You Are What You Eat - Maundy Thursday

I’ve been reflecting a lot on food lately. When I was in New York, there were any number of food experiences just waiting to be had!

Of course, those experiences all come with a hefty price tag. And, as with all opulent experiences, as delightful as they are, after a time it can get to be too much – a few times our delegation was choosing to just choose a sandwich and bowl of soup from a tiny grocery store we’d found, rather than going out for yet another meal. How fortunate that our hotel granted access to small microwaves.

So I was still thinking about the joy of home cooking when I arrived home. It was very late Friday night, however, and I was already making plans for an early morning shopping trip for the Saturday. I know we live in a wondrous age when you can literally phone a stranger, tell them your preference, and they will show up on your doorstep with food, in exchange for a bit of money – but after 2 weeks away, I wanted something simple and healthy.

What delight, then, to discover that the friend who had been keeping an eye on my house had gone ahead and stocked my fridge with a number of foodstuffs – there was fresh fruit, and a ready-to-cook flatbread, and fruit, and salad, and a few treat-meals, and more fruit. My goodness, my fridge was a veritable buffet of home-eating happiness. Did I mention the fruit? It’s shocking how little fruit one eats when on the go in New York City.

A few days later, I went food shopping. To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. On the shelves before me I saw fresh fruit and vegetables from all over the world, locally made bread products, more dairy products than all of us combined should be consuming in a week, and then that tasty-but-not-good-for-you pre-packaged stuff.

A veritable buffet of food choices. An unimaginable display of culinary possibility. This was – in a word – abundance.

How surprising, then, to hear the comments from some of my other shoppers. Rather than revel in the bountiful delight, there were complaints. “I don’t want to pay that” and “there’s not enough variety” and “I don’t like that brand” and ... well, you get the idea. We complain about the cost of special diets, or the lack of convenience (when did 7 minutes to boil pasta become ‘too long’?), or the choosiness of our families (he only eats red apples, not green apples).

We forget the blessing of the abundance before us. We forget how privileged we are to be eating. In a world where nearly half of our brothers and sisters are undernourished or starving, we see food being casually dumped in the bin or forgotten at the back of the fridge. We don’t consider the spices unused in the cupboard or the condiments in the fridge door to be luxuries.

We don’t see our own abundance, we only see what’s missing. We see scarcity. We see ourselves as deprived. And we know that we are not – but our culture has made it normal for us to perceive this as our truth.

The food is not the problem. Our mindsets are.

And distressingly, this mindset, this theology of scarcity, pervades into our spiritual lives as well.

Just as with physical provisions: we do have enough but do not see it; so too with our spiritual selves. Spiritual nourishment is not only present but abundant: but sometimes our mindsets prevent us from recognising the feast before us.

It’s at this time of year, in our spiritual journey, that we are inviting to shift our way of thinking. Throughout Lent, we have carefully and prayerfully been re-orienting ourselves to focus on God. Jesus is calling us to change ourselves and thereby change the world around us. And I hear, in the Gospel reading tonight, the eternal invitation to reject social convention and societal mindsets.

Jesus himself takes the lowest servant’s role, cleaning the feet of his friends and followers. He changes this dirty and demeaning act into a role of care and compassion and humble ministry, and instructs his disciples to do likewise.

He humbly leads worship at the Passover meal, where the Jewish people commemorate the Exodus story and their liberation from Egyptian oppression – itself a celebration of abundance. The narrative identifies that with God, there has always been enough, and always will be enough for all – if only one is willing to see it.

He then shifts the focus again – putting it back toward God – where the bread and wine become a remembrance for him. The instruction then that this Eucharist – which literally means Great Thanksgiving – is to be shared with many, changes the tradition further. Jesus’ leadership at his own Last Supper confirms his place as leader not just to the few who were gathered together, but for everyone who would gather together in God’s name for the rest of eternity.

So there is a change of mindset. With a few very basic things. Normal things. Everyday, average things. Water. A towel. Some bread, and a little wine.

This normal occurrence of eating with family is no longer basic. What is there is shared, is celebrated, is seen for an abundance that will transcend all time and all people. It will exclude no one, it will be scarce for no one.

Because the nourishment that is being offered is enough. It is more than enough. And tonight – the food that is offered – celebrates that. It celebrates that the mindset is not to be one of closed doors, but of open hospitality. It is a radical idea of inclusion, of sharing resources, of being nourished, and of helping others to receive nourishment.

This nourishment, of very simple physical food, changes the world. It calls us to see the profound gifts that God has given to us, and to recognise how the love of God and love of one another are entirely intertwined. This nourishment gives us all that we need to go out and live the mandate – from which we get the word Maundy – that Christ gave us – to love one another as He first loved us.

This is the nourishment that changes our lives – because this is not a suggestion or an option – it is a commandment. Love. With abundance, with reckless abandon, with all that we have. Because that is how Jesus loves us. There is no scarcity or judgement in how God’s love feeds us; there should be no scarcity in the love which we then share in the world.

This isn’t easy; we’re more inclined to see the negative, the scarcity, the lack. We come up with reasons why someone else isn’t worthy, isn’t good enough, isn’t deserving. Because we are stuck in a world that celebrates division, and one-up-manship, and harsh criticism. We live in a world that remains ready to crucify.

So we are challenged to change. To shift our mindsets. To understand what it truly means to be followers of Christ. It’s not an easy road, it’s not a popular road, it’s not a road that all of our friends and family understand.

But it is a road of abundance. We are not given too little, or just enough. We are given abundantly. We are given such abundance, that we cannot help but share. We are given a great feast, a bountiful buffet, an abundant meal: It is laid out before us as we are invited to the table.

May we have the spiritual courage to accept the invitation that Jesus extends to us. May we know that we are being fed with the food that will sustain us this day. May we delight in receiving food for the journey, being nourished with this abundance of life that is being so freely given.

In so many unexpected ways, the simplest of meals are truly the best we can have. A simple bread; the bread of heaven. A sip of wine; the cup of salvation. The Holy Meal, a foretaste of a heavenly banquet.

In this Eucharist, may we be nourished by Christ, in our hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving.