The Rev. Ann R. Lougee
September 2, 2007
Let's Be the Church
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16, Luke 14:1, 7-14

There is a tinge of anxiety that accompanies every dinner party. The host wonders, whom shall I invite? Will the guests accept my invitation? Will those whom I invite see me in the same way that I see them, as friends and peers? Will so-and-so get along with so-and-so? Will this person want to be seen with that person? Eating together is a social activity that establishes group identity and boundaries.

The host further worries: what shall I serve? Shall I offer the president of the corporation macaroni and cheese? What will show her that I respect and value her company, that I am worthy to be her peer? Will my invitation be reciprocated, reaffirming the kinship that I have initiated? A shared meal is an act of social formation.
(The preceding two paragraphs are substantially drawn from Stephen J. Patterson's The God of Jesus: The Historical Jesus & the Search for Meaning.)

Meals are ordinarily marked by social boundaries: decisions about with whom we will eat are as real as decisions about what we will eat. Eating and drinking, for human beings, are not simply biological occurrences -- they are occasions for companionship. The word "companionship" comes from the Latin words cum, "together" and panis, "bread." Human beings break bread together. Shared meals express the very texture of human association.

As Mary Douglas, a social anthropologist, reminds us, for human beings "food is not feed." Sharing food represents the basic conquest of our humanity over our animality. Hence one who treats food as feed, rejecting the human dimensions of meals, is said to "make a pig of oneself." And those who eat hastily, indifferent to the others around them, are said to "wolf down" their food.

Like pigs and wolves, sparrows and turtles, cats and dogs and horses, human beings must feed or be fed in order to live. No needs are simpler or more natural. Yet our natural needs for nourishment are culturally refined in ways that other species' are not, through customs and patterns of behavior.

Human beings cook, compose menus, and use utensils. We become mannered in our eating and drinking, and our manners enact and express our tacit commitments to a particular culture with its ways of behaving.

It is precisely because meals express and create our cultural identity that we draw lines at our tables, marking boundaries around our meals with numerous rules and decisions. One of those boundaries, as we have seen, is dietary -- what we consider acceptable sources of nutriment -- and another is social -- with whom we will share our table.

Patterns of "table-sharing," really reveal the operative structures of society. For example, in a provocative study of English, middle-class meal customs, social anthropologist Mary Douglas observed:

Drinks are for strangers, acquaintances, co-workers, and family. Meals are for family, close friends, honored guests... The meal expresses close friendship. Those we know only at drinks we know less intimately.

But as meals express relationships, they can also create them. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim noted:

In a multitude of societies, meals taken in common are believed to create a bond of artificial kinship... In fact, relatives are people who are naturally made of the same flesh and blood. But food is constantly remaking the substance of the organism. So a common food may produce the same effects as a common origin.

In other words, eating the same food makes people the same flesh. So sharing a meal is a vital symbol of social solidarity. When we refuse to share a meal with people, we say they are not of the same flesh, we deny their humanity. Meals enact profound social realities.

In the ancient world, eating together was an even more important form of social formation. The roles, the etiquette, the menu, the company were all tightly managed. Gentiles ate with Gentiles, Jews with Jews. Men ate with men, women with women. Washing preceded eating, and those with clean hands ate clean food. The host presided, the guests reclined, with those closest to the host in positions of honor, and the servants served.

Much attention is given in the Gospels to reporting about Jesus' eating and drinking. His meals seem to be of such importance as to deserve special mention. In fact, if you read the Gospels with an eye to what Jesus actually does, you will see that he is shown to be someone who heals people, speaks in parables, and shares meals -- and he shares those meals with sinners. "Sinners" in this context means those cast aside by the structure of society, those with whom open and free association should be avoided, in the opinion of those who count in society.

In the stories about Jesus and common meals, he is constantly depicted as overstepping these social conventions. He advises that guests should not seek the seats of honor, and that one's guest list ought not to include those one considers equals but instead the destitute who could never repay your hospitality.

Wherever he goes, Jesus seems bent on overturning the customary patterns of social propriety as he shares meals, using them to challenge and erode the various boundaries, the distinctions and discriminations that society makes between people. John Dominic Crossan, in his book, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, writes:

What Jesus advocates is an open commensality, an eating together without using the table as a miniature map of society's vertical discriminations and lateral separations. Open commensality is the symbol and embodiment of... an absolute equality of people that denies... any discrimination among them (or) ... hierarchy among them.

The Jesus of the gospels obviously knows the power of sharing meals. He uses that power to criticize and correct the prevailing social norms. Who Jesus is also is revealed in the meals he shares in the gospels. Often host, he is never simply guest, for he always gives more than he receives. Invited as guest, in the gospels, Jesus turns the tables: as he receives hospitality, he presumes to offer it.

In the stories of miraculous feeding, for example, it is not only the multiplication of loaves and fish which are startling, but also the ease with which Jesus says the blessing, acting as host with food that others have provided. Even the Last Supper he shared with his disciples, a Passover meal according to Mark and Luke, was set in a "guest room." Yet in that borrowed room, Jesus acts as host or lord of the feast.

In English, the word "lord" comes from blending the words "loaf" and "ward." A loaf ward, or lord, is literally one who wards or keeps a loaf. The title "lord" then originally referred to a keeper of bread, upon whom others depend for sustenance -- in other words, for life given in a meal.

Just as feed becomes food when shared in companionship by human beings, furnishing more than nutrition, so food eaten in celebration of someone or something is a feast. At their best, feasts afford genuine opportunities communion between people, for giving to and receiving from one another.

At their best, feasts involve communion both with others, and with The Other, the common ground of our being, from which we come and to which we will return. At their best, feasts enact what human life is ultimately all about -- they are trysts with transcendence -- spiritual, hallowed, and ecstatic.

The Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, is a feast that enacts the kingdom of God that is both now and not yet. So in the Lord's Supper, we act as if God's rule of peace and justice with mercy is already complete and humanity is truly united. In the midst of a world still sadly fragmented and torn by human greed and dissension, we share the Lord's table with the same hope that we express when we pray "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth...," looking forward to a time of human unity and peace. Here we practice at it, with the hope that we may take our practice with us out into the world and live by it.

In a study I read recently, the author pointed to a phenomenon that started being noticed around the 1950's. That is, that people began to speak of "attending" such-and-such a church, rather than being that church. I'm reminded of the wit who said "Going to church doesn't make me a Christian any more than going to a garage makes me a car."

Today's reading from the Letter to the Hebrews does a good job of saying what makes a Christian, describing how we might be recognized or recognize others as followers of Jesus, as being a church in his name. Lewis R. Donelson claims that "it would be hard to find a more representative account of Christian ethics in the entire New Testament," than this passage from Hebrews.

This call to hospitality is a call to ongoing vulnerability to the unknown other." This kind of openness to another makes necessary a willingness to share more than food and shelter – a willingness to share one's own self. Instead of a wary guardedness, we Christians are called to open our hearts, to love others, simply and humbly, and trust God about what happens next. That's the call to "Be church."

Jesus never meant to found a religion. He simply lived and preached a Way, and called people to follow in that Way.

At this table, and in all of our life together, let's practice the vulnerability and the caring and generosity that mark true Christianity. Let's be the church. Amen.