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For the Salvation of Souls: A Preacher's Contribution
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Take and Eat
18th Sunday of OrdinaryTime
08-02-2009
Fr. Edward Krasevac, OP

The Bread of Life discourses in the Gospel of John have always been difficult for me to preach on: I guess they seem somehow too mystical, too metaphorical, just too (I don't know) ethereal and abstract to get me very excited. These discourses of Jesus have been filtered through a long process of theological reflection and development in the Churches founded by St. John before they were finally written down very late in the first century, and perhaps for that reason have never seemed to me to have the same kind of concrete, down-to-earth immediacy as do Jesus' saying in the Gospel of Mark, for instance, which did not undergo so long a process of reflection and development.And so I usually try to avoid preaching on the Sundays in which these discourses form the gospel of the day; but today I'm stuck. I'm going to take the easy way out, however, and not talk so much about the discourses, but more generally about food and eating (which I do love to do!).

Food is obviously important in the gospels and in the entire life of Jesus that they reflect. And not just food grown or eaten, but food as eaten together by human beings in shared meals. The Gospels tell us that Jesus ate a number of different kinds of meals. —On the one hand, we're told that he was invited to meals put on by others--sometimes rather unsavory others, like tax-collectorsCand regularly accepted. —On the other hand, he himself served as host in various kinds of meals, both those with his friends, and also those with the outcasts of Jewish society--Roman collaborators, prostitutes, lepers, and sinners of all kinds, —not to mention his feeding with abundant supplies of bread and fish of the hungry crowd that followed him. These meals had many important meanings for salvation:

his calling of sinners and social and religious outcasts to eat with him signified that they were forgiven and reconciled to God in that very act of being admitted to table fellowship with God's prophet and son;

his meals with his friends and his command for them not to fast signified the joy of the time of salvation which was finally beginning to dawn in his life and ministry;

the abundance of food that he made present in his great feeding miracles signified the abundance of the Father's love and compassion.

These ways in which Jesus ate are not so different from the ways in which human beings have always eaten, and in which we eat today: we too celebrate important days and events with festive meals: Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving dinners, certainly, but

We also look forward to BBQ's together on Labor Day and the Fourth of July

We usually celebrate important events in our lives with more 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 friends with shared meals, formal or informal--although not as often as we probably should in these days of very fast food and TV.

And of course we not only eat to share our joy with others, but also to offer reconciliation to those who are alienated from us. How many times, after an argument with a friend or relative or co-worker or loved one, do we ask them to get a hamburger or cup of coffee with us, or to come to dinner at our house, as a simple gesture of forgiveness and reconciliation and starting over again. So it has always been with human beings.

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 as God, the giver of all good things, was remembered and praised: meals were religious acts for Jews.

And so when the Father decided to do something extraordinary for usCto give his Son to live a life of loving service for us that became sacrificial as he accepted the suffering and death that would result from itChe summed it all up and made it really present and enduring in the context of a MEAL: the Last--the final--Supper that Jesus would eat with his friends before his death. This meal looked forward and prepared for Jesus' final sacrificial offering on the Cross; it symbolized that sacrificial life of loving service both in the washing of the disciples' feet and the eating and drinking of the sacred bread and wine that would become the very substance of his life; and it gave thanks for and rejoiced in God's goodness and in the friendship with one another that that goodness had made possible.

I really have only two points to make here: The FIRST is that the Last Supper was indeed the Last Supper; it was the culmination of many festive meals that Jesus ate both with his friends and with others: hence it must be understood not only in terms of the sacrificial death that it sacramentalized, but also in terms of all the earlier celebrations of the joy of the salvation that was beginning, the intimate reconciliation of sinners with the Father, the abundance of God's salvific gifts.

The SECOND is that the Last Supper and the Eucharistic sacrifices we celebrate in its tradition are first and foremost meals, an eating together in friendship, fellowship, reconciliation, remembrance and joy. Jesus did not just say take, nor did he say "take and look," he said "take and eat," and he addressed those words and passed that food and drink to all--even Judas--sitting around the Passover table with him. And that means, I think, that we also must understand the Eucharists we celebrate very much in terms of the other meals in our lives, just as the Last Supper was understood by Jesus and his friends in terms of their long tradition of eating together. Our Eucharists must also be joyful, reconciling, abundant, and inclusive, as the Eucharist we celebrate today is the outcome and culmination of Jesus' long-standing practice of 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--eating together--became a profoundly salvific reality. 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, at this Eucharist, certainly, but also at the other meals in our lives which should radiate out from and reflect this central table of the Lord. Let our other meals as well be reconciling and joyful and inclusive, let them also be signs of the Lord's presence in our lives.

One day during one of the summers when I was a young Dominican student, and we were all at our retreat house on the McKenzie river in western Oregon for vacation, the Italian priest who was in charge of the place was cooking a special dinner for usChe was a great cook, but also, well, a colorful and irascible man (and, I think, a great one). I was helping him set up and cook while the rest of the students were in the chapel saying Evening Prayer together. But they weren't through by the time dinner was ready, because they had decided to be particularly pious and also say Night prayer in common after Evening Prayer (which was not on the schedule, because said privately). The wonderful dinner was of course getting cold, and so Fr. Moschini blew his hot Mediterranean lid, went into the chapel, called the students stupid and ignorant (as he often did!), but also asked them if they had forgotten the God was present, not just in their pious practices and prayers, but perhaps even more powerfully when they were gathered together as brethren to eat and drink (and laugh and argue) together, as a family and table fellowship that the Lord had founded, and at which he was present.

And, you know, Moschini was right.