A sermon by Fr. Davenport ©
Church of the Ascension and S. Agnes, Washington, D.C.
14 April 2002
Acts 2:14a,36-47
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Food is at the center of human life. Social eating and drinking strengthen and celebrate all human relationships: families, friends, marriages, business associations. Shared meals necessarily have an element of intimacy. After a meal, two strangers are no longer strangers. The phenomenon occurs not only with individuals, but also corporately. A banquet for leaders, be they tribal or global, may improve relations between whole groups of peoples. Food has also served as the best means for man to strengthen his relationship with his gods. Food rituals are essential to most religions. Meals are frequently the meeting place of God and man, and not only in the Church's mass.
On the first night or two of the Passover, Jewish families have a ceremonial dinner called a Seder. The meal has no leavened foods, that is no foods with yeast, such as beer and bread. Instead of bread, they eat matzoh, which is sort of like a cracker or wafer. At Passover, Jews eat matzoh to commemorate the Israelites who had to flee Egypt quickly and so had no time for their breads to rise. Once in the desert wilderness, the Israelites used the hot desert sun to bake dough into hard crackers. Besides matzoh, another essential part of the Seder is the Seder plate, which holds five or six dishes. (1) First, there is some kind of bitter herb, usually horseradish, to symbolize the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. Second, there is a vegetable, usually parsley, which is dipped into salt water. The salt water represents the tears shed during bondage in Egypt. Dipping the vegetable into the salt water also may commemorate the Hebrew slaves who marked their doorposts by dipping hyssop into the blood of the paschal lamb and then wiping the blood on their lintels and doorposts so that the angel of death would pass over their homes. Third, there are apples, nuts, and spices, which are ground together and mixed with wine. This represents the mortar used by the Hebrew slaves to construct Egyptian buildings. Fourth, there is a shankbone, which is symbolic of the Paschal lamb offered as the Passover sacrifice. Fifth, there is roasted egg, which has two meanings: it is representative of lamenting and mourning and of spring, the season of the Passover and new birth. Taken together, these dishes recall Israel's struggle for freedom, her suffering as she moved from slavery to liberation, from humiliation to glory. It is Exodus, the formative experience of the Jews. To some extent, the Seder, perhaps the most popular Jewish custom, encapsulates all of Israel's history and signifies her relationship to God.
When Jesus expounded all the scriptures to Cleopas and his companion at Emmaus, our Lord taught them the same lesson as the Seder teaches. Cleopas and his companion should have understood. "O fools," Jesus said to them, "slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" In other words, "Don't you see that the pattern of Christ's life is the same pattern as that of Israel, from suffering to glory, from bondage to freedom?" When Jesus explained the scriptures, he did not use the mindless technique of a fundamentalist, that is he did not turn to proof texts in scripture to show that the Messiah, the Christ, must suffer before entering glory. There are few places in the Old Testament that make that argument explicitly. Rather, Jesus argues that, taken as a whole, scripture shows us a common pattern of God dealing with his people. God's purpose is to create a holy people, dedicated to his service. Since the world resists God's will and follows its own, God's purpose can only be achieved if his people are willing to suffer and to be humiliated. So Christ also had to suffer. In Christ, God intervenes and acts for his people so that they may overcome the chains of sin and death and have victory and life. So Exodus, the great event commemorated by the Seder, is "the prototype of the messianic deliverance. Thus Moses and all the prophets [can] be said to bear witness to the one divine method of dealing with the problem of evil." (2) What God did with Israel, he did with Jesus. Just as Israel went from slavery to freedom, so through our Lord all of humanity may move from death and sin to life and joy.
S. Luke has carefully constructed this scene to make additional points. The meal at Emmaus begins with the proclamation and explanation of scripture, and it culminates in the breaking of bread when the disciples recognize the presence of Christ with them. The meal at Emmaus is the mass. By proclaiming scripture, by preaching, and by breaking and eating bread, the Word, the Son of God, is made present, and his disciples may receive him. Luke reports that before the meal the disciples' eyes were "holden that they should not know [Jesus]." But the explanation of scripture and the breaking of bread cause their eyes to open. This 'eye opening' means that they now see reality. The point is that the mass is not only for those with faith, but also the mass strengthens our faith and allows us to see reality. We come to the mass not because we are faithful, but to grow in faith, not because we already know Christ, but to meet our Lord, not because we have a perfect relationship with him, but to strengthen our relationship with him.
