Lent and Radical Peace-Making

Third Sunday in Lent

Message for Trinity Fillmore

3/15/09

Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Good Morning. Thank you again for hosting me, and allowing me the opportunity to share with you the life and work of our Abundant Table campus ministry. As with any organization that experiences frequent turn over and rhythmic changes, we have been constantly growing and developing in our constitution, and the opportunity to witness to these changes is very important to our group.

It was about this time last year, that I had the opportunity to first share with you. And here I am again, during the season of Lent reflecting on the correlations between campus ministry and the 40 days of wilderness and preparation. Yes, I could say…campus ministry is be a wilderness experience for many…and yes it is also a continual time of preparation for both students and chaplain, however, this year my participation with the Abundant Table has offered me a very different perspective of Lent and the wilderness journey towards Easter.

In today’s readings, we come across:

1. The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament,

2. A caution against the wisdom of “the world” in the epistle, and

3. Christ’s cleansing of the temple in the gospel.

In Exodus, the Israelites have just been liberated from the oppressive slavery of the Egyptian Empire. After generations of impoverished living, hard labor and institutionalized fear, God’s chosen people and beloved community find themselves free of their shackles and journeying through the wilderness to their promise land. During this journey, which we come to learn turns into a long wandering; God gives the Israelites a rule of life…more commonly known as the Ten Commandments. God reminds them of their past experience as slaves, and through the commandments calls this people group into a life of freedom and peace. A life of freedom and peace signaled by a particular way of living, by a rule of life and discipline that is embodied restoration of balance and the re-ordering of love. The Rev. Dean Buckley writes in his book The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times, “The Bible…and traditional spiritual theology all target “disordered inclinations” as key obstacles to freedom. The Bible stresses the objects of these inclinations, which it calls idols. Israel was to embrace the God of life and reject the idols of death.”

For so long, the Israelites had lived under captivity. In some ways they were dependant upon this captivity for their survival. What a shock it must have been to leave all you have known, the comfort of shelter and food, and be led into the wilderness for an unknown Promise Land. It is not surprising that many if not all of God’s chosen, felt more like God’s forgotten and began to seek comfort and stability by resorting to practices and pathologies of the culture and empire from which they were liberated. This passage from Exodus is calling the Israelites back into their covenant relationship with God, while at the same time invoking a way of life that restores balance and peace rather than imbalance and oppression.

Throughout the Old Testament we see this similar pattern of forgetfulness and re-membering. Much of the Prophetic texts of the Old Testament are devoted to naming the ways in which the Israelites have been captivated by the dominant culture, and then God sending a voice in the wilderness reminding them the way of the Lord. This narrative and relationship of God and God’s people lead us right into the Lenten story and directly into today’s gospel passage. Although not enslaved in the literal sense, the Jewish people were still under a foreign empire, Rome, during the time of Jesus. On one hand, the ruling Jewish authorities were trying to find ways to preserve their religious heritage (i.e. animal sacrifice, reciting of scriptures, tithing.), however in John we see that practices and principles of the ruling society had seeped into the everyday life of the Jewish community. While shared culture and practices are not inherently bad, the activities which are spoken of specifically in the gospel text do not reflect the rule of life which God has set before God’s people in the Torah and through the prophets. Jesus specifically condemns the economy surrounding the temple…the market place that was constructed in a location that was usher people into the holiness of God.

In what appears to be a violent outburst, Jesus is in fact restoring the holiness of this space. He is identifying the oppressive behavior of an idolization of power and wealth, and is calling his brothers and sisters in the faith into a different way of living. A way of living that we see demonstrated throughout the life of Christ. One that is not based upon the wisdom of this world, but upon God’s covenant to God’s people and a healing that comes not by seeking power and surplus, but through the care and love of one another. And when the Jews ask for a sign to prove his authority to make such claims, Jesus cryptically points towards his pending death and resurrection.

It is this death and resurrection, also known as the message of the Cross in First Corinthians, which appears as foolishness to the world…but speaks to a great wisdom which runs through the veins of healed creation. It is the wisdom of God. It is the power of weakness seeking peace for the world. It is the proclamation of salvation.

