Lord is good (in both our struggle and our joy)—this goodness overflows so that we might share this sustenance with others. When we return again and again to feast at worship’s table, it is possible for us to speak truthfully about the brokenness of our world, to lament, to call for justice, to live for peace—to do this with a hope that is stronger than sentiment; a hope that does not turn its face from suffering, but steps boldly into that very suffering; a hope rooted in Christ and his cross — a hope that is our life-line.
When we feast at worship’s table, when we have made God’s story our own, when we have glimpsed the promises of God’s future reign, it is possible for us to see signs of God’s story all around us—in our homes, at work and at school, on the highways, in the grocery store and on the bus.
It is our God who lavishly prepares this feast for us—week after week, year after year, day after day. It is our God who invites us over and over again to open our hands and be filled, to take the strength of God’s feast and go out and share it just as lavishly with others. It is our God who promises that the feast that we delight in today is nothing but a foretaste of the feast to come when God will gather all nations, all peoples, former enemies and friends to God’s mountain where we will forever be filled with God’s goodness, together at the table of worship forever. May we be strengthened by this promise and go from this place, sharing peace with all peoples, and may we return to this table to be nourished again by the one who continues to call us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Amen.