+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Kings 3:16-28, Acts 27:27-44, Mark 14:12-26

Paul said, “Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive; for none of you will lose a hair from your heads.” After he had said this, he took bread; and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat. Then all of them were encouraged and took food for themselves.
Acts 27:34-36

The traditional Jewish action before eating bread is not - as St Paul does here - giving thanks to God. Rather a traditional Jew says a blessing:

Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe who brings forth bread from the earth. (Amen)

The division between “blessing” and “give thanks” is very strong. In his Feast of the World’s Redemption, John Koenig points to Tractate Berakoth in the Babylonian Talmud and wonders if the prohibition against saying “We give thanks, we give thanks” might not be a prohibition against Messianic Jews making Eucharist. Either way, it is a clear demarkation between “give thanks” and “make blessing.”

Paul here, seems to be making Eucharist. It’s what you do in a shipwreck.

And by his action “all of them were encouraged and took food for themselves”. This is a picture of a Christian, doing what he does naturally, and thereby giving life to those around him.

Francis said, “Preach the Gospel always, use words if necessary.” Sara Miles says, “My first questioning year at church ended with a question whose urgency would propel me into work I’d never imagined. Now that you’ve taken the bread, what are you going to do?” (Take This Bread) It is our actions, the doing that matters.

When I first came out, back in 1984, I was convinced then (as now) that the reason so many Gay Bars were filled with Gay Men on Sunday morning was not because they had rejected the Church, but because the Church had rejected them. When I was ordained into a Gnostic order, in 1996, I consistently thought of Gay Bars and other such places as my parish. One of the most moving Christmas Eves ever… I left Midnight Mass at St John the Divine and travelled to a pub in Greenwich Village. There I met a bunch of drunks watching “Holiday Inn” and listened to them talk about their families and the holidays and all the reasons they couldn’t put those two things in the same room with themselves. So they were here getting drunk. If I had known then what to do in a shipwreck, I’d have followed Paul’s example.

The only person I’ve ever “won for Jesus” I met in a chat room on Gay.com. It was not by “witnessing” to him that I got him to Church the next week: but rather just by talking. People are starving for the kind of love that God shows us in Jesus. And people can be found everywhere these days. It is by being Christian or, better yet, doing Christian that we draw others into this life.

Think of the traditional doctrines of the Eucharist - that we take the daily stuff of life (Bread and wine) and offer it to God. God gives it back to us somehow transformed, as the very stuff of Divine Life by which we, eating it, become divine ourselves. The Eucharist is the meal that consumes us. Thus, in partaking of the Eucharist, Paul here is somehow making Christ present in his own person to these men and women on the ship: his fellow prisoners, the crew, the jailers and the other passengers. Fr Alexander Schmemann taught that humanity stands in the midst of the world as priest offering the world to God and receiving it back transformed. In fact, that’s our only purpose: we offer our food and it becomes enough to feed everyone. We offer our brokenness and wholeness returns. We offer our martyrdom and life ensues.

When we do what we are meant to do, when we live our vocation - making eucharist in all things - it can not but be open communion: for all around us, Christian or not, benefit.