Broken 4 U

Without doubt, one of the most significant ministries of the Christian Church has been the feeding of the hungry. It is something that we do today. We do it through Meals on Wheels. We do it through food banks. We do it through many and various forms throughout the world. It’s vital and important, for Jesus said, “When was I hungry, you fed me. Now go and feed others.”

There’s still a great deal of urgency and need to feed the hungry. In Ontario alone last year, 412,000 people used food banks. From 2008 and the economic meltdown to 2012, the numbers who have gone to food banks have risen to 31%, whereas the population has only grown 15 per annum. The number of children who are fed at food banks represent 38% of all those who receive food. It is a tremendous need. While like many of you, I recognize that in a just society and in a so-called just world, food banks and ways of feeding people seem like an anathema, they are necessary.

Almost so from its very inception, the Church of Jesus Christ has recognized this need. As early on as the writings of St. Augustine, he defined love in the following terms: “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others, it has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy, it has eyes to see misery and want, it has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows or men. It feeds the hungry. That is what love looks like. “

He is not alone. From the earliest monasteries that would in fact feed people who were travelling throughout Europe and Asia Minor, the hungry knew they had a place to go and to be fed. Here in Toronto in the 1930’s, during The Great Depression, the soup kitchens on Jarvis Street were a great source of help to those who were unemployed and destitute. But it was the church that ran those soup kitchens. For the Christians today, who were the primary supporters of the refugees who were leaving Syria and ending up in Jordan and in Turkey, it is Christian charities that are there feeding the hungry, even though the odds are overwhelming and they cannot meet them. To right here in the city helping people grow healthy food to be able to be self-sustaining is a ministry of the church.

For 2000 years, from the moment Jesus asked us to feed the hungry, it has been part of our ministry and it probably always will. Yet hunger isn’t just a physical manifestation. Hunger is also profoundly spiritual and personal. The same St. Augustine wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” There is a hunger, in other words, in the soul. There is a hunger in the inner self, as well as that which applies to nutrition and appetite. That is why the great William Barclay said that the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, is a meal for hungry people. And yet that very first Lord’s Supper was indeed a meal, a full meal. Bread and wine were part of the meal. It was planned, it was important, it was a true dinner, but since then, the meal has taken on other dimensions. It is not the meal per se that it started out with in Jesus’ time. It has transformed into something else, and yet it’s still a meal, even though it might not appear to be in the physical sense.

I love the story that I read about a young boy who went to church with his father, and decided to sit through the entire service with his father for one time. There was the offertory that was taken before the Communion, and his father put some money on the plate and an elder received it, and a little later on in the service the elder also handed out the cube of bread and the little cup of wine, and the little boy leaned up to his father and says “Now I know why you only tipped the server 25 cents.” It appears as if it’s nothing. It is but a morsel of bread and a sip from the vine but it’s more than that. It feeds us. It feeds us because its dimension begins by being a dimension of a meal that is from the past. It’s a meal from the past, because when Jesus sat down with the disciples in that Upper Room and had it prepared specifically for the day, it was a celebration of the Passover: The passing over of the first-born of Israel in order that they would not be destroyed. It was the salvation of the people that was celebrated under Moses. It was an incredible moment in the life of the people of God. And Jesus, as was his custom, would sit down with his disciples; they would probably recite the Hallel Psalms, Psalm 113 and beyond. They would sing songs in praise of God, they would have prayers, and they would share in this great Passover meal: A time of celebration and joy and of salvation. It was a meal of the past.

As we remember the meal, as we now celebrate the meal, it is also a meal of the past. It is our remembrance of the embodiment in that meal of the very sacrifice of Jesus himself. It is a symbol, a sign, a remembrance of his death and resurrection, and every time we take of this meal, we re-live, we recall, we memorialize, we remember the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the gift of resurrection. It is a meal then, for all time. For two thousand years it has been the one thing that we’ve all looked back to, to remember, along with baptism, which also celebrates and remembers the death and the resurrection of Jesus. So the Lord’s Supper is the other great sacrament of the church. It’s still one of the most heart-breaking things, though, to realize that this sacrament is also still a source of division within the body of Christ as well as unity. This, I think, needs to be worked on soon. It is a great thing, for history matters, collective memory matters. We remember Christ when we take the bread and wine.

