Eucharist Sunday Year A Alternative First Reading

When I was first told that the local church would feed 500 people at their strawberry social, I was dumbfounded. How could the scattering of seniors that faced me from the oak pews of that tiny chapel ever expect to muster the person power necessary for such a feast? They could hardly make it up the front steps without help! But no amount of hand wringing on my part could dissuade them. Even as the great day dawned, I had my doubts. I could picture line-ups of hungry citizens complaining about the snail-paced service as our half dozen souls served people into the wee small hours. But as the sun rose, so did the list of volunteers. Folks from everywhere arrived to lend a hand. Names that lay dormant, permanently fixed on the inactive side of the membership roster, suddenly sprang to life to lend a hand. Food made sense, as worship did not.

I was left to puzzle, why? Why would agnostics, atheists, and non-attenders show up to help at a church social? Sure, the baking was to die for, and there’s nothing like a mountain of strawberries as an excuse to eat a bowl brimming with whipped cream! But there was more at play.

A common table speaks to most folk, whether they are religious or not, because a meal is the moment when we all admit we are needy creatures. In contrast to the battlefield, senate chamber, or even church chancel, the dining room is a great leveler. It’s a humbling environment where, above all else, we admit we are mortal.

It is not strange to associate eating with faithfulness. In consuming food, we
acknowledge that there is a Creator who provides for us. No one by dint of virtue or strength of character can instigate the miracle of the harvest. It comes from on high. In a similar fashion, the exercise of consuming food re-enforces that all beings are equal before God. There is no one who is beyond eating or freed from the necessity of daily bread. Call it solidarity or fellowship, a meal binds us together as children of the Almighty as almost no other activity can.

In the end, we filled 632 plates that season and through the laughter than ran around the hall, I could hear the voice of a spirit that had rarely visited our Sunday morning worship. It was in those flashes of joy, the exuberance of a real meal, where there was a place set for everyone and seconds for any who wanted them, that God came to supper.

The words of Christopher Levan.