So you may be asking…what does any of this have to do with the Abundant Table and campus ministry. As I mentioned when I first began sharing, the Abundant Table has offered me a very different perspective on Lent this year. After reflecting on today’s texts, one significant theme stood out to me. While not explicitly mentioned, these passages all point to a radical notion of peace-making, one that is deeply interwoven into the covenant God has with the Israelites, now extended to the whole world. A form of peace-making that reflects the deepest core of God’s creation. In order for there to be healing and wholeness in our world, there must be peace. The Ten Commandments are given to the Israelites, because they exist to create a space for peace to enter. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple was necessary to remove the barriers for peace to occur both in the physical space, but also in the space of people’s lives. This narrative of peace-making found throughout the Bible may seem like foolishness to a world and society caught up in the accumulation of power and wealth, but as we see in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection…there is healing and salvation in this story.

Our role as a campus ministry, as Christians, is to also create the space for this peace to occur. In their Living Gently in a Violent World, The Prophetic Witness of Weakness, theologian Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier speak on the creation of peace in spaces of community. Jean Vanier founded the L’Arche Community, which is a beautiful example of God’s peace, where fully able bodies and minds live in community and relationship with those who have physical and mental limitations. Jean Vanier speaks of the day to day activities of eating, dressing, working, and celebrating, and how patience, gentleness, and a new understanding of time and space have become essential for the assistants who have chosen to commit their lives to living with those who experience disabilities. It is not a way of life that seeks power, wealth, time efficiency, productivity, or perfection. Rather it is a way of life that seeks to be one of peace-making.

Hauerwas writes, “Peace takes time. Put even more strongly, peace creates time by its steadfast refusal to force the other to submit in the name of order. Peace is not a static state but an activity which requires constant attention and care. An activity by its very nature takes place over time.” What I think he is saying is that it is not just an end goal, rather it is a rule of life. One that we see presented over an over again in our scripture. It is a particular way of living that for us as Christians is in relationship to the cross and to the journey towards Easter. We see God’s covenant inviting people into wholeness and healing.

This past year at the Abundant Table, we have had several moments of, which I would identify as “Peace moments”…a place in time, in which a way for peace-making was opened. Our group of students, alumni, staff, and community members are deeply committed to engaging this way of peace. This Lent we are following a study called, “Journey with Jesus Towards the Cross.” It is an opportunity for us as a community to identify ways in which we perpetuate death in our own lives and the world around us, and how as we commit to living in the path Christ lived our opportunities to be peace-makers arise. In order to journey on the path of Peace-making, space must be created and time given for healing to occur. Our hope at the Abundant Table is to be a vessel which opens up its ministry in such a way that we create the space and time for peace to grow.

Recognizing the blessing of resources housed within our ministry and its partners, the Abundant Table Campus Ministry is hoping to begin this process of peace by creating a faith-based rural internship program for college students and young adults. We have the opportunity to link our campus ministry to a large farm house sitting on at least five acres of land, with the hopes of expanding to 15 acres. The goal of this internship is to bring together college students and young adults who are interested in living in a Christian community of worship, while at the same time gaining life skills related to small scale organic farming and/or interning with a local community organization working on justice issues in the area. The Abundant Table would become a worship centered community with a land based ministry.

We thank all of you for your continuing support and for also being a vessel of peace-making in your support of the Abundant Table. We hope that you will continue to guide and ground our work in this time of transition, and look forward sharing with you the ever developing nature of The Abundant Table.

Join Hands, Reach Out, and Left Up -- A message from the Presiding Bishop

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is the 26th Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church.

Mark 1:29-39

5th Sunday after the Epiphany - Year B

February 08, 2009

I had news recently of the death of a friend's brother-in-law. He was a 60-year old Viet Nam War vet, a man possessed by the demons of war, until he was finally released in death. The last several decades of his life were filled with midnight terrors and round-the-clock attempts at self-medication. As I wrote his family, I prayed that his wounded life might be resurrected in the healing of God's ultimate grace. There are increasing numbers of haunted souls like him, each in need of healing.

Healing the sick and similarly possessed was a central part of Jesus' earthly ministry. His gift of physical and spiritual healing restored human beings to full participation in their communities. Healing and deliverance from pain and illness is a hallmark of the great prophetic dream called the Reign of God, where no one goes hungry, the ill and grieving are healed, and those in various kinds of prisons are set free for abundant life. Over and over again in the gospels we hear that Jesus "went about healing many who were sick or possessed by demons." It is a foundational image of the work we share as his followers.

