Have You Anything Here To Eat? Sermon for Easter 3 (April 30, 2006)

If you have ever watched the Food Channel’s Japanese cooking competition show called Iron Chef, you knew that it begins with a screen graphic showing a quotation from Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an 18th century French politician who once said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." The 19th century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said something similar, "Man is what he eats."

These observations have been distilled into our modern idiom: "You are what you eat" is a saying one hears or reads pretty regularly. And it's true. Eating shapes our identities, defines who we are. A particular food and drink may highlight ethnicity, nationality, or age: tacos, lasagna, Coca Cola (over fifty), Pepsi (under thirty,) hamburgers, sushi. Food and drink defines the great holidays and important celebrations of our lives: champagne on New Year's Eve, turkey at Thanksgiving, plum pudding at Christmas, hot dogs on the Fourth of July, eggs at Easter.

An ordained colleague of mine once commented that the Sacramental presence of the Eucharist has shifted location in the modern church. Once the table-fellowship of the church was centered on the altar; now, he said, it is found elsewhere depending upon denominational tradition. For Baptists, it is now found in the fried chicken dinner; for Methodists, in the potluck supper; and for Episcopalians, at coffee hour. He was kidding, of course, but there is an element of truth in his humor.

Gathering for a shared meal, of whatever kind, is a fundamental part of the human experience. We must eat together to be human and to become human. We must also, it appears, eat together to know God. President Woodrow Wilson, who was the son of a Presbyterian minister, once noted that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. "No one," he said, "can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach."

Food plays a very important role in the great story of God and God's people told in the Scriptures. Eating and drinking can be the occasion for sin, for separation from God and from others. Remember, the misuse of food, the fruit of a tree, caused the human fall into sin. A difference over which kind of food was a better offering to God, vegetable produce or animal flesh, led to the first murder, Cain's killing of Abel. The Hebrews rebelled against God in the wilderness because of their doubt as to whether God could feed them. Satan's first temptation of Jesus was to urge him to ease his hunger by turning stones into bread. Judas was revealed as Jesus' betrayer when he dipped his bread in the dish after Jesus.

On the other hand, many of the good and wonderful parts of God's story involve food and drink. There was a second tree in that first garden, a tree giving eternal life. Abraham entertained angels unawares, providing food for them and learning that he and Sarah will have a child whose descendants will be a blessing to all humanity. God, in spite of that rebellion in the wilderness, fed the Hebrews with manna and quail, and quenched their thirst. Jesus took one boy's picnic lunch and fed five thousand men, together with their wives and children. The culmination of God's plan for humanity and, indeed, for the entire creation is described as a great feast which last forever and to which all humanity is invited.

Today we have a Gospel lesson in which food plays an important part: Jesus "showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence." (Some ancient manuscripts say that they also gave him a piece of honeycomb which he took and ate; the Authorized Version includes this reference.) And this is not the only post-Resurrection appearance in which food plays a part. We have already heard the story of Cleopas and his companion, to whom the Lord was revealed in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:30-32) In another post-Resurrection appearance, John records that Jesus cooked a grilled fish breakfast for the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21:9-13) The traditional interpretation of these incidents, particularly the one we heard of in today's Gospel, is that they were meant to demonstrate to the apostles, and are recorded in Scripture to demonstrate to us, that Jesus' Resurrection was actual and physical, not merely a ghostly appearance.

I'm sure that's true, but I have always thought that the particular incident we heard today has an additional significance. Jesus, asking this question, "Have you anything here to eat?" sounds like a teenager coming home from a hard day at school, a construction laborer returning from the site, a farmer coming into the kitchen after hard work in the fields. It has always seemed to me that there is a suggestion in this that Resurrection, redemption, salvation is hard work! You and I and the rest of our race are so darned stubborn, we are so obstinate in our sinfulness, that saving us must have taken a lot of energy!

One supposes that God could have accomplished the work of redemption in anyway God chose, including just waving his almighty arm and being done with it. But, as Frederick Buechner noted in his book Listening to Your Life, that isn't God's way. God does not wish to be up on high, separated from God's people. In Christ, God has "pitched his tent among us"; God has dwelt with us where we are and as we are. As Buechner put it: "[Jesus] never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks." Real life questions like, "Have you got anything to eat?"

I believe that that is a question Jesus continues to ask. Just as he stood in that room and asked it of the first disciples, he stands in this room and asks it of us. Last week, we received the materials for The Bishop’s Annual Appeal through which Episcopal Community Services is funded. Among the many ministries ECSF supports are a variety of food banks and feeding programs, including our own Free Farmers Market. As I read through those materials, it occurred to me that in the need of hungry people here in our diocese, here in our town, Jesus stands in our midst and asks us the same real life question: "Have you got anything to eat?"

And the answer to the question must be, "Yes." And what we have to offer them is not simply our money, which is what the Bishop’s Appeal is asking for, but what our money represents – ourselves, our life and labor. "You are what you eat," said Savarin and Feuerbach, but the idea was not original to them. In the Eucharistic prayers of every Anglican prayer book are the words penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549:

We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.

Many centuries earlier, St. Augustine of Hippo said,

You are the body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken; you are to be blessed, broken, and distributed; that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of the eternal charity.

In answer to the question always asked by the Risen Christ present in the suffering of the Poor, "Have you got anything to eat?" we must always respond with sacrificial giving: "Yes. We have ourselves to offer, to be blessed, broken, and distributed." I encourage you to respond generously to the Bishop's appeal on behalf of the hungry whom ECSF, Free Farmers Market, and other ministries feed and, whenever you can, to all those in whose need Christ stands asking, "Have you anything here to eat?"