Breaking Bread

The Rev. Denise Giardina
June 22, 2008

Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

I don’t watch TV much these days – it’s not that I am one of those cultural purists who has something against watching TV, I just gave up keeping track of all the new shows. Nowadays when my set is on, it’s usually turned to a WVU or Marshall ball game. Or else I’m watching a show about food. I know -- I think it’s the silliest thing in the world. I’m watching the Food Network, or the Travel Channel. Someone – Anthony Bourdain or Paula Deen or Rachael Ray is eating food I can’t smell, or taste, and then they stare into the camera and say – “MMMMMMM!!—OOOOOH! If only you poor invisible person in TVland could taste this.”

But I watch. I like to imagine what it would be like to eat all those different types of food. And I watch because those foods come from many different places in the world, and I get to see scenes from those places, to learn about the different customs, to see and hear the people from those countries and put a face on the people there.

Last week I was watching a show on the Travel Channel – Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Perhaps you’ve seen it. Andrew Zimmern is a bald man with a kindly face who likes to travel the world eating cow’s stomach, chicken feet, baked armadillo, and a variety of bugs and worms. One point of the show, a good one, is that people around the world make use of all parts of an animal, rather than being wasteful. Another point is that our eating habits, though they seem familiar to us, are just as exotic as those found elsewhere. I am waiting for Andrew Zimmern to come to the “Critter Dinners” held in Dunbar and Pocahontas County for a feast of bear and groundhog, not to mention ramps.

The show I was watching last week was about the foods of Vietnam. Andrew Zimmern was invited to a family dinner in Hanoi, in northern Vietnam. A variety of traditional dishes, cooked by the older women in the family, were served, including a stir-fry of bugs. Andrew Zimmern loved it – a taste of citrus, he said. He offered it to the two children of the family, a boy and girl. Uh – no, they said. Their reaction made clear that stir-fried bugs were not something they were any more used to than our own children would be – rather like offering a West Virginia child some barbecued possum. The boy, around 7, turned up his nose and shook his head vigorously. The girl, who I’d guess was around 12, was dressed neatly in blouse and skirt. She wore glasses, which made her look studious and reminded me of my twelve-year-old self. She smiled shyly but skeptically at the offer of bugs and said, very politely, “No, thank you.”

And in the midst of that family gathering, that cultural exchange, that simple television show about food in other cultures, I had a horrific thought. Because I realized that forty years ago, when I was not much older than that girl, my country was trying to bomb that girls’ family into oblivion. And had she been alive back then, that girl, like many others might have been incinerated by my country’s bombs. And for what?

I consider that for many years I enjoyed going to the Japanese restaurant across from Town Center, sitting at the sushi bar and talking to the then owner and chef, known familiarly to his customers as Fuji. Fuji is from Japan. In my grandparents and parent’s day the people of Japan, Fuji’s family, were likely pleased as their country dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor. And my family’s generation of Americans was pleased as they firebombed Tokyo and dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there we sat, just a generation later, Fuji and I, talking over squid salad and eel and cucumber rolls.

We can kill each other, or we can eat together.

Our Old Testament reading today tells the ancient story of Hagar and Ishmael. If you recall from last week, Abraham and Sarah believed they were too old for children. So in another part of the story, Sarah gives her servant Hagar to Abraham so that he might father a child. I won’t even go into all this story shows about the place of women in that culture. But Hagar, willingly or not, bears Abraham a son, Ishmael. And then Sarah unexpectedly becomes pregnant, and Isaac is born. Sarah perhaps understandably regrets her earlier decision and grows jealous. Hagar and Ishmael are sent away and face death in the wilderness. But God rescues the pair and, just as God promises to make a great nation of Isaac, he promises to do the same for Ishmael.

This ancient story has been held up for thousands of years to explain the origins of two great peoples – the Hebrews and the Arabs. In Islam, as might be expected, Ishmael is a heroic figure. In later Jewish tradition, Ishmael is seen as arrogant, as bullying Isaac, and that is why he is expelled, though later he repents. But the story in Genesis is different. Isaac and Ishmael are boys, not men. And Sarah sees Isaac and Ishmael playing.