When Jesus went to Simon's house, he had just come from healing a man like that veteran. Simon's mother-in-law was sick with a fever, and Jesus walked over, took her by the hand, and "raised her up." That same word for raised or lifted up is used on Easter morn -- "he is not here, he is risen" -- but it is also used of Jesus being lifted up on the cross. Simon Peter's mother-in-law is raised up from her illness, and what does she do? She begins to minister, to serve. She is the first active witness to what a resurrected life in Jesus looks like. At baptism, we too are raised into a new life of service or ministry to others and acknowledge that ministry is a matter of lifting up our crosses daily.

We may not know her name, but the mother of Simon's wife is a model for our own servant ministry. Touched and healed by Jesus, she becomes minister of healing herself. She gets up from her bed and presumably begins to feed people, as any good Jewish housewife of the day would do for her son in law and his honored guests.

The very next encounter that Jesus has in Mark's gospel is also about touching and healing someone -- this time a leper. The leper is told to keep quiet about his healing, but he can't do it -- he has to tell the world. The upshot is that Jesus can't even enter a town without being besieged. The world is desperate for healing. Like the street outside Simon's mother-in-law's home, the streets out there are also filled with the sick and possessed, each one eager to be made whole.

The touch of a hand can heal, restore life, and exorcise our demons as well. Michelangelo used that powerful image of life-giving touch when he pictured creation as God reaching out a hand to Adam, offering life. We often say that Christians are the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. How do our hands serve as instruments of healing, and help to raise others to new life?

Simon's mother-in-law gets up and serves a meal. Food and feasting and the heavenly banquet are central images of a healed creation. The Good Samaritan ensures that the robbery victim he lifts up and takes to an inn is provided with food and drink for healing. The resurrected Jesus shares breakfast on the beach with his grieving and dispirited disciples. You and I have abundant opportunities to feed the hungry – through soup kitchens, reformed farm policies, and development that helps people around the globe to grow nutritious and affordable food.

The touch of healing is obviously about caring for those with physical illness. Our hands may be put to healing work in literally tending the sick, infirm, or housebound, but, equally importantly, ensuring that all members of the community have access to medical care. Our hands may serve in the voting booth or the sickroom.

Hands can also heal psychic illness. My friend's brother-in-law had the demon called "no hope." He didn't meet the needed hand of healing in this life; we pray that the good shepherd hands that led him home will bind up his wounds. Yet we see others who do find the needed touch of weal, whether in a person who will sit and listen to the pain behind the war stories or the searching hands and eyes that will take a fallen comrade to shelter or hospital.

Hands may provide hope in surprising ways. I visited a congregation in Florida recently which has for many years been host to an Ethiopian Orthodox community, nearly all of them refugees. That community worshiped with us on a Sunday morning, and shared a joyful telling of the story of Israel going down into Egypt and being led out by the hand of God. That was what we were told before the story began; and as the chanting started, we may not have understood the words, but we did hear and see the liberation of that journey to freedom. During the lengthy singing a young woman beat the rhythm of the tale on a large and powerful drum, three feet across and five feet long. She alternated between loud booming beats on the large end and staccato conversation on the small end. Her hands held the whole of the singing group together. Those who sat in the congregation accompanied her with complex clapping rhythms and hula-like movements of their hands. Together a varied and disparate group of hundreds formed one whole, focused on the power of God to lead us into wholeness and holiness.

Where have you met the healing hand of God? Where has that hand, gloved in human flesh, reached out to lift you up? Maybe that hand has fed you or soothed your troubled and fevered brow. Perhaps that hand has even shaken you to greater wakefulness, to notice the lonely soul or the suffering mob in the street outside.

Jesus' healing touch was grounded in open vulnerability. He received the yearning masses, healing as many as he could. He taught the crowds about the present reality of God's reign, breaking in all around them, and he offered hope. He silenced the demons who would cry out that there is no hope. He formed disciples by letting them try the work themselves, even though they frequently failed. He held himself open to whatever and whomever the day presented, even the terror of execution at the hands of an occupying government. His service was one of constant lifting up, in the face of forces that would tear down.