This past week I watched the first game of the hockey season, it was in Montreal, and the Leafs won. I’m a Canadiens fan and I cried! I watched the game with great joy, though, but it was the beginning that really caught my eye. This is where the Canadiens do things well. They passed a torch, and the torch came from one of the great players in their history. It was handed to each and every player that was going to play that season, and ended up in the Captain’s hand. Somehow the imagery of passing the torch reminded the Canadiens of their past and of their heritage, and also encouraged them into the future. The Lord’s Supper is just like that. It is the passing on of the torch. It is the handing on to every generation, the remembrance of Jesus and what he has done for us.

It is also a meal for the future. It is a meal of hope. For us it is the meal that celebrates the moment between the resurrection, ascension of Jesus and his return. It is the meal that we celebrate to remember the resurrection but prepare ourselves for the future. It is an eternal meal.

Jesus said there will come a time when you will be able to eat this meal in my Father’s Kingdom. That there will be something more, because we never know, do we? None of us really know what tomorrow will bring. We never know what our lives will be like. Therefore, to take the bread and the wine when you can and to celebrate it while you can is an incredible gift.

This came home to me this past week. I shared this at the Xchange on Wednesday night. I received a call from British Columbia from one of my long-time friends and colleagues, who was at University with me in Cape Town. She phoned me to let me know that one our classmates and dearest Christian friends with whom we scrimmaged at rugby and sang songs and went to Christian fellowship together, had been in Kenya at the Westgate Mall and had been executed, shot through the head: My age and a father of three. There in Kenya to help young entrepreneurs – those who have no business background to teach them –set up businesses. He had brought with him young Africans from South Africa who had been success stories in business to help encourage the young Kenyans in the future. The very Sunday before, as the Warden, he had actually overseen the Eucharist at St.Peter’s Anglican Church in Mowbray in Cape Town. You never know. The last meal that he took with his congregation was never thought to be his last meal, but it was. His priest said afterwards in a newspaper article in The Cape Times that we will eat with him again. It is a meal of future.
I love what the great liberation theologian Orlando Costa once said, “Taking communion in this life is but the first course. More of the meal is yet to come.”

It is also a profoundly inner meal. It is no coincidence that Matthew covers the fact that Judas betrayed Jesus and was revealed as the betrayer at the Lord’s Supper. It was the examination of the heart. It revealed what was in Judas’s soul. Yet for all of that, Jesus still says, “Take this meal, this broken body for you, is for the forgiveness of sins.” If the meal is about anything, it is for the broken, for the sinful, for the anguished, for the guilty, for the sorrowful, for the mourning in all their brokenness to come and recognize that someone was broken for them first. That is why he breaks the bread and shares it. When he offers us the bread in the meal of the Sacrament, we say “Take eat. This is my body which is broken for you.” But as we take that, we leave behind our own brokenness and our own sin. It’s a moment for some introspection and some deep inner thought about what our needs are.

It is an outward meal. The wonderful thing about the Lord’s Supper is Jesus says that he wants all of us to eat of it. This is what the Apostle Paul captured in Corinthians. He wanted the whole body of Christ, everywhere in every age to celebrate it. It was a meal for the hungry: The hungry of soul, the hungry of body. Those who are in need, come! Jesus wanted, as we said in our opening prayer and our call to worship, for the hungry to be able to receive the blessing of Christ, both physically and spiritually.

On this worldwide communion Sunday, I’m thinking of all the people, even in the last year that I have met who are celebrating communion today. I’m thinking of the Principal of the Bethlehem Bible College, who is in the midst of the most awful stress and strain, with a wall separating his community. There he is, breaking bread, probably has already done so a few hours ago, with his congregation at the school. I’m thinking of the Archbishop in Cairo who, in the midst of the turmoil and uncertainty is breaking bread and sharing wine and lifting up Christ. I’m thinking of those missionaries and care-workers that are with the refugees in the camps that are surrounding Syria, and I know that they are also this day, even in small groups in very meager conditions, celebrating the bread and the wine. They will take whatever they can find to celebrate it. I’m thinking about a pastor who ministers in Colorado, whose church was flooded in silt, but still gathers the people together to be able to give them bread and wine. I’m thinking about those who are working, for example, in shelters here in Toronto and are providing the Sacrament today, this morning, for those who are broken and are in need and are physically hungry. I think that throughout this world, there is no difference between us. When we come and we take the bread and the wine, we are as one. It is this memory of Christ. It is his hope in the future. It is this inner desire for the peace of forgiveness. It is this collective communion of the gathering with one another that actually makes it a meal for the ages, and a way of solving our hunger.

Remember, St. Augustine wrote, “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others, it has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy, it has eyes to see misery and want, it has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of people, it feeds the hungry. That is what love looks like.” And love was broken for you. Amen.