"Comfort Food"--October 11, 2019

"Comfort Food"--October 11, 2019

"As they came to the village to which they were going, [the risen Jesus] walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, 'Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.' So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight." [Luke 24:28-31]

To be clear, nobody was expecting a miracle that evening.  At least, not the two disciples (one named Cleopas, and the other maybe his wife?) who found a stranger walking beside them on the first Easter evening, before anybody really understood what that meant.  

You probably know the story: on the same day that Jesus rose from the dead, the rumors of the empty tomb were circulating among Jesus' disciples, but nobody really seemed to believe or understand.  And so here were Cleopas and his traveling companion, walking home back to their house in the suburbs outside of the city, and all of a sudden Jesus himself appears... but they don't recognize him!  All they see is a stranger who engages them in conversation, and so when they get to their exit off the highway to get to their town of Emmaus, they do what any self-respecting good Jewish adult would have done in the first century: they extend hospitality! (That by itself makes for an interesting point of reflection: our first impulse when a strange person comes up and strikes up a conversation is to be afraid and feel for our wallet, keys, mace, or whatever else you might be carrying.  But in a first-century Judean context, the default assumption is that you welcome the stranger to your own table, precisely because he is a stranger!)

So anyway, the scene is completely ordinary: it's a Sunday dinner (which, remember, in first century Judea is not a weekend, just a regular work night), and these two have just invited a guest to join them for the evening meal.  That's it.  No one is expecting a miracle--if anything, Cleopas and his housemate are convinced there is no hope at all anymore because they can't bring themselves to believe that Jesus is really alive again.  All they have at that table is their heartbreak and grief... and the comfort food of bread at the table, waiting to be broken. It surely felt the way it still does today when someone you love dies, and at some point in the midst of the numbness and shock, you realize you haven't eaten all day and you make yourself go through the motions of making a sandwich or opening the carton of ice cream in the freezer.  It is all such ordinary stuff.  

And that, I believe, is truly part of the beauty of this story.  Jesus has been there all along, of course.  And other than the fact that he was dead just the day before but is now as alive as you or me, Jesus hasn't done anything out of the ordinary so far in this scene.  He has walked and talked, and then, when he is seated at the table, he plays the host and breaks the bread.  And in that ordinary action, his identity is revealed and Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas realize that it is none other than their crucified rabbi Jesus who has been with them this whole time. Christ himself has been with them all along, but the thing that helps them to see it is ordinary bread being passed around at an ordinary Sunday dinner.  That floors me every time.

That, I think, is really the whole point of our celebrations on Sundays (in my tradition every week) when we gather around our own larger version of a family dinner table.  Christ is revealed "in the breaking of the bread," in a moment as seemingly ordinary as passing the basket of bread at your own house.  We dress it up with liturgy and chant perhaps, or make the bread into flat wafers from time to time as a nod to the unleavened bread of Passover that Jesus would have used on the night of his betrayal.  We may call it by names with varying degrees of fancy-sounding religiosity--from the Lord's Supper to Holy Communion to the Sacrament of the Altar to the Eucharist.  But the thing that really is amazing is how Christ keeps revealing that he's been present all along in the breaking of such an ordinary thing as bread.  

That's why I am not at all persuaded by those occasional arguments you'll hear that Communion would become "less special" if we have it all the time.  To me, that sounds like it misses the point entirely!  Sunday dinner with your family doesn't become less special if you have it every week--in fact the tradition becomes more and more special because you've made the effort to keep doing it.  And at the same time, in a very important sense, the ordinariness is exactly the point!  That's what makes the Emmaus Road story so powerful--it is the God who chooses to show up, not after an extended organ solo or once there has been sufficient incense burned, but right there in the ordinary act of breaking bread--of sharing comfort food.

And once we are clear that Christ keeps insisting on showing up in something as seemingly mundane as fragments of a loaf of bread, well, then there's nowhere that's off limits anymore. Today, on an ordinary enough Friday, Christ is loose in the world and waiting to be spotted.  Don't look up high in the sky or under a steeple.  Maybe just look right in front of your eyes.

Lord Jesus, show yourself to us in the breaking of the bread... and everywhere else you insist on being present.