"I want my Supper!"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 5, 2015; Easter Sunday, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Mark 16:1-8 – When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Jesus. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already \been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

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There's a story that caught my attention the other day. It's from a man who grew up in some privilege in Hungary many years ago. As a little boy, he loved dinner. He loved to go into the dining room and sit in front of the big plates. The maid would come in and begin with serving him soup. One evening he went downstairs to the dining room, and it was in an uproar. Jews had been fleeing across the border from Russia, and his grandfather had gone to the railway station and brought home the ones he had found there. The boy didn't know what was going on. There were old men with skull caps in the living room; mothers with nursing babies in the corners of the dining room. The boy was upset, and threw a fit. "I want my supper!" he cried. "I want my supper!" One of the maids brought him a piece of bread. He threw it on the ground and screamed, "I want my supper!" The grandfather happened to enter the room then and heard him. The old man bent down, picked up the piece of bread, kissed it, and gave it to the little boy. He ate the bread.[i]

That little boy is me. I'm so privileged. And so wrapped up in my own stuff. I like things to go the way I like them to go. Maybe you're a little bit that way too. When they don't go the way I want them to, I scream and pout. It's mostly invisible screaming and pouting, but my head gets full of fussiness, expecting the universe to bow to my demands, and just demands they are, I believe. Whenever I'm fixed on myself and my expectations, I'm pretty blind. I don't even see the suffering old men with skull caps and the mothers in the corners with their nursing babies. They are all around us.

Hugo of St. Victor used to say, Love is the eye! When we look at anything through the eyes of love, we see correctly, understand, and properly appropriate its mystery. The reverse is also true. When we look at anything through eyes that are jaded, cynical, jealous, or bitter, we will not see correctly, will not understand, and will not properly appropriate its mystery.[ii] Maybe that is why some saw the risen Jesus and others didn't. I know that when am wrapped up in my own self-concern, I can be pretty blind.

There's a priest named Ron Rolheiser who remembers an Easter Sunday many years ago when he was a young graduate student in San Francisco. Easter was late that year and it was a spectacularly beautiful spring day. But he really didn't see it. He was young, homesick, alone on Easter Sunday, and nursing a huge heartache. It colored everything. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday in spring, but for what he was seeing and feeling, it might as well have been midnight in the dead of winter.

Lonely and feeling pitiful he took a walk to calm his restlessness. As he entered a park, he saw a blind beggar holding a sign that read: It's spring and I'm blind! The irony woke him up. It brought him back to reality, present right before his eyes.[iii]

"Love is the eye!"

It seems to be a matter of attention, doesn't it? I notice that I am happiest, I am my best self, when I do two things: (1) when I forget myself, and (2) when I focus on the present moment. Or to put it in the negative. I notice I am most frustrated when I'm preoccupied with my own stuff, and when I am not in the present moment, either brooding over something in the past or anxious about something in the future.

Then I'm like the little boy yelling for his supper, forgetting to be grateful for the gift of life here and now, the bread of life placed in my hand as a gift.

On the night before he died, Jesus took bread and identified it with his own life, with his presence. "Do this in remembrance of me," he said. On Easter evening, Luke's gospel tells how some disciples were gathered at a table near the road to Emmaus, and a stranger whom they didn't recognize took the bread, broke it, gave it to them, and their eyes were opened. They knew him in the breaking of the bread.

Christians have known Christ present in the breaking of the bread for over two thousand years now. Love is the eye that sees him in the gathered community on this beautiful Easter. If we can but see, love incarnate comes to us, accepts us completely just the way we are, blesses us with the divine kiss of peace, and places in our hand the bread of life.

In that moment past and future become one in eternal time. We are with the disciples at the Last Supper and at that table near Emmaus. We are at the eternal banquet table where we will be one with all forever. We are here and now with this wonderful gathering of humanity. Present to God; present to each other; receiving the gifts of God for the people of God.

Back in the days when death squads operated in countries like Argentina and El Salvador, "the Christians there developed a way of a very dramatic way of celebrating their faith, their hope and their resistance. At the liturgy, someone would read out the names of those killed or 'disappeared', and for each name someone would call out from the congregation, Presente, 'Here'."[iv]

When we are present, here at this Eucharist, all of creation is gathered with us: our ancestors and loved ones who have gone before us; the child who starved last night in the Nuba Mountains; Lincoln and Gandhi and MLK, Jr.; young Chris Lewis whose heart stopped last week; the passengers of Germanwings Flight 9525; the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well; Peter and Paul and Jesus himself – Presente! Here!

Take! Eat! Bring your whole self here—be present. Present yourself. Just as you are. You are welcome to the banquet feast. Jesus made it so simple, so concrete. The incarnation of God continues in space and time in ordinary food.

Richard Rohr says, Eucharist is presence encountering presence… There is nothing to prove, to protect, or to sell. It feels so empty, naked, and harmless, that all you can do is be present. The Eucharist is telling us that God is the food and all we have to do is provide the hunger. Somehow we have to make sure that each day we are hungry, that there's room inside of us for another presence. If you are filled with your own opinions, ideas, righteousness, superiority, or sufficiency, you are a world unto yourself and there is no room for "another." ...Our only ticket or prerequisite for coming to Eucharist is hunger.

"I want my supper!"

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[i] Told by Mark Hollingsworth, Bishop of Ohio, in his Easter sermon of 2007

[ii] From Fr. Ron Rolheiser: http://liturgy.slu.edu/Triduum_Easter2012/reflections_rolheiser.html

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Rowan Williams 2004 Easter Sermon: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1647/easter-day-sermon-2004

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