Soul Food

My friend Christopher is a priest in San Francisco and a budding poet. He recently sent me a series of poems that he wrote about the Eucharist. They intimidated the heck out of me. It takes me a long time to read poetry and I always feel like I have missed three quarters of its meaning. When I read poetry, it takes me a lot of time. There seem to be so many layers of meaning. Poetry is rich, complex and can be incredibly profound. 

It is important to remember that the Gospel of John is really poetry. It is set up like a magnificent poem. Jesus performs seven miracles or signs and each sign is accompanied by a speech. Scholars call them the signs and the sayings. Jesus is constantly saying I AM and then he uses some incredible imagery. I AM bread, light, the gate, the good shepherd, resurrection and the life, the way the truth and the life and I AM the vine. I AM is the name of God. Yahweh. Which is the same as your very breath...AH, AM...every time you breathe, you say God's name.

Today Jesus says that he is bread. Food. God is food. And today this means very little to us.

Who cares about food? I don't know about you but I spend most of my time trying NOT to eat food. While on vacation, I gained five pounds because who can resist a French chocolate pastry in the morning, especially when it's hot and accompanied by the best coffee ever? We not only have too much food, we need to protect ourselves from the onslaught of dinner parties, fast food and the candy in the line at he grocery store. Food is a battle for me.

But it wasn't a battle in Jesus' time. You must remember that they had no fast food. Everything had to be cooked, dough for bread kneaded, fish caught and cooked. Food was scarce and it was a constant source of worry, when you were going to eat again. Hunger was real, so to say that God was food was to say that God fed you. And this kind of soul food that Jesus came to offer, it feeds the soul.

I am convinced that even though most Americnas are overweight and need to diet, our souls are starving today. Starving.

What is soul food? Today a little body will be baptized and the journey of his soul will begin. He will have this inner life, like a plant, that needs to be nurtured and fed. He will enter into a special kind of relationship with God and his soul will need food. Normal food just goes in and out of the body. Soul food feeds the soul. Things like...art, music, beauty, intimacy, truth...this is the stuff that really keeps us going.

It is often easy to see the state of a human soul when a person is dying. I can see clearly if the soul has been nurtured and fed or if the soul has been ignored and neglected. People who have a soul life have this joy and a willingness to let go and trust, a belief that there is something more than what they can see  or even understand. Soul people are mystical and they can let go.

The movie and book Unbroken are based on the true story of Louis Zamperini, the son of Italian immigrants, who was captured and held for years in a Japanese concentration camp. Zamperini had this inner strength that kept him alive, even while they starved and tortured his body. When he was fighting for survival, there was an image that would flash into his mind when he needed strength. It was the memory of watching his Italian mother bake. As a little boy, he would sit on the stairs and look down into the kitchen. She would fold the eggs into the dough. She would knead it. The smell, the sights, the sounds of her baking, it would stay with him because that bread was not just food for the body, it was her love incarnate. It was soul food. And when his physical body was dying, he was kept alive by the memory of soul food.

Many of you have heard me tell the story of the Russian priest that I met when I was in college and researching the Russian Orthodox Liturgy. At the end of my studies, I gave this priest money to fix up his church. It needed so much work! Icons were aging, the floor was sagging, the roof needed repair. But when I gave him the gift of some money, he told me to come back the next day. 

Father Boris took me to the grounds of an orphanage where he handed out 100 Swiss chocolate bars to the children. That was what he did with my money! It was not practical at all. He didn't fix anything. He bought chocolate! But I realized that he was buying soul food for children who had no concept of joy and of a free gift. He was handing them God's love wrapped in a chocolate bar.

Micah's mom came to this cathedral a few years ago. She took  Basic A and out of that class she and some other women formed what is called the Basic A gals. They meet together and pray. It is the kind of group that I want for each and every one of you, because it feeds the soul. The Basic A gals cooked breakfast for the church this morning to celebrate Micah's baptism. They wanted to feed all of you.

If we really understood what this Eucharist is, if we really understood the meaning of this bread and wine really were, there would be lines out the door every Sunday. But the only way you can taste soul food is by beginning to be fed. If you eat this bread and drink this wine regularly, you will begin to realize that a part of you that has long been neglected is being fed. Something deep down inside. 

Strange, how we can be busy and overstuffed with food but all the while we are lonely and our souls are starving for connection, for meaning. 

What feeds the soul? The beauty of a painting that takes your breath away. A song that moves you to tears. A smile from a child. And this...this bread, this wine.

How can explain it to you? It is poetry itself. That God could be food. 

