Breaking Bread Across Boundaries

Sermon by The Rev. David R. Anderson

Luke 24:13-35

 

Two forlorn disciples on the road to Emmaus. Getting out of town. Giving up hope. A stranger meets them on the road, and all the talking, all the readings from Scripture cannot pierce their grieving blindness. But as the day ends and they sit at table and the stranger breaks the bread, their eyes are opened and they know the risen Lord.

There’s spiritual power in food, in sharing bread and wine. That’s the punch of this story. And here we’re not just talking about a kind of clubby hospitality where two or three people who already presume to know one another sit down together. Nothing much can happen there. We’re talking here about the power of a shared meal to connect people who don’t seem to go together, who wouldn’t typically “know” each other, who live next door but in a different world.
I want you to try to imagine the least likely person you would ever have over for dinner. I mean, you know them, they know you, but you’d never share a meal. The man who sits on the same train most days. The woman in the next cubicle. You might even call them friends, but they’re Jewish, or they’re Hispanic, they’re Mormon or they’re a pay grade above us, below us, or they have kids or they don’t have kids. And, you know, we tend not to eat with those who are not like us.

Imagine that person, or that couple or that family.
The power of this Emmaus meal is that people who didn’t know each other (well, they did, they just didn’t know it)—people who were strangers discovered they that they did know one another. In fact, they were one.

We can’t hear this table story without remembering that eating—and who ate with whom—was a major social feature of Jesus’ day, and therefore a major feature of Jesus’ message. Strictly observant Jews didn’t eat with Gentiles or even other Jews who weren’t strictly observant.

I was talking to a Jewish scholar this past week. I was in England all last week for the Oxford Round Table, a conference that brings together almost 50 clergy and academics for a round table discussion, and this year’s topic was “Religion in a Secular Age.” This Jewish scholar, David, was telling me that he attended a Hasidic synagogue. Well, he didn’t have the black hat, the long black coat, the long sideburns. He said, “Actually, I’m not Hasidic, I just love that synagogue. In fact, if I were Hasidic I wouldn’t be here!”  I asked why?  “Well, to begin with,” David said, “I wouldn’t be eating at a table where all the food wasn’t kosher. I couldn’t eat with you.”
This is exactly the world Jesus lived in. And he angered the religious establishment by deliberately violating the social boundaries. “This man,” they screamed, “eats with tax gatherers and sinners!”
This group of almost 50 clergy and scholars was incredibly diverse. It was almost too diverse for me at the beginning. We were mostly mainstream people—black, white, men women, Christian, Jewish—mostly mainstream. But there were a few extremes, which at first made me uncomfortable (until I realized how vital it was to have the whole spectrum there if we were going to have a real discussion and not a feel-good gathering of the like-minded, applauding each other’s bromides).

On the second morning a fundamentalist Christian man responded to a paper that someone had presented. “Really,” he said, “I object to discussing Christianity as if it’s a ‘religion’ like all the others. Religion is man’s attempt to find God. But Christianity is God’s coming to find man.”

Immediately a rabbi named Joseph asked for the floor. “When you talk like that, Gary,” he said, “you exclude me and my faith. I’m a Jew who stands at that holy place before the bush that burns but is not consumed; I stand in that same covenant that included Jesus of Nazareth. And all I want from you is just enough humility to hold your truth without needing to deny me a place with you.”
But Gary wasn’t moved. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he shot back. It matters what Jesus says: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me.’ Now,” Gary said, “either Jesus was a liar, a lunatic or Lord. And if he was Lord as I believe he was, it doesn’t matter what I say. It’s an absolute truth.” The hall went quiet. Then a Methodist pastor on the other side of the room stood and said, “Romans chapters 9 to 11,” and sat down. Now, you might not know what’s in Romans 9 to 11, but all 50 of us around that table knew what he meant: Paul’s affirmation that God’s covenant with Israel is “irrevocable.” God is not through with his covenant people!

Nevertheless, that sad exchange tinged the whole group, the whole day. The discomfort was palpable.
That night rabbi Joseph had been asked to bless our food before dinner. We stood for grace and Joseph said, “We’re here to listen to one another, no matter how difficult that is. It takes courage to enter into that kind of discussion, to sit together, to reason together, to break bread together. So let us pray.”

And then he began his prayer with the traditional Hebrew Kiddush, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, for you bring forth food from the earth…” and then he paused. After a moment he continued, “ . . . you bring forth food from the earth, and invite us to risk our love in breaking bread across all boundaries so that your presence might save us. Amen.”

That was an Emmaus prayer—from a rabbi. In the coming days it changed the dynamic of the debate in the Oxford Union hall. It changed my heart. I went to Gary and said, “I don’t agree with your theology, but I’m glad you’re here. I need you.” I let go of my anger. All because a rabbi prayed that we might break bread together with our hearts open to the power of God’s own Spirit.

Are you still thinking about that person least likely to sit at your table?  If you don’t want to grow or change, you can forget this. If you’re happy to stay as you are, to stay in possession of whatever truth you have and you don’t want to risk opening yourself to someone else’s life, someone else’s truth, keep your same dinner mates.

But if you’d like to have an Emmaus meal, step out. It doesn’t mean you have to have someone for dinner or for lunch and start a debate. It just means . . . you sit down together, say hello, reach out a hand of friendship. And then, as this remarkable Emmaus story assures us, the risen Christ takes it from there. Always.