Nourishing the heart at Christ's feast...

This has been an intense week: the heat wave has been oppressive, the challenge of this ministry demanding and, on a personal level, the attempted suicide of a loved one in Dianne's wider family has been unsettling. (Thanks be to God this young man was found and is now receiving care and treatment.) And still my heart looks towards the feast... A story from the gospel of Matthew is clarifying in which those following Jesus are reprimanded for picking grain on the Sabbath and eating it, too.

One Sabbath, Jesus was strolling with his disciples through a field of ripe grain. Hungry, the disciples were pulling off the heads of grain and munching on them. Some Pharisees reported them to Jesus: "Your disciples are breaking the Sabbath rules!" Jesus said, "Really? Didn't you ever read what David and his companions did when they were hungry, how they entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat? And didn't you ever read in God's Law that priests carrying out their Temple duties break Sabbath rules all the time and it's not held against them? Look: "There is far more at stake here than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant—'I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual'—you wouldn't be nitpicking like this. The Son of Man is no lackey to the Sabbath; he's in charge."

A few ideas emerge for a "spirituality of the feast" from this text:

+ First, the way of Christ's feast is a path of the heart - lebab in Hebrew and kardia in Greek - rather than merely a collection of rituals. It is neither a rejection of intellectual thinking nor is it opposed to ritual celebrations for in the roughly 854 times "heart" is used in the Old Testament the meaning points to the emotional, rational and ethical core of a person. Both Jesus and his predecessors summarize the way of the heart like this: Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God and the Lord is One. Blessed be the God's kingdom forever and ever. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all soul and with all your might. These are the words I have commanded you today to be in your heart. http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/shema.htm

As a charismatic, mystical son of Israel, Jesus taught that the core of his tradition is always about turning our mind, our feelings and our will towards God in faith. He also emphasized that the best way to practice the turning of our core towards the Lord is by embodying compassion for our neighbors. Luke's gospel articulates this most clearly in Luke 19 where Jesus connects Deuteronomy 6:5 with Leviticus 19: 18 and 34:

And one day an authority on the law stood up to put Jesus to the test. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?” What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you understand it?” He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind.’(Deuteronomy 6:5) And, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ (Leviticus 19)” Jesus replied,“You have answered correctly, so go and do that and your life will have meaning.

Those who know the Christian tradition will recall that immediately following these words, Jesus defines our neighbor in the parable of the Good Samaritan: a despised outsider - the Samaritan - not only shares compassion and healing with a wounded Jew, but arranges for his well-being through gifts of food and lodging. Here is the embodiment of a flexible heart in opposition to the prison of inflexible ritual or habit - and curiously it is expressed through radical hospitality - in which compassion, food and shelter become God for the wounded.

St. Paul said something similar in Romans 12: I urge you, sisters and brothers, by the mercy of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice - THIS is your spiritual worship - and THIS is what is holy and pleasing to the Lord. Do not be conformed to the ways and habits of this world, but rather be transformed by the renewal of your mind, for then your bodies will show the world God's will in all its beauty and power.

+ Second, the spirituality of the feast trusts that it is our encounter with radical hospitality - the bread of life and cup of compassion - that is the best way to nurture acts of deeper commitment. Intellectual assent, catechises and all the rest have their place, but they are not primary. How does the old saying put it: "When the student is ready, the Buddha appears?" An encounter with grace that is experiential, honest, earthy and embodied - like a feast - is the best way to train disciples and cultivate a company of the committed.

Think of all the stories where Jesus teaches and molds his crew into a counter-cultural community through table fellowship: from the wedding banquet in Cana of Galilee to the post-resurrection supper along the Emmaus Road, it was the breaking and sharing of bread that "opened their eyes." I think the invitation to the Eucharist gets it right - but not just for the ritual act of feasting - but as a guideline for turning the core of our hearts towards the wisdom and spirituality of embodying Christ's feast in all things:

This is the joyful feast of the people of God: Men and women, youth and children come from the East and the West, from the North and the South to gather about Christ's table (or dare I say to make Christ's table visible and embodied) so that the presence of the Lord is made flesh and shared in community.

As the old words say, "Go and learn what this means: I seek compassion not ritual sacrifice says the Lord. Do likewise and you shall have the essence of life." (check out "Peaches en Regalia" by my man Frank Zappa.)