One of my favorite books is Christianity’s Dangerous Memory by an Irish social psychologist, theologian, and clergy—Diarmuid O’Murchu.   We may argue that the UCC is accustomed to look at Jesus as dangerous prophet who challenges our conscience, complacency, and any tendency to tribal exclusivity.  Over the years, I have found Jesus continuously as the most dangerous person. I study him in scripture and attempt to get to know him in prayer and follow him daily in my intentional practice of compassion. He is a messenger of the Spirit, who teaches and lives God’s radical inclusive love.  Jesus communicated to his disciples in Luke’s sermon on the plain: “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate.” (Lk. 6:36)   Compassion is a major theme of his ministry.

Jesus apprenticed to John the Baptist, he was instructed and taught to mediate as preparation for his baptism and retreat in the Judean wilderness.  At his baptism, Jesus experienced the descent of the Spirit as a dove and a revelation that the was he beloved child of God. He went into the wilderness to understand what God as Abba meant in his life and learn what the Spirit instructed him. His wilderness experience became a visionary quest that many indigenous peoples go through as they become adults. There he discovered God’s presence in creation as Spirit and what he would describe as the kin-dom of God.  I use kin-dom not kingdom for non-patriarchal usage. Kin-dom signifies the dangerousness what Jesus understood as living in the presence of God. It is not like the kingdoms and empires of this world. A Canadian theologian Bruce Sanguin writes,

The metaphor of kin-dom is a family metaphor. To be kin is to belong, no questions asked. In an evolutionary universe, I’m interested in kin as a metaphor that includes “all of us,” not just “us.” From this perspective, kin is not just about our tribe, our nation, our family, our religion, or even our species. Kin suggests the radical belonging of all our relations human and other-than-human. Viewed holistically from the perspective of the universe story kin-dom breaks down false boundaries that separate and alienate.

Kingdoms and empires are full of economic and political inequalities between the have and have nots.  For an example the 1% in the Roman Empire owned 15-18% of the wealth, now 150 families in the US own 45% of the world’s wealth.  Income inequality is real and has grown even further in the last several decades. Jesus used the symbol of the kin-dom of God to indicate that God lives in our midst, Kin-dom is both a familial term as well as Jesus was very conscious that God’s kin-dom required a different ritual than John’s baptism.

Jesus adopted  eating as a more dangerous ritual than baptismal immersion. Meals reflect hospitality, or they can be tribally exclusive. My Greek grandmother would welcome all who came into house, sit them at table, and bring out food to share for guests. There were no strangers, all were guests were welcomed as family.

Jesus practiced an open table fellowship, and all were welcome to the table—poor, male and female, sinner and righteous, outcasts, impure, throw-away people of his society.  The inclusive table of Jesus stood in contrast to the hierarchical meals of imperial aristocracy, the exclusive meals of the Pharisees, or the exclusive holiness meals of the Temple priests. Jesus’ meals triggered terror in his religious critics and political opponents—both whom cannot comprehend eating together with discrimination and hierarchies. There were only those who voluntarily served others, gladly washed the feet of their companions, who assisted folks at table to heal from the years of religious abuse and oppression. Many holiness groups and churches today practice inclusion through exclusion while the radicalness of Jesus’ inclusiveness through inclusivity.

Today’s gospel has Jesus after his resurrection cooking breakfast on the beach of the Sea of Galilee for his disciples.  In setting a charcoal fire, he is setting up a meal for an important personal encounter. Remember in John 18:18 when Peter was warming himself besides a charcoal fire in the courtyard of the high priest Caiaphas and where he denies Jesus three times.   Cooking with a charcoal fire was intended to bring the memory to Peter of his three denials of Jesus in the courtyard of the High Priest Caiaphas.

While the disciples are fishing, Jesus inquires about the fishing and invites them to bring some fish for breakfast. The beloved disciple recognizes Jesus, and when he says, “It is the Lord,” Peter strips down and swims for the shoreline. Peter is often portrayed as impulsive. The disciples have breakfast with Jesus’ blessing bread and fish. As sideline, I want to mention that bread and fish were use for early first century resurrection communion services as well as other foods.

