Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Empanadas de Pino, Queso, y Ensalada Chilena.
That was our Lunch last Monday. My brother Jimmy was visiting us on a break from School up in Pennsylvania, and Leslie decided to make a Chilean meal while he was here.
Empanadas are a kind of Chilean pocket sandwich. Pino empanadas are a meat pie. The meat mixture is made up of browned ground beef and onions, seasoned with cumin, thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, and paprika. After most of the cooking is done, you add raisins to the mixture and let them plump up with the juices from the meat. Then you take a couple of spoonfuls of it and wrap it in dough and either bake or fry it. The baked kind can be as big as half of a large dinner plate, and constitute a meal in themselves. Empanadas de queso are made with cheese, usually a white cheese similar to Monterrey. Those you definitely deep-fry.
Ensalada Chilena – literally, Chilean Salad, is simple: thinly sliced tomatoes and onions, tossed with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and liberally seasoned with chopped cilantro and salt and pepper.
We gathered around the table, gave thanks, and Jimmy and I just soaked in the smells of home. A bite into the salad transported me back to those Asados - open-pit barbeques – we were lucky enough to enjoy at mission meetings in Temuco, in southern Chile. There was usually a side of beef, a
sheep, and a pig that ended up suspended on spits over a 15 x 15 foot pit,
and the salad was a required side dish. Empanadas are one of the national dishes of Chile, along with Cazuela de Ave, a chicken stew, with potatoes, carrots, and a kind of pumpkin in the broth.
To my family, my brother, sisters, parents and I, those are all comfort foods.
Comfort food that I’ve come to add to that list since I’ve gotten married: Pineapple cheese casserole, the first time I heard it described, my reaction was ‘no, thanks!’ but after tasting it, it became a standard at any holiday meal or special occasion. Tomato sandwiches in the middle of summer, when the tomatoes are perfectly ripe, and the bread is fresh, and there’s enough mayonnaise to make it a challenge to keep the tomato between the bread. Squash casserole, made with sour cream, it usually doesn’t last beyond two days in the refrigerator. Or Creamed Hamburger and rice, one of the simplest meals to prepare, but the emotional comfort it brings goes so far beyond the simplicity of the tastes that there is simply no comparison.
Aunt Lala, my mother’s middle sister, and Uncle Ray, lived in Nashville Tennessee for years, and always had the biggest table I can remember. Stan, Kim, Brad and Eric, our cousins, and for several years, 4 additional Park kids would join her either around Christmas or Thanksgiving, or really, whenever we could fit in a weekend trip to Hermitage.
“Y’all come!” was all we needed to hear to run down the hall or up the stairs from the den, to sit and eat and joke and laugh and try to follow fifteen conversations at once.
“Y’all come!” meant it was time to feast, to quench our thirst, to satisfy our hunger.
Out from all this, Jesus is calling us to his table.
“Y’all come!”
But what does he call us to?
He promises to quench our hunger and thirst, as he promised the Samaritan woman at the well, but hunger and thirst for what?
He offers himself, the bread of life, and the water of life. But which life? The life I’ve just described? We live in a country and an area within that country that can at times and to many of us, feel like just this side of heaven. If we were to scratch just a little beneath the surface, though, we would probably find otherwise.
One of the surprising benefits of parenthood has been rediscovering children’s books. We’ve introduced Hannah, Caleb and Judson to ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, as well as to other classics, like ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, or ‘Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day’ and Shel Silverstein’s ‘The Giving Tree’. One of the joys of parenting has been to discover new children’s books, like ‘Bedhead’ or ‘I Love You, Stinkyface’, or to find books that, though designed for children, have something to say to adults as well … I think, in retrospect, that is the genius of Children’s Literature anyway, that the books and stories have something to say to those being read TO as well as to those doing the reading.
We have one book, a simple little paperback that has action prayers, songs, and prayers for mealtime. Flipping through it, Leslie came across a prayer from Nicaragua that caught her off guard. We pray it occasionally around the table at home:
O God,
Bless this food we are about to receive.
Give bread to those who hunger,
And give hunger for justice
To those of us who have bread.
Today we observe World Hunger Day.
We live in a world of harsh, sometimes horrible realities.
Enough grain is produced in the world to provide every living person with two loaves of bread a day, and yet, nearly one in six of us goes hungry.
• More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished—799 million of them are from the developing world. More than 153 million of them are under the age of 5.
• Six million children under the age of five die every year as a result of hunger.
• Of the 6.2 billion people in today’s world, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day.
• The amount of money that the richest one percent of the world’s people make each year equals what the poorest 57 percent make.
• Virtually every country in the world has the potential of growing sufficient food on a sustainable basis. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has set the minimum requirement for caloric intake per person per day at 2,350. Worldwide, there are 2,805 calories available per person per day. Fifty-four countries fall below that requirement; they do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities to make up the gap. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
And finally: The death toll from hunger is horrendous. Each day, 32,000 children die from hunger. That is not counting men and women, only children.
We distributed rice bowl piggy banks this summer during vacation bible school. The money that is collected in them will go to world hunger. It doesn’t depend on massive donations from a few select multimillionaires or corporations. The genius is, with enough participation, small gifts from a large number of churches and people accomplish the same goal. It may not seem like a lot, but it can make all the difference.
Paul is addressing the brokenness of the world, made apparent in the church at Corinth, when he reminds them of what the Lord’s supper was supposed to be: a proclamation. ‘For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’
We are, in observing the Lord’s Supper, communing, that is an action verb. As a body, as a community of faith, we are proclaiming the central truth of the Gospel. Christ’s death for the world. Christ’s death in our place. The second part of that last sentence is critical: “Until he comes”. That is saying a couple of things. First: Christ is no longer dead. So, the proclamation is not only of his death, but also of his resurrection. Second: Christ will come again. And this is critical: we are a part of his return. When we do this, when we act as Christ’s body in the world, we are active participants in the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.
Let’s Pray.
(Communion)
26 While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." 27 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26)
This is our time of invitation. Christ invites each of us to the table. Whatever we bring to it, we are welcomed. It is what we take from it that will change the world.
Benediction:
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May God give you Grace never to sell yourself short,
Grace to risk something big for something good,
Grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.
So, may God take your minds and think through them,
May God take your lips and speak through them,
May God take your hearts and set them on fire
Through Christ our Lord.
Closing hymn:
Blest be the tie that binds (1st verse)
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