The Fifth Wednesday After Pentecost
We cannot debate the import of eating or being fed. Food, its preparation, presentation and sharing forms the base of so much of our lives. We are, I suppose, always hunters and gatherers and at our best sharers of food.
I had a puzzling encounter as a young priest. Long story, short, a young boy came to me at a coffee hour and said, "I want a piece of cake to take home to my Mom."
Looking over and seeing the large sheet cake was being served by an elderly spinster of the parish I responded, "Ask Miss Anderson for a piece."
"She won't give me any." "
Then you must not have asked politely. Go and ask her again with a polite 'please."'
I watched as he went back. No cake and he was crest fallen.
I intervened, "Bea, this young man would like a piece of cake to take home to his Mom."
"He will just eat it on the way home and his mother will never see it!" was the reply.
"Then may I have a piece of cake?"
Down went the knife and off she walked.
It was a stupid encounter really. I could have been more subtle, gotten the cake later. She could have been more gracious and allowed the boy to deal with the ramifications of whether the cake got home or not. Later that day I watched as the remaining sheet cake went home divided by a group of older white ladies. The Black choir boy had the small piece I had cut for him. I could not help but wonder was this a Depression survival group, a White power group or just one old spinster with the power to judge? Was it just one more example of discomfort with the changing demographic of the parish?
These issues around food are not odd and they are not new.
"Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food." Acts 6:1
Food can be power. We know it if we pay attention to global economies and politics. We Americans have food in abundance. So much so that we can worry whether it is organic or not. We stand side by side in the grocery store, some of us buying the best cuts of meat while others are looking for the mark downs. Some fill their carts with prepared foods while others dream how they will create a meal from raw ingredients.
In the urban center I once lived, I would see a bus load of seniors arrive and watch as they picked through the carts of bruised produce or expiring packaged goods looking for ways to make their pensions last. This gave me pause to be grateful for my own choices.
Then of course there is the global dynamic of who will eat what. In times of famine will the food get to the needed destination point and how many will be aided? How many will starve or suffer malnutrition?
It is thus not surprising that the Bible has rules on food. Yes there are forbidden foods like pork and shrimp and oysters and there are permitted foods like lamb and vegetables and grains. There are also rules on what the planter, landowner may harvest. There is a rule to protect the poor, the landless, the widow and orphan. A tenth of the field, the edges are to be left for them. What ever is dropped by the harvesters is to remain on the land for the poor to glean. Yes they will work for it as they are able. They must pick it up, harvest it, winnow it, grind it. Yet it is there for them...if the land owner follows the rule and the harvesters are instructed to leave the gleanings.
So I am not surprised that there was concern for the widows in the early Church. What is interesting here is who is being overlooked. Two groups made up the Jewish Jerusalem Church. There are those who always lived in Israel and those whose families had once lived scattered in the Empire now returned.
As a North Carolinian who lived in New Jersey for 34 years and then returned, there is a dynamic of credibility. Your accent is noted. Your origins questioned and an insider/outsider status is assigned. You "understand" life here or not, lies beneath this status. You will be included differently, to varying degrees.
Every locale does this it seems, in one way or another.
What is important in Acts is that the solution is not whether all widows will be fairly handled but how they came to handle the normal status struggle of inside and outside. The order of Deacons is founded. They are to care on behalf of the Church for those in need. And here the named ones all have Hellenistic names. They reversed the power structure freely asking those who felt overlooked to now administer care for all. It is as if they saw one way to even out the inside/outside dynamic was to redefine who was which. They trusted the "outsiders" returned home would care equally without regard to accent. We hear no more of this issue in Jerusalem so one supposes this worked. Perhaps it worked because all were "outside" the norm of Jewish life by the very fact they held Jesus to be Messiah, believed in resurrection, hoped in the second coming. Perhaps it worked because those with the power to exclude recognized their tendency and saw this as a way to heal it.
They are also united in the redefinition of Passover as we read in Luke. The bread and wine of Jesus' last Passover is now a weekly event. What once had been an annual reminder of God's saving help and providence in the past is redefined. Now it is a sign of Messiah having come, having left us as his Body present. Like the mother pelican seeing her young in crisis, he feeds us on his life blood so we do not spiritually starve in the world. His spirit of generosity and compassion is to course through our veins, our heart to pump it into every bit of our being. Like the Torah before, this shared meal is to instruct our outlook and actions.
We are to fed each other compassionately.
I wonder what would have happened if we assigned a choir boy to cut the cake. What behavior would he assume, Bea's or the image of communion where all share equally?
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