9am & Choral Eucharist

Preacher: Canon Andrew Nunn, Sub-Dean

Text: Exodus 16. 2-4, 9-15; Ephesians 4. 1-16; John 6. 24-35

Confession, so they say, is good for the soul. So let me come out to you as a fan of rubbish television – but those of you who’ve heard me before will know that already. I can’t help it – I realise that there are a great many things that I’d be better off doing but I can’t help tuning into programmes that aren’t good for me. Programmes like ‘Come dine with me’.

Now, for those of you who keep yourself pure from such things I need to tell you a bit about the programme.  It’s a very simple format. 4 or 5 people, strangers, invite each other round to their houses on successive evenings for a dinner party.  You watch the host struggling to prepare the food and then their guests arriving and sitting down to sometimes a wonderful meal and sometimes a disaster on a plate.  Then fed and watered they mark their host out of ten and the winner at the end of the week wins a thousand pounds.

All very simple.  What makes it unmissable is the commentary – rarely complementary and always hilarious.  What’s also compelling is watching how the people gel as a group – or don’t - as they get to know each other and are forced to share a meal together.

Sitting down and eating with other people is such a normal and yet such a special thing to do.  We do it every day – but usually with people we know and usually with people we like.  We don’t often sit down with complete strangers, people with whom we’ve no connection, people not like us.  And when we do we have to work at it and if we discover that we can’t bear the person next to us or opposite us then the evening seems to pass very slowly and we usually decide not to seek out their company again.

Who you choose to sit down and eat with is therefore significant – and Jesus knew this.  He knew that the fact that he chose to eat with tax collectors and sinners and have prostitutes wash and anoint his feet and kiss him when he was at the table would be a scandal to those who sought to keep themselves pure.  Yet that was where Jesus found a welcome and a meal to be shared – with the people on the edge, with the people with whom others, the religious pure, would not sit down to eat.  Jesus was a scandal at the meal table.

And when he was invited by Simon, a Pharisee, a good man in religious terms, to his house for dinner the welcome he got was half-hearted and lacking, nothing like the welcome that the outsiders gave him. 

Last week saw a huge amount of emailing amongst people on the inclusive, progressive catholic front, people who share the kind of attitudes that, I suppose, we in Southwark are known for – people who’d choose to be at the meals that Jesus was at – with the interesting people!

What provoked all of the emails and the blogging was the reflection that appeared on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website, a reflection on the decisions of the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Youo can find it here.

I’m sure that in fact the General Convention made many decisions but we’ve only heard of two.  The first, as it was reported, was to overturn the moratorium that they’d imposed on themselves, in response to a request from other parts of the Anglican Communion, on the consecration of partnered gay and lesbian bishops.  The second was to begin looking at creating a service of blessing for those who enter into same-sex partnerships.

The Archbishop attended part of the Convention and after returning had an opportunity to consider the implications of those two decisions by the General Convention.  Immediately those votes had been taken the internet was full of delight from the progressives and horror from the conservatives.  Undoubtedly, the Archbishop, as a focus of unity, has to somehow hold these two groups together and the vast majority of Anglicans who do not express an opinion either way.

However, the response that came out last week has caused distress and anger among many and particularly those who are looking to the Anglican Church in the global north to be able to respond positively to where society is.  The Archbishop’s reflections on same-sex partnerships, his comments about gay and lesbian clergy and how tenable their commitment to the church is and his desire for the church to arrive at a common mind and for no part to act prophetically – my words not his – independently, have all caused this dismay and anger.

The implication is that in some way communion with the Episcopal Church in the United Stares will be impaired, and the more extreme conservatives are actively calling for a break in communion with TEC, as it’s now called.  If that were to happen we’d no longer be able to gather at the altar with our American Anglican brothers and sisters, or I’m sure our Canadian ones as well, if that part of the Communion goes down a similar route.

Some Christians love to wear a wristband with the initials WWJD – what would Jesus do – on it. What would Jesus do in this situation?  I believe Jesus would continue to do what he has always done – to sit down at the table and share the meal – it’s as simple as that.

You’ll be relived to know that I’m not just a huge fan of trash TV I’m also a huge fan of George Herbert – you see I’m a real catholic in every sense.  One of his amazing poems speaks into the situation in which we find ourselves.

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

In this Eucharist today we’re focusing on the bread with which God feeds us, the bread which is Jesus Christ, the bread which is the body of Christ, which feeds the people, the body of Christ.  That’s why we’re here, because we’re hungry and we need feeding and the only food that’ll satisfy is the food that God gives to us; the only meal that’ll satisfy is the meal that God places on his table – the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, bread and wine, food and drink for our journey, for our pilgrimage.

And we came through the door because we’d heard God’s invitation to us, ‘Come, dine with me’ and we arrived with people we know and people we don’t, with people we like and people we don’t.  We’ve come here and we’ve already found that there are people like us and people who aren’t.  We’re gay and straight, black and white, male and female, young and old.  Some of our life styles are challenging to others, some of our habits need reforming, all of our lives need redeeming – yes, we know that but the invitation is still there – ‘Come, dine with me’.

‘Love bade me welcome – but my soul drew back.’

We cannot believe it – would God really invite us if he knew who we are, what we’re like?  But of course he knows us better than we know ourselves - ‘Who made the eyes but I’.  We find it hard to accept this gracious invitation, yet he insists that we sit and eat.

When the Israelites woke, they looked out of their tents and found that across the ground was a fine flaky substance – and they didn’t know what it was until Moses told them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat’, the food that God gives.  And it was scattered and it was fragile and it had to be gathered.

So are we, scattered, fragile, broken in so many ways – and God gathers us and gives us his broken self for food.  For the bread that we eat is the broken body of Jesus given to a broken people who look for the wholeness that Christ gives.

‘Come dine with me’ is Christ’s message to Anglicans in Nigeria and in America and to us in Southwark.  I’m prepared to sit down with any of my brothers and sisters – but maybe they won’t be prepared to eat with me, and maybe they won’t be prepared to eat with you – and that’ll grieve the heart of God, who in generous self-giving love spreads a table for all his people and offers himself broken to a broken church and a broken world.

AMEN