Luke 24:35-48
When I was growing up I seem to remember frequent get-together’s with the families of my cousins -- and I had a lot of them. Or maybe we’d go over to the grandparents’ house for supper, or vice versa. My mother and father liked to entertain, about the only thing they agreed upon. My mother had nine siblings, and four were farmers or married to farmers. I remember when I was a newly minted doctor and went back to Montana. I had some time so I drove to the farm country to join several relatives for supper. Interesting topics come up at mealtime. The men got into an argument about which was better as a fertilizer, chicken manure or cow manure? After a great deal of debate, my cousin turned to me and asked me what I thought, because I was a doctor. I don’t remember my answer.
Today Jesus appears in the midst of his disciples once again; and they are startled and terrified once again. Jesus has been murdered. His heart has been impaled on a spear just to make sure he was dead. He was buried in the ground, wrapped in a shroud. And he rises from the dead. The world will never be the same. The most momentous event in history, past, present, and future, has taken place. God was put to death and man rose from the dead, and God and man were one in this Jesus. And Jesus asks, “do you have anything to eat?”
What kind of question is that, Jesus? I imagine that dying and rising from the dead can make you pretty hungry – but still....
It's possible to read this statement as a way for Jesus to show his disciples that he is flesh and bone, not a ghost. But remember that in the section of the gospel just before this one, he was sitting at the table sharing a meal with the two disciples who had just told the apostles about their own meeting with Jesus.
I think instead that Jesus wanted to eat with his disciples again; the desire to share food with friends is perhaps a much stronger sign of being human than having a body of flesh and bone.
But eating with other people is an intimate act, and not an exclusive one. Most of us who are married began our relationship with meals together – usually these would begin with sharing food and drink at a party or a dance, gradually progressing to that first deliberate meal together in a nice restaurant. And getting away to eat together is still a way we renew our relationship.
The Quakers have an insight which I think all of us can appreciate; unlike most Christian denominations, they do not celebrate the lord's supper, the Eucharist, holy communion – all terms which have to do with a symbolic meal of bread and wine, which we Catholics believe becomes the body and blood of Christ. The Quakers, though, believe that wherever two or more people share a meal, it is a sacred meal. God is present in a special way. We can see the roots of the idea in the statement Jesus made, “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am.”
When Jesus appeared among his disciples, they were frightened and even terrified. When he asked them for something to eat, they were reassured because they had heard words like that from him so many times before when they walked with him through the length and breadth of Israel. No doubt they remembered the little girl whom Jesus had raised from the dead. As he handed her to her parents, his words to them were “you give her something to eat.” After he raises his friend Lazarus from the dead, the next scene has Jesus at a supper being held in the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. On the shore of the lake after his resurrection he starts a charcoal fire and cooks some fish, and calls his apostles: “come, have breakfast. “
In our world we are losing something that makes us human. In many homes everyone eats when their schedule permits. And when there is an attempt to get everybody to sit down together, there is often someone who feels put out because they will be late for the next event.
When we eat with each other, we make ourselves vulnerable; we open ourselves up in more ways than opening our mouths. We can't really eat with other people unless we converse, even if we talk about nothing but the weather. If we don't speak, we are eating alongside them, not with them.
It's important, I think, for us to make an effort to recapture the act of eating together, at least now and then. It's important for our humanity, it's important to overcome alienation and loneliness. And it's important for our appreciation of the Eucharist, which, after all, is a meal, a meal in common, a meal in which we share the bread and wine and speak with each other and with our father, all in response to the invitation of Jesus: “take and eat this, all of you, for this is my body.”
So you've just heard a sermon about sharing a meal. Maybe you feel it's a small matter. But figure if Jesus asked for something to eat after changing history, opening the gates of heaven, overcoming death, and winning our salvation, it isn't a small matter at all.
