Big Picnic

     I kind of like it when the story of Jesus feeding the multitude comes up on a communion Sunday like this week!  It is a nice parallel, one lovingly discussed by about a million preachers and commentators.  But for some reason it avoids being trite; it is that deep and fundamental.  Both the spiritual and the bodily intersect at the communion table and in the physical parable.  God feeds us both ways.

     Lee Bristol (whose family’s little drugstore in Clinton NY grew into Bristol Meyers Squibb and built the Bristol Campus Center at Hamilton College) wrote a little book meditating on the ways Jesus shared meals with his followers, such as on the road to Emmaus, the Upper Room, and this event which gave the book its title: The Big Picnic.  He, like many others, noted that always when Jesus broke bread with others something else was going on beyond the food shared.  Jesus shared his very presence in a deep and meaningful way; he was for them the Bread of Life while sharing life’s bread.  Grace and wonder and hope and salvation were passed from one to another along with the crusts and crumb.  It was the pointing beyond the baked goods that make these meals miracles, make them holy encounters with God.  That is still the miracle we experience on communion Sundays.  We really meet and experience God’s grace, support, hope, and salvation when we together share bread and cup.

     But it goes both ways.  It is not just that the church celebrates spiritual nourishment; we are reminded to share physical nourishment.  I am wary of those who “spiritualize” bread too much and neglect (I think) the clear, pragmatic, actually feeding of the hungry.  Gandhi once said that if someone was starving, the only way God dares show up is as a loaf of bread.  The prerequisite for filling a spiritual hunger is filling the person’s stomach.  Simple as that.  Don’t get all “religious” about it and piously overlook that the person in front of you cannot afford food while claiming that bread is a spiritual metaphor.  Alleviate hunger before preaching, huh?  Donna Claycomb Sokol posted a blog about how the church is the place where all are fed.  The congregation she serves took the invitation to communion out past the sanctuary into the streets around the church to the homeless and disenfranchised.  They do both kinds of serving the bread of life.

     FCCI grasps the concept.  We have a demonstrable history of alleviating food insecurity through the different outreaches that happen between communion Sundays.  We’ve helped to feed well over five thousand through the Mobile Packs of Feed My Starving Children, the PB&J packs, supporting the UCC Neighbors in Need offering, and engaging in local political and societal efforts.  But we cannot slack off because the hardships keep coming at so many around us.  Sometimes during communion service while I hold the basket of bread, my mind drifts to the twelve baskets of leftovers in the Bible story, and then it drifts beyond the church to think of all the souls… and bodies hungering out there, reminding me there is more to do for Jesus and his least sisters and brothers.  There is a multitude to be fed spiritually and in fact around us.  Right now.

     I hope you will join us this Sunday for communion, the bread of life.

                                                                              In Christ,
                                                                           
                                                                                David


Texts for Sunday
      From the Hebrew Bible      Genesis 32:22-31
      From the Epistles               Romans 9:1-5
      From the Gospels              Matthew 14:13-21