What was it about the sight of two children playing that threatened Sarah so? We can only guess. But I suspect it had something to do with seeing someone who was thought of as “the other”, as “different”, as “inferior”, being treated as an equal, and being accepted as a fellow human being. When we look at the long, tragic, terrible history of the Middle East, the bloodshed between Jew and Arab, it is tempting to say that Sarah was prescient, that she sensed the future.

We can kill each other, or we can play together.

Today’s Gospel lesson includes one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted passages in all of scripture. Jesus says, “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Time and again, from pulpits, in Sunday School lessons, in letters to the editor, in the halls of Congress, people have used this passage from Matthew to justify going to war. “Go fight and kill, because Jesus said so.”

I find this horrific not just as a Christian, but also as an English teacher. I want to say to the people who make that argument, Do you not understand a metaphor? Jesus was not speaking of a literal sword, but a metaphorical one. Yes, he was saying, there will be conflict because of my message. People will misunderstand, they will be divided, because the message Jesus brings is a radical message, a message we are not used to hearing or living out. Love your enemy? Care for the poor, not for possessions? Reach beyond your narrow lives and go into all the world, welcome all people? To say, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”? Of course trying to live out such a gospel will bring a metaphorical sword down upon our heads.

But to use this passage to justify going to war and killing wholesale people from another place or culture just because we don’t like their ideas, or their system of government, or we want their resources, or simply because our government tells us to?

The early church was a pacifist church. When Christianity finally became the state religion of the Roman Empire, St. Augustine set out the parameters that would allow a Christian to fight in a war. What it boiled down to was this – Christians may fight wars only in defense, and only when the good result hoped to be gained is greater than the destruction caused by the fighting.

Given that history of the Christian church, given the consistent message of Jesus about turning the other cheek, and loving enemies, and losing one’s life to save it, we are compelled to examine ourselves and our nation.

This week’s New York Times website showed a picture, taken after a recent marketplace bombing that killed scores of people in Iraq. A young father kissed his son, a toddler of around 2. The son was dead. The little boy was a Shiite, killed likely by Sunnis, and we are not responsible for the centuries of hatred between those two groups. But we ARE responsible for destroying the structure, flawed though it was, that kept them from killing one another en masse. We ARE responsible for ignoring their situation while we pursue our own selfish national interests.

Nations will indeed pursue their own selfish interests – they have throughout history. But Christianity, true Christianity, is countercultural. Christianity calls one to follow Jesus Christ, not national interest. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, living in Germany in the 1930s, pointed out the difference between what he called Germanism and Christianity. There is also a difference between Russianism and Christianity, between Britishism and Christianity, between Americanism and Christianity. Americanism at its best may incorporate some Christian virtues. At its worst, it does not. When it is violent, and grasping, and judgmental, and torturing, it is at its worst. Christians, including American Christians, must turn to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

In another famous passage from today’s gospel, Jesus says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods would understand that these sparrows were being sold for food. But also, Jesus says that not one of those sparrows will fall to the ground apart from the Father, without the knowledge of God. And he says, “even the hairs of your head are counted.”

Of course. If God sees the fall of a sparrow and counts the hairs upon our heads, he sees what we do. He sees why we go to war, why we hate, why we kill. No amount of public relations, no dissembling of press secretaries, no manipulating of intelligence, will fool God almighty. And God will judge, both individuals and nations.

But God also gave us a precious gift, himself. God suffered and died for us, even though we make idols of our nations and turn our backs on him. God gave us the gift of one another, if only we will take the trouble to talk, to learn, or even just to turn on our televisions and meet the other vicariously. And God gave us the gift of Holy Eucharist to share together.

We can kill each other or we can eat together.

I will close with one of those wonderful collects from the back of the prayer book. It’s on p. 815 if you would like to follow along. “A prayer for peace. Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. AMEN.