Loaves and Fishes

Jesus was accosted by the crowds. Once they realized that he could cure diseases and heal the sick, that was it. They would not leave him alone. He was forever trying to find time alone or time with his disciples. In today's gospel, he climbs a mountain with his disciples but just as they sit down, they see a mob of people struggling up the mountain to be near Jesus. 

Five thousand. Who knew if anyone counted. The point is that there were more than you could count. Too many. Women, children, uncles and aunts- babies and older folks, climbing in the heat of Israel. Hot, sweaty, tired and hungry. You can almost see them coming. All those people. All those needs and desires and wants. So much for time alone.

Jesus sees them coming and he says the words that all of the disciples must have been thinking. Jesus names their fear. He identifies the elephant in the room. 

Where can we buy enough food for these people to eat? How can we provide for them? Do we have enough? What have we got? Is what we have enough?

Philip gives the first response, the honest response. He says that we don't have enough. Six months wages wouldn't buy enough food for all these people, he says.

A lot of us consciously or unconsciously answer Gods question with...there is nothing I can do about it...I can't help the world find peace. I can't do anything about all the children who have suffered, all the people who are hungry, all the teens who have become lost to drugs...what can I do? I don't have enough.

But a few of us answer differently. When faced with life's challenges, we are more like good old Andrew, Peter's brother. Andrew tells Jesus not what they do not have but what they do have. Andrew looks around and assesses the situation. Then he tells the truth. The truth is that the people did not come empty-handed. 

"I saw a small boy who had a little food..."

There is a little boy who has five barley loaves and two fish.  

If you want to see God at work in your life, you must point out what you do have. For God multiplies our gifts. God takes our meager offerings and makes more of them.  God uses what we have to offer, however little it may be. That is how God works. Jesus did not make food out of nothing. He used what little they had and made it enough.

A new Presiding Bishop has been elected in Episcopal Church. His name is Michael Curry. When he was a young boy, his mother fell into a coma because of an aneurysm caused by a childhood head injury. For nearly a year, she remained in that coma. Eventually she was moved from the hospital to a nursing home. But her family did not despair. No, Michael, his brothers and sisters and his father went to her room every day where they just acted like family together. They did their homework and watched TV, they talked and every night before they left, they prayed together with her. Even if there was not enough of her there, they gave thanks and shared her life. When she did die, Michael realized that the time they spent with her had taught him many lessons. God had made their time rich, their love was enough.

It is very easy to feel sorry for yourself in this life. We all have tragedies. We all have ways in which our lives have not gone as we had planned. There are times when we look at our lives and compare them to the lives of others and we feel as if we haven't been given enough. How many times have people come to my office asking me if God is punishing them? Why not longer health? Why can't they have children? Why are they lonely? Often whatever we have been given doesn't seem like enough.

We all have to chose between Philips answer and Andrews answer. When Jesus asks us, "What have you got?" We can either say that we don't have nearly enough and give up, or we can give to God whatever we have and pray that God can make it enough.

What will it be? Have you been given enough in this life? Can you take whatever you have been given and multiply it to feed the world? Michael's family had only a short time with his mother but they used it to love her and each other. And it shaped his life. It made him into the man he would become.

Michael would later write that this time with his mother taught him that life can be hard, but "A life with God can be a life triumphant." 

A life with God can be a life triumphant.

The Church of England sent a missionary priest to Africa many years ago.  The priest served in a rural township, in a church where he soon came to love a little boy who was his most faithful acolyte. The little boy fell ill and because of poverty and politics, the nearest hospital was a long distance away. But the priest went many times to visit this little boy and he told him stories from the Bible, stories about Jesus and Moses and God's love for us.

When the boy got better, the priest was sent to another area, but the two stayed on touch. Many years later the little boy would grow up and become a priest himself. He would never forget the missionary who told him simple stories in a small hospital room. The missionaries name was Trevor Huddleston. The boys name was Desmond Tutu.

A few stories told to a little boy in a poor hospital in Africa. And God multiplied the offering. And it was more than enough.

So maybe you haven't had the most miraculous life. Maybe you have been dealt only half the cards that some others have to play. Maybe you don't have much to offer. But no matter what you have, how will you answer when Jesus says, "What have you got?"

Will you tell God that you just don't have enough to make any difference at all?

Or will you hand over your paltry offering, your five loaves and two fish, knowing that it is not enough but that God can make it more than enough.

God does that you know, multiplies your gifts and feeds the world with them.

And every Sunday, we give God some wafers, a little wine and what does God do? God feeds us with a food so unfathomable that if we ever could catch a glimpse of its value, we would never miss a Sunday again.

What have you got? What ever it is, God will make it more than enough.