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October 2, 2016 - World Communion Sunday
Exodus 12:1-13, 13:1-8
The
Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 2 This month shall
mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year
for you. 3 Tell the whole
congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb
for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a
whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall
be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it.
5 Your lamb shall
be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the
goats. 6 You shall keep
it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled
congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take
some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses
in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it
roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any
of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs,
and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything
that remains until the morning you shall burn.
11 This is how you
shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in
your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. 12 For I will pass
through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in
the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I
will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the
houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no
plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
The
Lord said to Moses: 2 Consecrate to me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to
open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.
3 Moses said to
the people, “Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of the house
of slavery, because the Lord brought you out from there by strength of hand; no
leavened bread shall be eaten. 4 Today, in the month of Abib, you are
going out. 5 When the Lord
brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your ancestors to give you, a
land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this observance in this month.
6 Seven days you
shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a festival to
the Lord. 7 Unleavened bread
shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen in your
possession, and no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory. 8 You shall tell
your child on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came
out of Egypt.’
Sermon: “Feasting on Onion Sandwiches”
One of my favorite places on
earth is our family hunting camp less than 100 miles from the Mexican border in
Texas. We call it “Mac County” because
it’s in McMullen County. My
great-grandfather purchased the land, and the family legend goes that he was
hoping the railroad would come through and lead to great financial
success. The railroad ended up many
miles away. But that land is priceless
to us.
Mac County remains a rustic
camp for my family. What’s lacking in
terms of running water and electricity is made up for in innumerable stars and domino
games. Everything is cooked over an open
fire, and you’d be surprised at what delicacies can be concocted in that way.
But on one particular trip
when I was a teenager, the menu was…different.
My parents and I were making
a quick trip to ready the camp for deer season, and it was an especially warm
fall South Texan day. I came expecting a
meal of grilled steak and potatoes or something delicious. What my parents brought was a loaf of bread
and an onion. The menu? Onion sandwiches. I cannot overstate my dismay at such a lunch.
Ever the foodie, even then, I
connived to redeem that simple fare. It
was too hot for a fire, so I borrowed a lighter and got to work “toasting” my
onion. It was a tedious effort, and the
result was a lukewarm onion with the distinct undertones of butane. Yum.
The food we eat reveals so
much about us. Or put another way, you are what you eat. The Saga of the Onion Sandwich revealed
that: 1. It was a hot day. 2. We were in a hurry. 3. We didn’t want to bother with an ice chest
or a campfire. 4. My parents are frugal, and 5. I can be a little fussy when it comes to food.
As we enter into the story of
the Passover in Exodus, we find the same to be true: the food the Israelites
ate revealed much about them. We have
incredible detail in the institution of the Passover, not because God is a
fussy foodie, but because each and every
detail matters, as a window into the story and life of the people of
Israel.
A lamb must be used for each
household – symbolizing purity and unblemished innocence. But justice and compassion are woven in,
because if a family cannot afford a whole lamb themselves, they can join up
with other families and share one.
The blood of this lamb is a
precious thing, adorning the doorposts of their homes because these are a
people who have bled. Their suffering is
remembered, not just through words or stories, but through blood. This is not meant to be a feel-good meal.
Dennis
Sanders[1]
helps us understand their sorrow mirrored in the particulars of this meal,
saying, “The preparation of the meal was
incredibly specific. They eat bitter herbs as a reminder of their suffering. They
use flatbread or bread without yeast because they had to eat in a hurry. The
lamb was not to be eaten raw or boiled. Why did it matter if the meat was
boiled? Because the waters of Egypt were the places where the Hebrew male
infants were drowned at the Pharaoh’s command. The water brought death and this
lamb could not come in contact with a reminder of the evil inflicted upon
them.”
These
refugee people are told that doggy bags are not an option: they are to eat
their fill, and then destroy what’s left.
There is no hoarding for tomorrow.
