Pie

Luke 24:13-35

Yesterday was my Grandmother’s 100^th birthday.

Last month, my father and I talked about how to mark the occasion, because this would be the first time we’d have to do so without her. She died last October, decades after she was ready to be reunited with her husband, but six months short of the milestone we’d all sort of started expecting her to meet. So it was an unexpected challenge, thinking about how to mark this 100^th anniversary of her birth without her, for the first time.

And the first thing that came to my mind was dinner.

A nice substantial dinner in the middle of the day, with ham, and mashed potatoes, and probably collard greens. A few other dishes, and then pie. Very definitely pie.

You see, my childhood memories of my Grandmother are dominated by the dining table. I grew up as a picky eater, not interested in cooking (and to this day, my idea of cooking dinner is taking the Trader Joe’s goodies out of the freezer and putting them on a baking sheet). So my Grandmother’s home-made dinners were a daily wonder to me, when we visited. They were rich in butter and bacon, and unlike my parents, my Grandmother wasn’t worried about my sugar intake. She was a scratch baker – a true miracle in my eyes – and if there was ever a dinner at her house that didn’t end with pie, I have blocked out the memory.

My grandmother showed her love in many ways, but for me, her dinner table is a sign of love that looms large in my memories and heart, and shaped my sense of God’s abundance from a very early age.

Meals mattered with my Grandmother.

And they do with Jesus.

In Luke’s gospel in particular, Jesus is constantly eating a meal, going to one, coming from one, or talking about a meal. And in both of Luke’s stories about the resurrection, it’s a meal that makes Jesus’ risen presence a reality to his disciples.

Imagine this:
You’re headed home after an emotional holiday. The friends and family you’ve been with have suffered political and emotional whiplash as your friend was killed just when he was on the verge of doing great things, fulfilling his destiny.

Now there are rumors that he’s not dead after all. Crazy rumors, but someone you know was there and says that his grave is now empty. It’s crazy, but you can’t stay in the middle of it. There are responsibilities waiting, and you have to go, so you do. We hit the road.

The road is a good place, sometimes, for grief. Or for conversations about crazy things, speculative things, vulnerable things – for saying the kind of things that can be hard to say face to face, but that flow a little easier when you’re side by side, moving along, together.

We try to figure it all out. We get it off our chests, we process our experiences. We do the things you are supposed to do when you’re stunned and sad.

And along the way, someone else chimes in.

“Hey, what’s this you’re talking about?”

Sometimes it’s easier to tell a stranger, to talk about “out there” stuff to people who don’t know you and won’t hold it against you next Monday at the office, or suspect your commitment to them because you’re exploring something new.

And this particular stranger is interested. Passionately interested. Joins in the conversation, working to make sense of the whole thing with us, quoting scripture, citing authoritative sources for the things we’ve only speculated about.

Sometimes telling your troubles – or your wild ideas, your fondest hopes – to someone else creates a bond. You don’t want to lose the moment, and when we get to a stopping place, we don’t want to let go: “Oh, come in and have dinner with us. I insist.”

And at dinner, in the warm, nourishing intimacy of the table, the stranger picks up the bread: breaks it, passes it, shares it,

and everything changes.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

I don’t know why the traveling disciples didn’t recognize Jesus on the road. Preachers and scholars have plenty of explanations – distraction, expectations, the hand of God, – but whatever it was, I think Luke tells the story this way because he wants us to notice that the meal matters. That the dinner table is where the relationship is made real all over again; the meal completes the miracle of resurrection and redemption.

From God’s earliest promises of a homeland flowing with milk and honey, through the prophets’ visions of abundant tables, through the stories and actions of Jesus, throughout scripture, an abundance of good food is a sign of the completion of God’s promises.

So it is at dinner, at the table, in the act of receiving bread from God’s hand, that the disciples on the road recognize the completion of everything that Jesus has taught them; the completion of his promise of resurrection and return and redemption that they had heard, and wondered about, and never quite understood.

You and I, Luke’s readers, Luke’s hearers, are supposed to recognize not only Jesus in this story, but the Eucharist, the meal we still share two thousand years later to remind us that the promises of God are still being fulfilled among and in us.

The words of the story, that Jesus “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them,” intentionally echo the words that describe Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper when he offered his friends his Body, and at the feeding of five thousand hungry people with an abundance that overflowed even in the leftovers.

And when these traveling disciples rush back to Jerusalem, they tell Peter and the others how Jesus was revealed in the breaking of the bread, in the same words the community of apostles will use to describe their first Eucharistic meals, the breaking of bread which makes us one.

When we read and hear this story, Luke wants us to remember that this miraculous meal the disciples shared on the road is the same thing we do every Sunday, every time we meet for Eucharist.

We come from wherever we have been, sometimes puzzling over what has happened in our lives; we bring blessings and griefs and questions, and together, we remember and interpret the stories of scripture.

Then we break bread. And commit ourselves to the truth that the risen Christ is here, that love takes solid form among us at this table, just long enough for us to recognize and respond.

It can be harder to see a real meal in the wafers and wine than it is to see Jesus in them, I know. And sometimes, with all our prayer and faith, the wafers are just…well, a faint facsimile of bread…and the wine or juice is just grapes.

Sometimes dinner with my Grandmother was just dinner. Sometimes I was disappointed to find out the pie was just boring apple.

But even then, the flour and water, wafers or pie, are still love made physical, love made edible, love made – sometimes – boring and bland but still nourishing to the body and soul.

And other times, well…other times the pie was lemon meringue, and I tasted heaven. Other times, Jesus bursts into our sight, our hearts, as we receive a little morsel of bread from God’s hands, and we remember how Jesus has set our hearts on fire.

Sometimes that happens because we come to the table – the altar table, the dinner table – more open than usual, more vulnerable in our grief or wonder or spiritual hunger. Sometimes it happens because God just can’t be kept out of even the most ordinary days and things. Either way, those are the times that make gospel, that set resurrection loose in the world to redeem us all.

So keep eating, my friends. Practice being fed with love at your ordinary dinner table, whether the food is frozen or home-made. Practice being fed by love in the Eucharist, so that we are ready for those unpredictable moments when we recognize God’s promises fulfilled, right here and now, when heaven comes to meet us on earth, and we remember all at once how Jesus has set our hearts on fire, and go forth from the table to light the world anew.