Holidays are for feasting and Easter is no exception to the rule.  A couple of years ago, I remember heading over to HEB for some last minute items we needed for our family dinner.  At ten thirty, almost eleven o’clock I figured that not only would I find a parking spot close to the front door, I’d have full run of the place.  “In and out in ten minutes, right?”  Wrong.  Pulling into the lot I discovered that it was as full as 5 o’clock on payday.  The shopping cart return bins were filled to overflowing and those that hadn’t made it there dotted the landscape like metal cows.  Inside, it was nothing short of a mad house—people everywhere, baskets filled with ham, vegetables, candied eggs, cascarones, soda, beer and wine.  When it finally came time for me to pay, I discovered the checkout lines were ten, fifteen deep.  So much from a quick in and out trip.

            And Easter has always been connected with food in one way or another, even from the very beginning.  Alongside the familiar, joyful stories about empty tombs, angels and surprise encounters with the risen Lord are stories about the resurrected Jesus sharing meals with the disciples.  There’s the one from John’s Gospel printed in this morning’s bulletin in which Jesus invites the disciples to join him in a grilled fish breakfast.  Earlier in Luke’s Gospel is the account of Jesus showing up unannounced proclaiming a word of peace and then asking them if they have anything to eat.  Of course one of the most well known stories is the one about what happens on the road to Emmaus, late afternoon and evening that first Easter, when Jesus was known to them in the breaking of the bread, in sharing a common meal with them.

            Of course we’re reminded of how we continue to experience the risen Lord whenever we share in the Lord’s Supper—his body and blood broken and shed for us for the forgiveness of Sin, a simple meal that gives us the promise of eternal life and salvation.  And while that connection is crucial, we ought not over look the fact that all this takes place over supper, in a meal that three hungry people share together at the end of a long and remarkable day.

            So, we can say that the Good News of Easter is in part a word to fill the hearts and bellies of hungry people—those who suffer from a gnawing spiritual emptiness to be sure, but to those who suffer physical hunger as well.  The spiritual and physical hunger that Jesus addresses are really just two sides of the same coin when you get right down to it.  And that’s the message that has proclaimed for going on two thousand years now.  It’s one of the reasons I’m so pleased to a part of a church like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in general and Ascension in particular through our support of the ELCA World Hunger Appeal*, the Capital Area Food Bank* and Caritas* through the Faith Food Drive* that continues through next week.  I’m convinced that our collective response as the church is a sign of the Spirit of the risen Christ at work among us, opening our hearts and our lives to the lease of these, to the hungry poor who, as Jesus reminds us, are always with us.

            We have to be honest though.  Living in the kind of world that we do, a world that poses versions of reality that are fundamentally counter to God’s ways, we can see that the work to which we are called is not easy—in the disembodied voice that asks us at the drive through if we’d like to supersize.  I suppose it bears noting that with a simple we add more calories to what we’re eating than many people in our world consume in a whole week.  But then who really stops to think about that?  It’s just food.  Likewise, we’re confronted more and more these days with the role that food plays in our lives.  Studies suggest, not to mention, our own personal experience that families like ours are eating fewer meals together than ever before. But that’s just the way it goes with busy on the go folks like us and hey, after all, it’s only food. 

            But the eye opening message of Easter is that food is never just food, because when hungry people share something to eat, in the breaking of the bread, sooner or later the risen Jesus is apt to show up.  At the last supper, Jesus told the disciples that he wouldn’t eat or drink again until the reign of God had come.  In other words, he says he’s going to fast, to go without food until the kingdom comes.  If the risen Lord is really Jesus, he will be hungry so, in that way hunger and resurrection walk hand in hand.  And to truly experience resurrection is to experience hunger—our own emptiness yes, but our neighbor’s as well.  After all did he not say to us that as we do unto the least of these including those who are hungry, we do unto him?

            Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  And we are his Easter people.  Think of it then!  Responding to hunger in our world is a way for us to experience and in turn to make known the real presence of Christ risen from the dead.  It’s not our work to be sure, not by our own effort and ability, by our resourcefulness and intelligence, but by the power of the risen Christ at work in and through us all!

            Where is the risen Lord today?  Right here at the table he’s prepared for us, and out there on the road too, walking with us, opening our eyes, giving himself for us and for a hungry world.  Praise be to God.  Amen.     

 

 

Pastor Brian Peterson