For the Salvation of Souls:
A Preacher's Contribution

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It is abundantly clear that food and eating is one of the most recurring and important themes in all the gospels, indeed, in all the Bible. Why?

For one, food is obviously a very basic human reality on the biological level—we need to eat to live.

But it's also a very basic human reality socially and religiously, as we know when we think about how important a shared meal is in our own lives together.

We celebrate important days and events with festive meals: Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving dinners, of course—Thanksgiving in particular almost being equated with dinner.
We look forward to BBQ's together on Labor Day and the Fourth of July and, of course, on Raider days.

We usually celebrate important events in our lives with formal meals, sometimes going out to dine: graduations, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries.

We often eat together on the occasion of the death of our loved ones: the traditional meal after the wake.

Even daily we often celebrate our bonds to our families and communities with shared meals, formal or informal—although not as often as we probably should in these days of fast food and TV.

The meal was probably even more important in ancient times, particularly in Israel, than it is today. We think of the foundational character of the Passover meal, celebrating the Israelites deliverance from Egypt, but even everyday meals had a kind of sacred character: they were religious acts for the Jews.

Meals also had important social functions, especially for the stricter Jewish groups, such as Pharisees, Priests, and Essenes: As one scholar says,  "The sharing of a meal. . . . was, and still is today, a mark of acceptance and friendship. . . . .  They could not offer the acceptance of the table to those whom they regarded as unacceptable, as sinners." "Refusal to share a meal symbolized disapproval and rejection; such rejection was a form of social control."

Meals symbolically maintained the social and religious boundaries between Israel and the Gentileworld—Israelites and Gentiles didn't eat together, but also between god-fearing Jews and sinners—they didn't eat together, between the ritually clean and unclean—they didn't eat together, and between the upper and lower social and religious classes—they didn't eat together. And so sinners—even those good people who were forced to work in unclean occupations, such as butchers and barbers and tax collectors—were not allowed to eat with pious Jews, and for those that were allowed, their position at table was determined by their social and religious status.

Jesus certainly shared the Jewish belief in the importance of meals: we are told that he constantly shared table fellowship with all kinds of people during his ministry, that he used the imagery of the banquet to refer to the kingdom of God that was dawning, that he shared a last, especially intimate and sacred meal—the Last Supper—with his friends before he died.
But he departed from Jewish practices of his time in significant ways: He ate and drank, we are told, with tax collectors and sinners of all kinds, giving great offense to a number of pious Jews. And in today's gospel he feeds thousands of people huddled together on a plain—all sorts of people, we can imagine: sinners, Pharisees, gentiles, upper and lower classes, barbers, butchers and on and on.

The great miracle here was not God's creative activity of producing abundant food for so many—although that's really something in itself—but rather Jesus symbolically telling those who were present—and telling us—that the boundaries that had for so long divided Jews from gentiles, the clean from the unclean, the pious from sinners, the rich from the poor, were finally SHATTERED in this meal that symbolized the coming kingdom and made it present—the Kingdom of God was meant for ALL, without exception.And so it is today. We must ask ourselves if our meals together follow in any way the pattern of Jesus', or

    do we occasionally use our meals to exclude those we don't consider good enough to be with us, perhaps members of our extended family or estranged friends or embarrassing co-workers?
    And positively, do we at least sometimes share our meals with those who feel excluded socially and religiously from our communities?

    Do we do what we can to see that those who cannot really share a festive meal because they don't have enough food, get the resources to celebrate this most basic symbolic and meaningful of human activities, that can give dignity to their lives?

I remember vividly an experience when I was a freshman at Santa Clara: the Jesuit chaplains put together a Seder meal on Holy Thursday for interested students, and I really looked forward to it. I sat down with some of my friends, good Christians all, and, lo and behold, one of the chaplains ushered in some fairly rag-tag families—probably homeless from a nearby shelter—to share it with us. I am embarrassed today as a remember my reaction then—and those of my pious Catholic friends—to that profoundly symbolic and compassionate gesture. We felt intruded upon, our meal and good time ruined: we were the Pharisees and Priests of our day, refusing to recognize God's compassionate offer of a meal to reconcile and save.

The Eucharist we celebrate today is the outcome and culmination of Jesus' long-standing practice of open table fellowship in which he offered salvation to all without exception under the sign of a meal.

In the life of Jesus, a profoundly human reality became a profoundly salvific one. Let us continue, each in our own way, to share the salvation we have been offered with each other and with others by our own table fellowship, which should radiate out from this central table of the Lord.

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