We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 10
by Doug Wiebe
L’Arche Community, Lethbridge, Alberta
sermon to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Lethbridge (abridged)
Luke 24:13-35
Two depressed men walked along the road to Emmaus on the first Easter Sunday. They were not members of Jesus’ 12 disciples, but part of the larger group of men and women who believed Jesus was the long-awaited and hoped for Messiah. But their hopes and dreams had died with Jesus’ crucifixion two days earlier. They were suffering from a crisis of meaning in their lives, and the vibrant, life-changing community they belonged to had evaporated overnight.
Their depression was so deep they did not even recognize Jesus when he began walking with them. Neither did they recognize his voice when he began to teach them. Something in their hearts was stirred as they listened, but the words they were hearing did not reconnect them to the joy, the meaning, or the community that had filled their lives just a few days earlier.
Their spirits were crushed. Their minds could not make the connection between the words of their own scripture and what was actually happening, even though Jesus himself was right beside them explaining it all to them. But their stomachs still worked! So they invited Jesus to stay and have supper with them. As Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, they recognized him for who he really was. Yet when Jesus promptly disappeared, that didn’t seem to bother these two. Their spirits soared again! They understood what Jesus had been trying to tell them on the road! They raced back to Jerusalem and re-connected with the community they thought was gone forever.
It is extraordinary that at a moment of intense grief, loss, and despair, it was not a grand plan, not a stirring speech, but the simple act of eating together that reconnected these two men to joy, to the meaning and purpose of their lives, and to their community.
It is extraordinary, but on the other hand, the connection between joy, meaning, purpose, community, and a good meal is rather commonplace. Jews celebrate their deliverance from Egypt with the Passover meal. Christians celebrate their deliverance from sin with Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, which is nothing more (and nothing less!) than a highly stylized and super-condensed version of the Passover meal Jesus celebrated the night before his crucifixion. Significant times of the year are marked with Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter feasts. Friendships often begin with the invitation to share a meal. Birthdays and anniversaries are celebrated around friend and family-filled tables. The birth of a baby is most fully complete when it takes its first meal at the mother’s breast. What is a wedding without the feast? And the last celebration is often the meal after the funeral where laughter, tears, stories, and food are shared.
These meals are not always happy occasions. Seders, Eucharists, Lord’s Suppers, family feasts, first dates, wedding banquets, breast feeding, and funeral sandwiches can also be bittersweet or excruciatingly painful. Whether they’re happy, painful, or somewhere in between, most of us keep on breaking bread around these tables because somehow we know that our spiritual, relational, emotional, and physical well-being is nurtured and sustained here.
Why do I do what I do? What do I really want? Where, and to whom, do I belong? What is the meaning of my life? These are the universal questions of human existence. They are not often answered completely in our earthly lifetimes. Most of us, however, receive glimpses of the answers. I believe the place we receive these glimpses most often is when we’re eating together.
Who are you having supper with? If I named everybody I had eaten supper with during the last month, you’d get a pretty good sense of what my life is about. If you have questions about the meaning of your life, a good question to start with is, “Who am I having supper with?”
I am the community leader of L’Arche Lethbridge, an intentional Christian community of two homes in which persons with and without developmental disabilities share their lives together. L’Arche Lethbridge is a member of the International Federation of L’Arche that includes about 130 communities in more than 30 countries. At the center of each of these communities is the commitment the assistant and developmentally disabled members make to share their lives together in a very intentional way. The form this most often takes is living together as brothers and sisters in the same home.
L’Arche is no more complicated, and no less profound, than a group of people deciding to have supper together on a daily basis. The first L’Arche Community began in 1964 when Jean Vanier invited two men with developmental disabilities to live with him in a little house in the small French village of Trosly-Breuil. For Jean, a central part of every day is preparing, eating, and cleaning up the evening meal together.