Will you let yourself be taken by the hand and lifted up? Where and how will you join hands, reach out, and lift up others to healing? For, indeed, as Simon and his companions said to Jesus when they found him at prayer, "everyone is searching for" that physician of hope.

Precious Lord, take my hand

Lead me on, let me stand

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn

Through the storm, through the night

Lead me on to the light

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.

--Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932

Let us pray.

O God, your loving hand has made us in your own image, given us all we possess, and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: reach out your hand again and heal us, that we may respond in kind, offering your hope and healing to all who are broken in body or spirit, that together we may be your whole and healed and holy Body on this earth. This we pray in the name of your son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prophetic Voice and Radical Hospitality

Lent 5 message given at
Trinity Episcopal Church in Fillmore, CA

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Psalm 130

It has been a joy for me to enter into the life and vision of the students, faculty, staff, and community members who recognize the importance of our campus ministry’s presence at the university as a prophetic voice for change and a welcoming space of hope.

In these two veins, prophetic voice and welcoming space, we are given the opportunity to share God’s good news of love and redemption to both our student group and to the people we come across on campus everyday. This morning’s epistle is a reminder of the challenges that each of us face as we participate in the daily movement of life and the need for a voice of hope and a space of hospitality.

When we entered this season of Lent, the readings brought us in touch with our humanity, a humanity and flesh that hungers. In the creation narrative we saw this hunger turn away from God to fill a void and towards seeking to be fed through knowledge of power, self-trust, control, and survival. In his book For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann classifies this shift as disordered hunger or disordered love. Rather than hungering or loving after God, we seek fulfillment elsewhere.

We again meet humanity’s disordered hunger and love for power, in the form of the devil, when Christ is tempted in the desert. Here Jesus resists the temptation to seize power and “save the world” outside of the perfectly ordered love of God. A love, which, Paul reminds us in Romans chapter eight comes from the Spirit of Christ. One that is life and peace; a Spirit that is restorative, that reorders our hunger, and reflects Christ’s life of servitude and compassion.

Each Sunday this Lent, we have journeyed with the gospel passages through Christ’s ministry on Earth. All of these narratives challenging conventional notions of power, exclusion, and holiness. All of these narratives calling us to no longer hunger for the dysfunction of this world, but to allow our flesh to be filled and satisfied by God’s spirit. As ministers of this gospel message, our work at the Abundant Table campus ministry is to be the hands and feet of Christ. To model the example Christ gives in his journey from the desert to the cross and beyond.

Today’s Old Testament reading and gospel draw our attention to two primary ways in which we live out Christ’s life in our own. In Ezekiel God’s Spirit leads the prophet to a valley filled with bones. Dry bones; bones without flesh and therefore without life. While Ezekiel acknowledges that only God knows whether “these bones can live,” God still commands the prophet to “prophesy to these bones,” “to say to them – you shall live.” Ezekiel must share a prophetic voice of change, a change from death to life. God shares with Ezekiel that these bones symbolize the “whole house of Israel”. It is important to note that the promise of life is not just for one of the houses of Israel, but its entirety.

Up to this point in the scriptures the Israelites were outcasts; a people divided by lusts for power and an economy of oppression, whether brought upon them by outside nations or perpetuated internally by their own disordered hunger. God promises to renew and restore them, to breathe into Israel a radical hospitality that welcomes them into right relationship with God and to each other.

So, now, jumping into the Gospel of John, we come across another narrative, with a very similar pattern. It has been four days since Lazarus was laid in the tomb; dead, a man on his way to becoming dry bones. Risking his life in returning to the town of Lazarus’ burial, Jesus arrives to a crowd of mourners, skeptics, and a handful of the hopeful. Deeply moved by the death of Lazarus, the unbelief of many followers, and the knowledge that the following display of power will place him in opposition to the ruling elite of his day, Jesus wept. And then…Jesus spoke. Like in Ezekiel, Christ called out to the dry bones in the tomb when he called “Lazarus, come out!” Once again, we see a prophetic voice of change call to the dead, that life may be breathed into them.