The meal at Emmaus also emphasizes the necessity of generosity and sharing. The story is about the fruits of hospitality. Although they do not recognize Jesus, the disciples welcome him and offer him hospitality. The disciples open themselves to Christ by being hospitable to strangers. The riches of hospitality is a frequent theme in Luke's gospel. "Jesus enjoys the hospitality of Peter's mother-in-law; he shares a meal with the despised tax collectors at the house of Levi; he enjoys the largess of Pharisees on at least two occasions; he dines with Martha and Mary; and he points out the lack of hospitality in the story of Lazarus and the rich man." (3) Hospitality is both a mark of faith, and it strengthens faith.
Wednesday's Washington Post had a front page story about an American nun, Mary Clarke, a former "all-American Beverly Hills beauty, accustomed to luxury and her weekend beach home." (4) Mrs. Clarke is the mother of eight children, but after twenty-five years her marriage ended in divorce. The suffering and anguish, however, eventually led to a renewed life. In the late 1970s, she crossed the border into Tijuana and became Sister Antonia. She gave up her "airy Los Angeles home for a musty Mexican prison cell" so that she could minister to the most miserable. She now lives in a concrete room, about ten feet by ten, in La Mesa State Penitentiary, one of the roughest prisons in Latin America. Sister Antonia has started a new order, the Servants of the Eleventh Hour, for older single, divorced, or widowed women who want to serve the poor.
She provides aspirin, eyeglasses, false teeth and bail to thousands of petty thieves and other imprisoned convicts. She washes and prepares for burial the grotesquely tortured bodies left in gutters by drug gangs. She sings in the prison chapel to lift the spirits of the down-and-out and counsels rapists and drug traffickers as well as the guards who carry automatic weapons. . . .
Long-timers recall when the 5-foot-2 woman halted a riot, walking into a hail of bullets to demand that the shooting stop. Inmates, stunned that she would risk her own life and let the tear gas burn away at her Windex-blue eyes, put down their guns and jagged broken bottles.
She cares for prisoners with tuberculosis, AIDS, and cancer. She raises money for the families of the poorly paid prison guards. One of the guards said, "She gives us a good talking to before we become guards. It's part of our training. She asks us to be better with our families, with our wives, to be faithful husbands, not to drink, and to treat the prisoners well." Sister Antonia says, "Pleasure depends on where you are, who you are with, what you are eating. Happiness is different. Happiness does not depend on where you are. . . . I live in prison. And I have not had a day of depression in 25 years. I have been upset, angry. I have been sad. But never depressed. I have a reason for my being." The Post article is not explicit, but it does leave you with a strong impression of irony: a woman who did not find freedom and happiness until she was in prison. But it is the irony of Christ, who made himself subject to men, and suffered at the hands of men, so that men might have life and freedom. Sister Antonia has gone from the slavery of the world to the freedom of serving Christ. That is a resurrected life.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
1. The five are: maror (bitter herbs), karpas, (vegetable), charoset (apple, nuts, and spices), zeroa (shankbone), beitzah (roasted egg). A second bitter vegetable- chazeret, often lettuce, is sometimes used because of the commandment to eat the paschal lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs uses the plural 'herbs.' (Numbers 9:11).
2. G. B. Caird, Saint Luke, Penguin (1963), p. 258-59.
3. Lawrence Cunningham, 'And Their Eyes Were Opened: A Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff,' Theology Today, Vol. 48, No. 1, April 1991.
4. Mary Jordan, "Tijuana's Live-In 'Prison Angel,'" Washington Post, 10 April 2002, A1. After giving the sermon, I was told that Sister Antonia had abandoned her children to go off to Tijuana. If so, this was not in the Post story.
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||