But as I said eating is a dangerous memory of grace.  Think about what Peter first thought when he saw the charcoal fire.  A flashback to the High Priest’s courtyard…There is no question that Jesus intends to interrogate Simon Peter.  He does three times with a question.

The first question: “Simon son of John, do you love me?  In the first and second questions, Jesus uses the Greek word for love (agapan). It is word of agape, the sacrificial love of a mother for children. It is the type of love a fireman laying down his life to save a person.  Peter answers, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” But Peter in this first and every other answer uses a different word for love and different type of love, (phileins), the love of friends. After each question and answer, Jesus instructs Peter: “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep” and “Feed my sheep.”  In his third questioning, Jesus uses the same word for love philein that Peter uses.  Jesus recognizes that Peter, is squirming in his guilt over his denial and abandonment of Jesus: he is still not yet ready to attain the sacrificial love that Jesus is asking him to practice.  Jesus abandons the sacrificial notion and word for love for Peter’s own word of friendly love. He accepts where Peter is in following of Jesus. in the own way he can emotionally do.

The gospel John has Jesus predicted Peter’s fate:   ^“Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  The evangelist inserts a bit of history on the end of Peter’s life and death in Rome.

This breakfast meal and the meal at the end of the journey to Emmaus highlight that these are crisis meals for Jesus’ disciples wherein the risen Jesus confronts and instructs his disciples to practice a sacrificial style of love, the type of compassionate love that Jesus understood invited to live that God practices for all of us.

Christian memories of eating with Jesus are critical moments of grace and challenge, for grace challenges us in the world within which we live. I am speaking about creation or the Earth and web of life, for creation and the Earth herself are a gift to us. It is, to use the words of Jesus, “freely received, freely given.” We actually live and dwell unaware in a freely received ocean of original gifting.  God has gifted us with creation and the Earth, a continuum of life going back 2 billion years ago as life microscopic life began and evolve. This continuum of life continues with the emergence of trees and countless animal and plant species, long before the emergence of hominids and humanity.  We as humans are born into continuum of creation grace, an ecological continuum of creation grace unfolding to the grace of incarnation of the Christ.  God has always abundantly provided for creation and all its life.

Our celebration of the communion meal today reminds us that gratitude is the appropriate response to this ecology of grace. We are interconnected to the Earth, our bread we share is the flesh of the Earth.  It is planted in the soil, rain and sunshine, gardening care, harvesting, grounding the wheat into flour, kneaded, and baked into bread and served today at our meal.  The grape juice represents the blood of Christ, also the blood of the Earth grown from grapes on vines, crushed and fermented into juice, and served today as well.

Communion meal represents several importance signs for us:

• First, there is the insight that I am what I eat. I eat and drink the body of Christ. The body of Christ is part of me, and I am in communion with the body of Christ. Yet the body of Christ is this and more.
• In creation, there is no life without eating. Eating is life and creation grace, and Jesus interprets his body with bread and his blood with grace juice. He becomes the bread of life. But even more significant God becomes part of our food cycle and comes to us as food this morning.
• Radical inclusive love does not stop with including people who are different. It includes the Earth ad all life. In John 3:16, the favorite quote for stadium games, ”God so loved the world that God sent God’s only begotten Son…”  Most people who hold such signs miss the word “word” (cosmos, creation).  God loves dearly creation and the Earth and all life.
• Finally, if God is found in the food cycle as food, it requires us to care for the Earth and her resources, to use with care and responsible love. Earthcare is connected with which this church and every church that celebrates the Earth and Earthcare. God is annoyingly present in the world, and we may understand the body of Christ as extended to the earth and all creation. That has consequences and the need for responsible care.

Now let me interrogate you and myself with the voice of the risen Christ:

“Do you with a sacificial love me?”   “Yes, Lord.” Then feed my sheep who are hungry and suffering from poverty and food injustice.  This instruction also includes non-human life as well.

“Do you love with a compassionate me?”   “Yes, Lord.” Then tend to my rivers, the soil, and atmosphere by removing the poisons and pollutants.  Many indigenous peoples and a few townships have incorporated a bill of rights for nature into their communal documents.

“Do you love friendship me?”   “Yes, Lord.” Then feed and care for all life. It means that we are call to see nature as God sees and love nature as God loves nature.

 

Blessings!