Good Morning Friends,
There is a lot of talk about feeding the love this Advent and appropriately so. Today in a passage from Isaiah we see the great joy and hope of a feast without death and in the Gospel of Matthew the means of this movement of love multiplied in the grass roots to feed the souls of many to overflowing. It was written at a time of crises and transition when hope was in short supply. The thing is that people are hungry in more ways than one and they need to be fed. Some are suffering malnutrition. But I wonder how this will creatively translate into the Covid-19 Christmas season we hope to celebrate. So, Will We Have An Abundant Spiritual Feast This Advent?
Scripture: On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain. The Moabites shall be trodden down in their place as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit.
Isaiah 25:6-10a (NRSV)
After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” The disciples said to him, “Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” Jesus asked them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish. “Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
Matthew 15:29-37 (NRSV)
Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’
Matthew 22:1-4 (NRSV)
Message: This morning, I invite you to focus on God as a gatherer and a giver of grace and how we will be able to celebrate those aspects of His creative nature as we gather together with other believers to share a communion meal honoring Jesus over the next several weeks. To prepare us, today we explore scripture that describes the miracles of two feasts, one that multiples the gift and another in its abundance that swallows up death. I like the idea of multiplying the loaves and fishes, it is kind of exciting. But I think I love the image of a feast where God will swallow up death too. It suggests a feast that is full of joy and sorrow mixed – joys and sorrows that are not just swept away from the table or ignored but integrated as a part of the feast, eaten and fully experienced…it is kind of like the experience of Communion and the Passover more than Christmas but we are in the time of contemplation before the twelve days of celebration. So, let us not forget Christ’s Mass is about his death more than his birth. Really, I am not so sure about what is so merry until the resurrection. Maybe it is the hope of a child bringing joy. But during all the merrymaking if indeed we have much of that, here is the deal… God does not stop people from shedding tears at the table, he does not say that only happy people can come to his table, but instead he lets the tears fall and he himself wipes those same tears away creatively weaving the experience toward hope.
And So, I know that the experience of Christmas for many people is not merry at all during the pandemic, but I imagine great works of imagination and of peace will come out of it. Last night I was listening to music written during the Spanish Flu Pandemic and there are some amazing compositions born out of the time by people who suffered though it and for the most part survived. Uniformly they have a tension and discord in them. I suggest music like: Stravinsky’s, The Firebird Suite, Bartok’s, The Miraculous Mandarin, Prokofiev’s, The Love for Three Oranges, Respighi’s arrangement of La boutique fantasque and Griffes’, Three Preludes for Piano. They were composed during a pandemic that killed 50 million people. Griffes’ piece is particularly interesting in that he died from the Spanish Flu Pandemic. The first movement wraps around the listener in a tsunami of menacing waves. The storm clears in the second movement, but a sense of foreboding remains. The third movement is dissonant, but cheerfully tantalizes the listener. The trio of miniatures ends with a single chord, assuring the listener that all will eventually be merry and bright, ultimately, at peace. The impressionistic music prompted me to be just a little more sensitive to the reality of the Season of Sadness for those who get depressed with the reduction of hours of light and the anxiety of family and the endings as well as the beginnings of life during a pandemic. And I hope they help you too to understand the history we are living in a deeper way. Perhaps the ramp up to Christmas in 2020 is better experienced like Lent and a little less like traditional Christmas music. Stay hungry for the Gospel my friends. Feast on the Spirit of the Season.
Pray we live lives feasting with the Messiah on the best of the best. Pray our lives explode beyond, living with and for others, though community, and city, into the whole world and into eternity. Pray we prepare for the Great Banquet to be, anticipating it to be amazing. Pray we rejoice not so much about the bounty of the feast but also on the beauty of the guests. Pray we reclaim the alters of the world as a table for Christ. Pray we rejoice in the fast and the feast of the family of God.
Pray we celebrate with joy by savoring the life that we have, cultivating an attitude of gratitude. Pray we share the love and grace of God with others by our words and actions. Pray we realize that every day God invites us to be guests at the party. Pray we realize that grace and judgement come every day. Pray we honor Jesus in our actions as we feast on the Word and pause to fast from all the busyness of the season in the gift of God’s creation of us.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 