This call is an invitation into a welcoming space of hope. How much more radical can hospitality get, then to invite the dead, back into the land of the living. If we think about it, those who are dead lay in the ultimate exile and exclusion. In the raising of Lazarus from the dead, Jesus reminds us of the power of hospitality, and that it is in his Spirit of life and peace, can our flesh truly live.

While in Campus ministry, we do not find ourselves resurrecting the dead, we constantly come across opportunities for radical hospitality, to provide a welcoming space of hope. Many of the students on our campus face some level of exclusion and in that a loss of life. Just this pass week I had a conversation with a young woman who, because of her situation in life, felt very alone and often misunderstood by her peers. She is someone who would be considered at the very margins of society. Although a hard worker, a visionary, mature and motivated, this young woman is excluded from many tables that our society has created for people to “eat at” (you’ve heard the saying, “a seat at the table”). My hope is that the Abundant Table can be a safe and welcoming place for everyone, especially for this young woman. It is in such a welcoming that hope emerges, a hope that one day we will all live in wholeness. The story of this young woman is one of many that have crossed our paths, and one of many that we have yet to encounter.

Just as in last week’s gospel, where Jesus sought out the blind man whom he healed, but whom the religious authorities rejected, we are to follow Christ and seek out those who are excluded. To the campus we desire to be a prophetic voice of change that signals a welcoming community of hope. A community with an Abundant Table for all, where a hunger for God leads to reconciliation, redemption, peace and justice.

Into the Desert

As we enter into the season of Lent, I hope this becomes a time in which we "re-claim" and "re-imagine" the depth and richness of our spiritual traditions. While, many of us recognize Lent to be a period of fasting and reflection, there is a profound challenge that these disciplines call us into.

During Jesus' 40 days in the desert, he was challenged to overcome emptiness, loneliness, a tired body, a weary soul. It was in this part of his journey that Christ encountered Satan, the face of disordered power, greed, hunger, and desire; it was in this time of fasting that Jesus was renewed in his innermost being and called to move beyond "worldly" ways of making change and taking power and into God's work of reconciliation with humanity.

For those of us who consider ourselves followers of Christ, it is here in the desert and in the fasting that we are moved beyond ourselves. Like Jesus, we are called out of the desert and into the ministry of reconciliation. What is fasting if it does not lead to right relationship (righteousness and justice) with God and with the world? Isaiah 58:6 (click on the link for the full passage) reminds us of this call to justice:

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?"

However, let's remember that we are not called to work in vain. Nor are we a people without hope. As, Isaiah goes on to write:

8 "Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

11 The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings."

One way, we here at The Abundant Table are hoping to enter more fully into God's call to fasting this Lent is through the Solidarity Fast with Los Angeles Faith/Activism Collective and other college campuses around Southern California. In focusing on supporting immigrant families of Los Angeles and Ventura County, remembering our own migration story, and reclaiming the spiritual tradition of fasting, we seek to commit ourselves to the work of the Church that does not end at Easter, but continues in Christ's victory over the grave and in the Hope of a future where "...all ate and were satisfied."

Liturgy and the Abundant Table

Epiphany 3A
Isaiah 9:1-4
Matthew 4:12-23

I recently started receiving a word of the day e-mail from dictionary.com. My roommates told me it is the best way to improve one’s vocabulary as a preparation for the GRE grammar section. While I really enjoying learning new words and their definitions, what I find most fascinating in these e-mails is that they include the etymology or origin of each of the words. Whether it is Latin, French, old or middle English, I begin to see how and why different words have become part of our lingo. For example, yesterday’s word was “caterwaul,” the word for loud noises or to make a harsh cry. Its origin comes from the Middle English caterwawen, "to cry as a cat.” Makes sense right?

As I began preparing for today’s lesson, etymology was on my mind. My thoughts were pulled back to a time when I read about the practice of “liturgy” its word origin. Interestingly, the word liturgy has its origin in the Greek word leitourgia (λειτουργια ), which is translated to, or understood in that time as, – public work or duty - work of the people. When I first read this, I was struck at the implications it had for my participation in Christian worship. So often I want to relegate the sacred and the spiritual to a particular service, location, or activity, but as I am learning this year, God’s sacramental work extends beyond this.

