Sermon: Easter 3

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23243409.post-37633455264069671572008-04-06T07:03:00.000-04:002008-04-06T07:04:27.217-04:00Sermon: Easter 3Breaking Bread: Being Served and Serving Sunday, April 6, 2008 Easter 3, Year A (RCL) Luke 24:13-35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how [Jesus] had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Today, Jesus is still known to us in the breaking of the bread. When I was a senior in high school, I served as the liaison between the wealthy suburban Episcopal church where I grew up, and the poor inner-city Episcopal church that hosted the largest feeding program for the poor in the Diocese of Southern Ohio. Each month, I was responsible for seeing that parishioners from my home parish signed up to cook and serve meals, I had to talk with the priest and staff at the inner-city church to coordinate schedules, and I had to swing by and pick up large containers of donated food from the local Olive Garden. Each month, cars of white, suburban soccer moms and business professionals would drive downtown to an area of Columbus affectionately referred to as “the bottoms”, park in the vacant lot across the street from the church, and descend the steps into the dark and dingy basement of the church where the meals would be served. Soon after, a line of local Appalachian working-class poor would form at the top of the stairwell. When it was time, the doors would be opened and the men and women and children who had been waiting would funnel into the undercroft, forming a line at the window where the food was dished up and served. After everyone had been served, we’d serve ourselves there in the kitchen. We’d wait until the entire line had gone through, then we’d take some of what was left and stand there, huddled around the kitchen counter, standing, eating our dinner and talking with one another. Meanwhile, all of the locals were seated out there, in the undercroft, in another room with a very different feel. From time to time, someone would approach the window, asking for seconds, asking for more milk, asking for something, and one of us would have to leave the kitchen and go to help. But that rarely happened. Usually we could stay in the safety and comfort of the kitchen the entire time we were there, with the food and the trays and the window between us and them. All of us felt pretty good about what we were doing; all of us were proud of ourselves and our church for helping to feed the poor in our midst as Jesus would have done. None of us paid too much notice to that fact that we were well dressed in Polo and Tommy, that our clothes were covered with clean aprons to protect us, that we smelled of sweet perfume or at least didn’t smell like week-old body odor or stale urine. Truthfully, we didn’t have to pay attention to these things because we were in the kitchen, talking and sharing and breaking bread with each other and not out there in the undercroft with everyone else. We weren’t out there sitting next to the elderly man with lettuce and sauce and crumbs lodged in his unkept beard, or the woman with year-old dreadlocks held together with oil and dirt, or the child who belched and flung food and kept bumping into others unapologetically. Our food was our own, our tables were our own, our space was our own. We felt good about our service, yet we were safe. That is, until the priest at that poor inner-city Episcopal church there in the “bottoms”, in the sewer of central Ohio, until she asked us to try something new. From now on, we were going to be serving dinner family style; we were going to be preparing large bowls of spaghetti, salad and breadsticks, and instead of handing them out through the window, we would be placing them directly on the tables for people to serve themselves. So, when everyone came in from outside, there would be no waiting in line, but everyone would be seated around the dinner table with the tables already set with food and plates and utensils. And our job, instead of hanging out and eating in the kitchen, our job would be to go from table to table to get refills on food and drinks. And not only this, but she had another idea as well, an idea which would pull all of us out of our comfort zones and challenge how we thought about the Last Supper, about the Eucharist, about table fellowship and the breaking of the bread. She suggested that we not only wait on our guests in getting refills on food and drinks, but that we also eat with them; that we sit down with them and rub elbows and talk with them and share the same bowls with them. If we needed to get refills, we could do so, but for the majority of the meal, we would be sitting and eating with them. For you and I today, this may seem like an easy, even welcomed request, but for those from one of the wealthiest parishes in central Ohio, even the suggestion itself was greeted with objection, rationalization, and fear. “What was wrong with the way things have always been done?” someone asked. “We’ve come to serve not to eat” another stated. Quickly, part of the group decided that they would just eat before everyone arrived, then they’d be able to be up and moving around to help out. Wanting to support this new style of serving dinner, I decided that I’d take a chance and join the people at the tables, but that I wouldn’t force others from my church to join me. If they wanted to eat beforehand and then hide out in the kitchen, that was their choice. Yet at the same time, I made it clear to everyone that I wouldn’t be helping them in this way, that I’d only be getting refills for my table, as was the original intent of serving dinner family style. At first, some of my parent’s peers objected to my “sitting down on the job”. Yet slowly but surely, more and more of them began to engage those they were serving in conversation; more and more of them were being served by those they were there to serve. Within a few months, everyone was sitting at the tables; no one was in the kitchen. Within a few months, a transformation had occurred; Jesus had become known to me, Jesus had become known to them, in the breaking of the bread. Today, Jesus is still known to us in the breaking of the bread. One of the things that I love most about St James is our passion for outreach and our acting out Jesus’ gospel of service to others. I’m thrilled that four times a year a sign-up sheet shows up and is filled with our names, volunteering to cook and deliver meals to the Burlington Emergency Shelter. I’m thrilled that on Palm Sunday, and again this past Sunday, our St James Youth Group gathered after church in the kitchen to prepare and deliver a meal for the shelter. I’m overjoyed by our support of this most important feeding ministry in the North End of Burlington and stand as a witness to this ministry’s fulfillment of an essential part of Jesus’ gospel message to us. Yet I also dream. I dream about what it would look like if we stayed and broke bread once we delivered those meals. I dream about what it would look like to have our church family breaking bread with their shelter family. I dream about a table surrounded by homeless men and women from the cold streets of Burlington and housed boys and girls from the warm walls of St James Episcopal Church in Essex Junction. I dream about our seeing and recognizing the face of Jesus in them just as clearly as they see and recognize the face of Jesus in us. What if we somehow, someway developed an even more intimate relationship with the clients there? What would that look like? Back in the basement of that poor inner-city Episcopal church there in the “bottoms” of Columbus, I learned what that would look like. I learned that making a meal or dishing up food for others wasn’t the same thing as eating with them, talking over dinner with them, truly breaking bread with them. I learned that I can give others food, but unless I stay and eat with them, I will never truly receive the gift of faith and hope that God is calling them to give to me. Sitting and eating with them, I was able to truly see Jesus in them for the first time; my eyes were opened and I recognized the God in them recognizing the God in me. It was when we served and were served that Jesus was revealed to all around the table in the breaking of the bread. My hope and prayer for us today is that we all set our minds and hearts on the task of creating more opportunities for us to break bread with those we feel we differ the most from; that we take the time and give each other the courage to enter into fellowship and relationship with the strangers in our midst and on our roads; that we come to know and to learn that while we have much to give, we also have much we need to receive. Amen.The Rev. Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01996742602813947057noreply@blogger.com