I remember my decision to join L’Arche almost 20 years ago. On my first visit to one of the homes at the community of L’Arche Daybreak just north of Toronto, I remember that we ate oven barbequed chicken, rice, and salad. After a lovely meal and short prayer time, everyone did the dishes, wiped the table, and swept the floor! After years of living in university student communities where mounds of dirty dishes were huge sources of conflict, I leaped at the opportunity to live in a community that cared enough to do the dishes! The story of why I came to L’Arche is much longer, of course, but it is true that my final decision to become a live-in assistant in a L’Arche home was made as the dishes were being done that evening.
Ellen, one of the members with disabilities I lived with during my years as a live-in assistant, dominated the home with unpredictable violence. Being at home in this L’Arche home meant never knowing what was coming next. Most L’Arche homes are not like this, but this one was. As a result, the supper table was often not an easy place to be.
I sat at that supper table almost every day for three years. In fact, I delayed my marriage for one year because I felt that two years at that table wasn’t enough. What was so important? The answer has many layers, some of which I am still discovering. One of the more important answers, however, is that everything was real in that home; nothing was hidden. Almost all of the realities of human existence were present in that home within the space of just a few hours. The violence was real, but the good times were just as real. The pain was real, but the peace was just as real. The rejection was real, but the forgiveness was just as real. The hatred was real, but the love was just as real. The tears were real, but the joy was just as real.
I soon found out that these things were just as real in my own heart as they were within Ellen and the dynamic of the home. This was quite a revelation to a good quiet Mennonite boy. I discovered that the incredibly complex daily dynamic of being in relationship with Ellen was a pretty accurate reflection of the contradictory feelings and impulses that lived inside of me. It was impossible to have any illusions about Ellen. Every time I thought I had her figured out, she’d come up with something new to throw at me. She was, and is, really real. But just as importantly, living with Ellen made it more difficult for me to have illusions, good or bad, about who I really was.
And so the work began. I brought everything that I knew about living in a non-violent manner to my relationship with Ellen in an attempt to help her learn kinder and gentler ways of being in relationship with others and herself. She brought everything she knew about living transparently into her relationship with me. I believe that I helped her learn some healthier ways of being in relationship. I know she taught me how to live more healthily with those parts of me I would rather not acknowledge, and to be more confident in the things I am good at. We are both better people for having known each other.
But more important than what we taught each other is the fact that we became friends and that we have a deep love and respect for each other. After Jackie and I got married, Ellen came over to our home every Wednesday for supper. She was over for supper when Jackie began the miscarriage that ended our first pregnancy. She came with us to the hospital that night, and phoned the next morning to find out how we were doing. When Jonathan was born 19 months later, Ellen made it to the hospital before anyone else and was the first person besides Jackie and me to hold him. She kept on coming every Wednesday for supper and developed quite a wonderful relationship with Jonathan.
Those Wednesday night suppers became a “violence-free zone.” It was something we could count on. It was an important reference point in the week for all of us. We’d been to hell and back with each other more times that we cared to remember, and we were still OK. We had no illusions about who we were, and so we could enjoy each other’s company in a simple, yet very profound, way.
There was much that should have divided us and kept us apart. She’s Jewish and I’m Christian. She’s a woman and I’m a man. She’s OK with violence and I’m not. She went to special education classes and I have three university degrees. We should never have met. We should never have become friends. But we did meet and we became soul-friends. This is because L’Arche is one of the places where people the world keeps apart through ignorance, prejudice, hatred, fear, and violence are empowered to live together, eat together, transform each other, and discover the presence of God in the process of building a community together. And it often begins with supper!
Here then is an invitation that opens the door to a mutual discovery of each other’s unique value and vocation. Here is an invitation at the beginning of the path to becoming fully human. Here is an invitation that lies at the heart of community. Will you stay with us? Will you stay for supper? I like you: will you stay for supper? I am someone that the world has rejected: will you stay for supper? I am someone you don’t understand: will you stay for supper? I’m someone you don’t want to understand: will you stay for supper? God is present here: will you stay for supper?