Homily for July 29, 2018

Homily for Sunday, July 29, 2018:  Good Shepherd and Graves Chapel

Warm hospitality… that is what we are being asked to consider through today’s lessons. Hospitality is not simply a sharing of food and drink among family and friends, though few things in life are better than such convivial sharing. Hospitality, we are reminded, is God’s gift to us and the Lord’s sign of blessing. We understand from the Old Testament prophet Elisha that the bountiful feeding of his people is the Lord God’s purpose and plan: “They shall eat and have some left!”

Will you please take a moment with me now to recall and then reflect upon a memory you have of a meal celebrated with family? Maybe a special holiday dinner comes to mind, or maybe a simple evening meal with your immediate family. I hope, like me, you find a smile beginning to warm your heart. Can you see the faces of the ones seated around the table with you? You may even remember each one’s customary seat. Can you hear the sounds of conversation and laughter? Can you see, maybe even smell the platters and bowls of good food being passed? If you have such happy memories, and I pray all of us do, reflect on what such a shared meal might represent in God’s kingdom. Is there a better metaphor for the Lord’s intimate and loving companionship with us than the experience of a family dinner? Commissioned by Our Lord at the last supper he shared with his closest friends, the Holy Eucharist—Holy Communion—is the profound outward and visible sign of the gift of loving intimacy we are invited to share with Our Lord and with one another.

The earliest Christian churches were house churches—meaning that services were held in the private homes of the members; maybe one particular home was established as the church base for a certain community. Imagine the kind of trust and love that must have prevailed among those members. After all, they lived in a time when Christians could be persecuted, even martyred, for their beliefs. If you were the host, having the courage to open your door to all who wished to attend a service, even newcomers, must have been fraught with anxiety. Yet, walking in the footsteps of the Lord, you understood that hospitality itself was the key to building a Christian community—and you opened your door. When Paul writes to the members of the church at Ephesus, he prays for their courage and steadfast faith. He says, “I pray that…he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” “Rooted and grounded” by our faith, we are called to make the Lord’s love visible in this world by our own hospitable lovingkindness.
Hospitality was clearly important to Jesus during his ministry. Even before his ministry officially began, the first recorded miracle of Jesus occurred when he turned some water into wine at a family wedding in Cana—saving the host from embarrassment. Today’s story of the feeding of the multitude, 5000 people, recounts a miracle that is recorded in each of the four gospels. The context and the details of the miracle are important to our understanding of Christ’s expectations for the ministry of hospitality. At this point in his life, Jesus is feeling worn out. He has crossed the sea and climbed up a mountain with his disciples, hoping to have a respite from the desperate crowds that now follow him, seeking his blessing and, often, healing. Even so, when he sees the large group of people climbing the hillside toward him, Jesus knows he must not only welcome them, he must also provide some nourishment for them. He asks the disciples what food is available, and famously takes five barley loaves and two fish and turns them into enough food for all those people—with twelve baskets left over.
How does he manage this miracle? Jesus tells the people to sit down on the grass; in another of the gospel accounts, we are told he asks them to sit in small groups. Then, certainly with the assistance of the disciples, Jesus walks among the people, distributing the food until all are satisfied. He has welcomed them to a kind of dinner they can understand and enjoy together—a picnic on the lawn with those nearest to them. All who are hungry for what Jesus has to offer are fed. Is it any wonder that “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world’”?  Jesus simply disappears quietly when he realizes that the crowd wants to take him by force and make him king. Ruling over them with political power is NOT the objective of the Lord. He simply wants to provide for their human needs, including their need to believe in a loving God. For that reason, in the intimacy of the Last Supper, Jesus models for his disciples the way he wants them to “feed his sheep,” with a communion of bread and wine that reenacts his feeding of the multitude as it also serves as a reminder of his death on the cross—the ultimate sacrifice of his love.
With communion [or with a 5th Sunday dinner] we experience the intimacy of enjoying a feast with friends and family.  That comfortable feeling of hospitable togetherness would certainly have been at the root of the success of the early house churches. Yet, it can also be experienced at the largest of cathedrals. A few Sundays ago, Dave and I were in Washington and we worshipped that morning at the National Cathedral. That beautiful and imposing space, built with such majesty to the glory of God, also has its own feeling of warm hospitality, thanks to the people who serve there. When we went forward to receive communion, I asked for directions to the St. John Chapel, where we had been told priests would be present to offer the laying on of hands for healing. A kind usher guided us to the chapel, just to the right of the main altar. When we entered the chapel, we found three priests at separate stations, individually greeting those who had come for prayers and quietly praying for and with them. Dave and I moved to the back of a short line to await our turn.
When we were invited forward by a woman priest, we knelt before her, and I said we were there to pray for healing for our good friend Donna [who has had the 3rd recurrence of her cancer]. I will never forget the kindness and compassion of that priest as she placed her hands on our shoulders and quietly offered prayers for Donna and for all those who love Donna. We left the chapel and the cathedral with a feeling of great hope, the blessed assurance that all will truly be well with our friend. In that small chapel within a grand cathedral, we experienced the presence of our Lord through the loving words and kind hands of a priest.
By telling us that the bread and wine of communion are his own Body and Blood, Jesus provided a way for each of us, 2000 years after his life and ministry, to experience his gracious presence. We call this feast “communion” because we share it in community with each other and with the Lord, around a common table. As priest and theologian Richard Rohr has said, “More than a theological statement that requires intellectual assent, the Eucharist is an invitation to socially experience the shared presence of God, and to be present in an embodied way. Remember, within a Trinitarian worldview, everything comes down to relationship.” Whether we kneel together in solemn worship at the communion rail or sit on the grass at a family picnic, we can experience the Lord’s presence with us—and in each other.
[Whenever I am here in Graves Mill] I think often of large family dinners at  my grandmother’s house, of the many loving hands that prepared the food, of comfortable and comforting relationships. Of corn pudding, peach pickle, and pies of all varieties! Do we first learn how to love God from learning how to love one another? Or, is the ability to love implanted in us by a gracious and generous God? The beautiful words of Psalm 145 suggest that in and through God all things are possible: “The Lord is faithful in all his words/and merciful in all his deeds…The Lord upholds all who fall; he lifts up those who are bowed down…The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord,/and you give them food in due season…You open wide your hand/and satisfy the needs of every living creature…The Lord is righteous in all his ways/and loving in all his works…The Lord is near to those who call upon him…”
Truly, the Lord IS always with us. It is simply up to us to recognize the Lord’s presence, to make ourselves fully present as we call upon God, as we seek the Lord’s face, as we serve the Lord in one another. It is with joy and reverence I now pray, “Be present with us, O Lord, in all of the ways we break bread together, in all of the ways we practice your gifts of hospitality. And be present with us, Lord, in our need.” AMEN.