If you’re ever looking for Jesus just follow the crumbs. Throughout his life he was always sharing meals with people. He dined with Pharisees, tax collectors, and prostitutes as well as the various men, women, and children of the villages he visited on his journeys. After his Resurrection, as this Sunday’s Gospel relates, Jesus shares yet another communion meal. Jesus’ community members initially wonder if they are seeing a ghost. Jesus shows himself to be real, flesh and blood, and in need. Jesus is given food after he asks them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
Communion can abound with hungry people fed and people in need sharing the gifts of creation. Communion is frustrated when the behavior of rulers of the status quo prevail. People who are rich dine on sumptuous foods with people who already have all they want. History is filled with the extravagances of this truth; among them the Medici’s of Florence who held a banquet of great renown when a family member got married, and Nicolas Fouquet, finance minister to Louis XIV, who threw a bash the people of France still talk about today. The late Malcolm Forbes capitalist founder of Forbes Business Magazine once wined and dined the world’s elite at a lavish 70th birthday party he threw for himself estimated to have cost $2.3 million. History is filled with the routine of this truth so that every day those who are in need go hungry and those whose wealth is gained from the labor of people in need have all they want. It therefore makes sense that Forbes’ Magazine routinely critiques the food stamp program. It also therefore makes sense that the magazine’s Congressional readers routinely cut the food stamp program. Food stamp recipients are as visible as ghosts to them but in truth are real, flesh and blood, and in need. They are expected to live on crumbs; $162 dollars per person per month.
It is time to transform the status quo. It arranges for rich people who want more to have more – more of a right to be satisfied than poor people in need have a right to basic sustenance. Jesus is not apparent in a nation that claims to be Christian while it acts so un-Christ-like. Jesus’ meals nourished people in need and signified not excess but simplicity and care. Let ours do the same.
Prayer: Spirit of Creation, as earth is abundant let us be also.
Question: Who are those persons in need with whom I can break bread?
April 19, 2015 Gospel Luke 24:35-48 Third Sunday of Easter