(After all, hoarding is an Egyptian ethic, and they are fleeing
enslavement from that gluttonous society of haves and have-nots.) They must rely on God’s sustenance each new
day, taking life one precarious, precious day at a time.
They
are what – and how – they eat.
Now,
I could turn the tables here and ask how you ate your breakfast this morning
(if you ate it at all). Whether you were
standing at the kitchen sink, rushing like those Israelites, which says you
might have a habit of lateness or over-sleeping. Whether you had the same breakfast as every
day of your life, which says that ‘change’ might not be your favorite word or
activity. But today, I don’t want us to
talk about your breakfast table. I want us to talk about another Table.
On
this World Communion Sunday, I want us to think about the particulars of this
meal, and what it says about who we are, and who we hope to become.
We
begin this meal with a welcome, not from me, but from Jesus Christ. The welcome is essential, because it is the
hardest for us to accept. Sometimes, we
don’t feel we’re worthy to be welcomed by God; God welcomes us anyway. Sometimes, we don’t feel others are worthy of
our welcome; God calls us to welcome them anyway. It all begins with a welcome.
And
then we bless one another: “The Lord be with you…” I say (and you say “and also
with you”). We call each other to lift
our hearts to God, and to give God thanks, and then we do that: praying
together.
The
words change but the prayer is essentially the same: we remember the story of
our sacred text, we sing of God’s grace, we remember the person and work of
Jesus, we confess our trust in him, we remember that Pentecost wasn’t a one-off
event, and we ask for the Spirit to make this meal a holy one.
I
don’t pray for the bread and the cup to become
Jesus’ body and blood, because I as a minister can’t really command God to
act on cue (I am not a minister of magic).
Instead I pray that the bread and cup would be “for us” Christ’s body
and blood, that is a sign and a seal
of the grace we receive through his body and his blood, given once, for all. So, I pray not for God to transform this
bread and this cup in that moment, but for God to transform us, however long
that may take.
Then
I say the words you may know by heart, that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he
gathered with his friends in a upper room and took bread, giving God thanks for
it, and broke it, giving it to his disciples and saying, “Take, eat, this is my
body, broken for you.” I tell you how
did the same with the cup, saying “this is the cup of the new covenant sealed
in my blood, drink of it all of you for the forgiveness of sins.” I then add, “for as often as we eat this
bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the saving death of our risen Lord, until
he comes again. He will come again.”
I
finish by saying all is ready, and all are welcome. All.
Now,
this puts me in a bit of tension with traditional Presbyterian practice, which
says all “who are baptized and confess Jesus as Lord” may come to this Table. But knowing our Book of Confessions and Book
of Order are always secondary sources to scripture, I read Jesus feeding his
betrayer Judas as an invitation to the faithful and the faithless, the follower and
the betrayer, and to everyone in between.
So I say all are welcome,
because I believe that there are no prerequisites
to an encounter with the grace of God, and I believe that, as a minister, I am
a steward of the sacraments, not a gatekeeper to them. You can see I’ve given this some thought!
Then,
we eat the bread and drink the cup, today by intinction as you come
forward. On this World Communion
Sunday, you will hear the words “the body of Christ broken for you, the blood
of Christ shed for you” in another language, reminding you of this global Table
we are a part of.
The
elder(s) serving and myself eat last, because we have a call to serve you first
in all things. And then we pray, asking
that this tiny taste of the kingdom will nourish us to leave this Table better,
more peaceful people.
We
celebrate the Lord’s Supper to remember who Jesus was and what he did, just as
those Israelites ate the Passover to remember who they were and what Yahweh had
done for them.
But
we also do this to claim who we hope to
be, a people who do not re-enact the sacrifice of Jesus once a month (which
is why do not call this an Altar but a Table), but who daily sacrifice
ourselves by feeding the hungers of this world, with God’s help.
We are what (and how) we eat.
So let us come to this holy Table today, and feast on the stories of our
faith, finding our place and call within them.
Let us come to this holy place, and celebrate the bountiful goodness of
our God, who feeds and sustains this world each new day (even with onion
sandwiches). Amen.
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