Sit Down Stand Up
Eric Johnson has been a popular sports reporter-anchor at various Seattle TV stations for the past few decades. KOMO-TV viewers tune-in just to watch him; they trust him to tell their stories to one another.
About ten years ago now, Eric decided to move beyond sports. He knew that in the Pacific Northwest (like everywhere, quite frankly), ordinary people were living extraordinary lives in very humble ways. Beyond the political fighting and riots and wars that now dominate the nightly news, Americans were taking care of each other in some profoundly beautiful ways. And as Eric soon found out, most of those acts of charity came through food. “I couldn’t believe how much we show love to one another by feeding each other,” he said.
One story that stands out among the many he’s reported on begins in the suburbs of Tacoma, where a woman in her 80s sits in a faded Lazy-Boy surrounded by photos of a husband and son from years gone by. Both became critically ill around the same time twenty years before, and Ms. Helen was left to care for them by herself. At the time, she had few resources available to help her and didn’t know where to turn: until she saw an ad in the local Seattle newspaper seeking bakers to raise money for a start-up hospice provider.
Ms. Helen knew she could bake – her family and church friends loved her blackberry pie – so she got to work and entered the contest. Donated bake-goods often raised a few hundred dollars for the hospice, and the winner would receive a small financial gift and the opportunity for hospice care if and when the time came.
On the night of the contest judging and fundraising gala, Helen couldn’t go, of course. She was caring for her ailing family. But she had it delivered by a neighbor with a note: “My gift to you. Please pray for me as I care for my husband and son.”
When organizers got word of Helen’s situation, the host of the evening shared Helen’s note to the assembled movers-and-shakers of Washington state, and before the night was over, not only did Helen’s pie win the contest, but she raised $30,000. The next day, the hospice came to her home and began caring for her husband and son until the Lord called them both home, only weeks apart.
As a thank you, Ms. Helen still enters a dessert in the contest every year, and each year, her pie wins tens of thousands of dollars for the hospice. “Who knew that one little offering could do so much,” Helen told KOMO-TV.
Who knew, indeed?
What is so powerful about the miracle feeding story in Luke’s Gospel is the way in which an act so simple and humble on the surface – so ordinary – became an extraordinary act of love. At the heart of Eucharist is that very same ordinary-extraordinary gift of self for others, a gift that changes lives forever.
No doubt we read this particular miracle account and see our celebration of the Mass foreshadowed in all that happened that day with the hungry crowds. A people who are hungry gather in search of food, spiritual and physical. Bread is lifted, blessed, broken and shared. Even with so little, plenty is left to be shared. What happened there that day happens at every Catholic altar each time we celebrate Eucharist.
What may not be so obvious, however, are some of the details that are easy to get lost in the retelling of the miracle feeding story.
For starters, notice that the inner-circle of Jesus’ disciples actually fail to act compassionately. They see the hungry crowds as a bother, perhaps – an intrusion on Jesus’ time and theirs, too. Or maybe – giving the benefit of the doubt here – the disciples knew they had not the resources to feed and care for the crowd in the way they needed. Sending them home would give them a better shot of finding food. “Not on our watch will this crowd starve,” they thought to themselves.
But immediately, Jesus offers a different solution: “Feed them yourselves.”
Imagine if you will the radical, impossible command being made here. It would be comparable to moving a mountain with only a word. How can this be?
And yet Jesus doesn’t back down. He knows that at the heart of Eucharistic love is the understanding that it always gathers, never dismisses. And so He pushes on: “Have them sit down in groups of 50.”
What seems like a minor detail in Luke’s narrative actually speaks to something much more powerful. For the faithful Jew, 50 is the number associated with a jubilee year: a time of freedom and reconciliation; a time of forgiveness and great love for all, not just a few.
So when the hungry crowd sits to be fed in groups of 50, they are there to be healed and brought to wholeness. They are to be fed by a joyous love that sees, not ignores. Eucharistic love is a love that includes, not shuns. It is a love that invites the lost back to the Table and says: Find the mercy you hunger for right here. Come forth and ask for the Food of Wholeness.”
A pause at this point before the bread appears in the miracle story: How are we doing as a parish and as Catholic-Christian disciples in inviting the hungry to sit in the Jubilee-50 group of healing love? Do we actively seek the addict, the divorcee, the member of the opposing political party to be with us? Are we willing to sit in the circle of 50 with an LA rioter? A teen questioning her gender? The ex you just broke-up with?
When the Lord suggests to his disciples “feed them yourselves,” what I believe he is asking of them (and us) is this: Let your love bring them here to me. Let your forgiveness open the door to the Eucharist and Reconciliation that gives life. When your love sees and invites the lost, Jesus tells us, then he will always step in and do the rest. He always does, and always will. How do we know?
Luke says it without saying it: “Then [Jesus] took the 5 loaves and two fish …”
It is always God that provides the sacrifice. It did not come from the deep pockets of the hungry who were hoarding foodstuff; there is no mention of a boy in the crowd who happened to be walking by with a basket of meager portions. All that matters to Luke is that Jesus is the ultimate Provider. He had the loaves because He is the Bread of Life. He is the One whose sacrifice at the Last Supper and on Calvary provides the very Eucharist we now eat in order to sustain and transform us. He who is the Sacrifice – the One who is poured out on the Cross like a libation – becomes Love Incarnate in the consecrated bread and wine we receive at every Eucharistic celebration. Eucharistic Love – the very Presence of the Christ for us – is what is offered and shared in our so-called “Jubilee groups;” our parishes, our homes, our workplaces and schools and our community. Being fed here (at Mass), we go forth and feed others.
For therein lies the final piece of Luke’s understanding of Eucharist: once the hungry crowd was satisfied, then they left to return home … and there was still enough left over.
Eucharistic love never keeps us in one place. It is always about sending forth; making us missionaries in ways we don’t often expect. The Eucharist we receive here should (and will) make us feeders of others: by the ways we listen and serve; by the ways we walk in the footsteps of the One who carried a Cross and laid down His life in love for the world. What we receive here at the Sacrifice of the Mass makes us other Christs, if we are willing to be sustained on such Bread.
The Bread of Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Bread of Him who tells us: Whenever you do this, do this in remembrance of me.” A living presence – when we are here at the Altar, we are truly present to the One Sacrifice for all time.
How could that Love not change us? How could that love not sustain us?
And yet, on the surface, it seems so ordinary.
Not unlike a blackberry pie from a Tacoma Widow named Helen, whose small contribution not only fed a small crowd of hospice supporters, but changed how an entire city of sick and dying people are cared for in their final days.
Love sees and gathers. Love offers freedom and sustenance. Love sends forth to feed others.
That is Christ – and that is Eucharist.