When we look at the gospel reading for today, we see Jesus at the initial stages of his public ministry. He is beginning his “liturgy” or work of the people. It is not something Christ chooses to do alone, but is an act in which he invites or rather calls Peter, Andrew, James and John into. What is it that Jesus calls the disciples to? What was the liturgy he preformed?

In verse 17 the author of Matthew writes, “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” In verse 23 it is written that “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” Well…that all sounds nice and religious right. But really…what was the liturgy that Christ and his disciples were beginning to perform? Repentance? The kingdom of heaven? The good news of the kingdom? These too must have been words with an origin, with a tangible expression.

Lucky for us, the folks who put this particular lectionary reading together probably thought the same thing. As you may have noticed earlier, part of what we see referenced in the first part of the Gospel reading comes from the words of today’s OT reading out of Isaiah. In Isaiah we read words of hope and salvation to “those who were in aguish.” This passage was written during a time when Israel’s territories were occupied by a foreign and oppressive people group. It was written to God’s people who were experiencing great injustices, as well as falling into the same patterns as their oppressors. Isaiah shares of a coming light, a coming salvation in which the “yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor” will be broken.

As we see in today’s Gospel, Matthew writes that Jesus is the fulfillment of what was “spoken through the prophet Isaiah.” Jesus is the “light [that] has dawned.” This is the “coming” that will break the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. This is the good news of the kingdom.

When Christ inaugurated his ministry as told in Luke, he read another passage from Isaiah, a passage proclaiming:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Again…the good news of the kingdom, of Christ’s beloved community. This is what Jesus calls the disciples to. This is his liturgy.

John Howard Yoder explains in his book The Politics of Jesus, that “Jesus’ concept of the coming kingdom was borrowed extensively from the prophetic understanding of the jubilee year,” (a topic which we will delve into later this semester). Its basic premise is a redistribution of resources, a return to balance, or as expressed in Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000… “all ate and were satisfied.” It is through this act of liturgy that Christ moves in ways that present an alternative to the socio-political structures that are oppressing and starving the world. Through the life of Christ, God offers us a new paradigm of living and moving that counters the corrupted structures evolving from humanity’s disordered hunger. Yes we are a hungry people. We hunger for power, for prestige, for longevity, so often for a life that is not wrapped up in God’s love and reconciliation.

Such reconciliation had a place throughout the Old Testament in the commands of God and in the prophets. The proclaimed year of jubilee called for right relationship within the Israelite nation, so that all members of society found themselves provided for, as well as gave rest to the land. We see here that Christ does not call only for personal repentance, reconciliation and salvation but the entrance of a new community committed to living in the jubilee through a life of love and sacrifice to the other (the outcast, the marginalized, the lonely, the hungry, each of us on this planet). William Cavanaugh, in his book Torture and the Eucharist, writes that the church “can never be restricted to a sphere of the personal and the spiritual because human life is social and the religious lives of people are interwoven with the political, economic, and cultural processes of society.”

It is in this conversation, that I am beginning to see how our liturgical work on Sundays, the Eucharistic act we perform during each service, is a cyclical and expanding movement, one that goes beyond the confines of our Malibu Hall 120. In order for me to fully participate in the Eucharist, I must become the bread and the wine in my everyday encounters. It is that voice in Isaiah and in the gospels that proclaims the hope of salvation that God in Christ brings.

Every Sunday we are reminded of a table that is full. A table that is full of life, full of God’s grace, full of the body of Christ and full of the work of the church. It is not just that we have an abundant table before us, but that we are the abundant table. We too are the bread for the world, for we are the hands and feet of Christ. As the semester continues we will engage topics both overtly religious and not so religious. We will work together to try and understand what it means for us to be the church, followers of Christ, a people of the resurrection and coming kingdom of God. It is we who exist in the mystery of God’s presence on earth, for as we live as the church/as Christians, we know that we live in God’s grace and victory over the grave and can proclaim God’s Jubilee and reconciliation boldly.

Namesake - -

Below is an essay I found by Ched Meyers that has a title similar to the name of this blog. While I had not seen this essay before I chose the name for my blog, the content it holds reflects the churnings in my mind that led to "...and they all ate and were satisfied." That said...I feel sharing this article is quite appropriate for this first post.

Enjoy! --

http://bcm-net.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/All%20Ate%20and%20Were%20Satisfied.pdf