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You folks may be familiar with the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s shelter ministry down in Toronto known as Evangel Hall. They’ve a really amazing ministry there. Daily meals, medical and dental care, temporary housing even for special needs people, clothing, help with job searching, bathing facilities, a chaplain, and that’s just getting started. Evangel Hall serves meals every day of the week, but they like to provide churches with the opportunity to come and serve the Sunday dinner. This is a wonderful thing.
My last church was close enough to Toronto to go down a couple times a year to serve the Sunday dinner. It was a big effort for my church for we averaged only in the upper twenties on a Sunday. We had to bring enough food for upwards of a hundred people and ourselves. We had to get there in plenty of time to prepare the meal in their kitchen with enough volunteers to cook, serve, and clean up afterwards. We were small and mighty and we did it joyfully and efficiently. You know how small churches are. Once we had done it a couple of times everybody knew what they each had to do and we did it and it never became a labour of love. I even brought along a couple of musician friends to provide a little hillbilly indigestion to accompany the meal. When everybody was served, we served ourselves and sat and ate with the people and made friends. After dinner, we took whoever wanted down to the chapel and had a little informal church service that was a really beautiful moment in time.
I don’t want to say these meals were a miracle of loaves and fishes. It was just a group of relatively well-off white-people pulling together $400-500 and donating a Sunday afternoon and evening to provide a meal to some folks who otherwise wouldn’t have had a meal on Sunday. The real miracle, the real gift was the sharing of lives; the building of relationships in what I would call a wilderness place, getting to hear the stories of people who for so many reasons just aren’t able to do life the way “society” expects them to do it. To such as these belongs the Kingdom of God.
Now, if I may, let me share another meal experience I’ve had as a minister that for me was not so uplifting. It was a Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast. There was an element in the ministerial association in a community in which I previously ministered who thought it would be good to let the mayor and other local government officials know that the local churches were praying for them. Good idea, but…I would have whole heartedly supported the event if it had just been a thing where the Ministerial invited the Mayor and the Councillors for breakfast in the fellowship hall of one of our churches and we shared a meal and then prayed for them, but that’s not how those Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast things work. Let me bring you up to speed.
It was a well-catered event for which everybody had to pay, I think it was about $35 a person. You got a little break on the deal if you could get enough people from your church to fill a whole table, about eight. Of course, there was some status associated with being able to do that. It’s been a while, but I think the venue wound up being either a big meeting area in the town offices or one of the local banquet halls. The local business community was also invited as if this were a Chamber of Commerce event. They were also given a reduced price if they could bring enough employees to fill a table. Posters went up all over town. There was a motivational type of speaker and a brief prayer at the end.
Being a frugal Presbyterian with some Mennonite in my background, I had a hard time seeing the purpose in the event. The people who attended, the mayor included, were already involved in local churches so it wasn’t outreach. It wasn’t even a fund raiser for a special need in the community. There wasn’t much socializing afterwards. Everybody had to get to work. I questioned why have these breakfasts. Knowing the theological tradition from which the idea of the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast arose down in the States, at best it seems they hope that they can build a type of relationship between the Ministerial and town council that was enjoyed by Billy Graham and American Presidents. But…, and I don’t want to sound cynical but I guess I am…, I am suspicious that these breakfasts are just a way of letting local politicians know there is a Christian voting block they need to consider next time they run for office. Anyway, a good time was had by all, but the next year when the Ministerial decided to organize another one of those things, I just stopped participating in the Ministerial. It just didn’t feel right.
These two meals show two different ways the church can be in the world. We can serve others unconditionally or we can court power. In his Gospel, Mark presents us with these two options. First, we have Jesus miraculously serving a meal of abundance to the crowds of people who followed him everywhere because he was bringing hope and healing to them. It was really wild what was happening around Jesus. People were coming believing they just had to touch the hem of his cloak and their lives would be dramatically changed. They would be healed, restored; the word for that is salvation. Jesus and his disciples were so busy they could hardly get away to rest and regroup.
The Ministry at Evangel Hall is like Jesus’ Feast of Loaves and Fishes. Presbyterians all over Canada give what amount to a loaf or a fish to Presbyterians Sharing and it’s funnelled through to Evangel Hall to where it becomes a feast of abundance of sustenance for people in some really challenging situations and their lives are changed. The people who come to Evangel Hall, if they keep coming back and take full advantage of what’s offered there, they will get a taste of salvation now in the Kingdom of God that manifests wherever Jesus is.
As far as the other way the church can be in the world, the courting power way, we had a look at it last week with the Birthday Feast of Herod Antipas. The guests at that feast were exclusively the rich and powerful. It was totally cut off from the real needs of real people. In fact, the abuse of privilege exercised by those at that feast was causing most of the “real needs” that the real people of the land had. John the Baptist, who bore the Word of the Lord to that bunch, God’s word of judgement against them for their abuses of privilege, was locked up in prison only to finally suffer beheading. The disciples of John, unlike Jesus disciples who were flooded with opportunity to minister, they had no opportunity for ministry among that clique at Antipas’ Feast. All they could do is collect John’s dead, beheaded body. At Antipas’ Feast a child was exploited, made to dance a perverted dance. Then, they made the child to be a pawn in a marital game of power that resulted in murdering the Word of God.
I don’t wish to depress anyone. I did enough of that last week in highlighting that the Church in our culture has been a welcome guest at the Feast of Herod Antipas. We’ve courted power. Ever since the fourth century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the unifying religion of the Roman Empire we have been courting political power and have given a false prophet’s approval to the greed and power lust of Western empires that have destroyed and enslaved the people of many cultures. We called the spread of Christianized Western Culture the Kingdom of God. Children were exploited and killed everywhere this anti-Christian form of Christianity went.
For me, that Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast really struck a discordant cord of a not right mix of Church, Power, and Wealth. It was trying to keep that unholy connection of Church and State alive. As I said, I would have had no problem inviting the Town Council to one of our churches’ fellowship halls and feeding them breakfast, listening to their challenges, and praying for them. I would even have gladly cooked the breakfast for that. But the way those Mayor’s Prayer Breakfasts get done…let’s say 75 people were there. 75 people at $35 each equals just over $2600. That would have provided at least six sit-down Sunday dinners at Evangel Hall where people’s lives really do intersect with Jesus and his Kingdom and they get changed.
In our society today churches are closing left and right as we’ve lost our place at the banquet table of Antipas. Our current place in this society that we helped to shape resembles that of John the Baptist locked up in Antipas’ basement prison. We who are left need to be asking how we should be in the world. Should we be like Jesus’ Feast of the Loaves and Fishes or should we be wasting resources on trying to regain the prestige we once had in our society?
There is a world of ministry opening up as we come out of these COVID lockdowns vaccinated and are able to socialize more. People are needing space in the midst of other people to just (for lack of a better word) debrief; to say this is how I’ve experienced the last year and a half. Giving each other the opportunity to speak and be heard will be an important ministry for churches to offer. It’s also an important ministry to be there with listening ears for our neighbours. Doing things outdoors that gives people an opportunity to stop and chat are helpful. Two of our Coop churches pre-Covid offered a coffee time during the week. Things like that can now start-up again, but maybe, if possible, weather permitting, do it outside. Have lemonade and cookies after church outside. If you’re a townie, spend some time in your front yard instead of the back. Be mindful that short conversations, short visits are nice. Oddly, a lot of people, particularly introverts, have lost their stamina for being around people.
Be mindful that many people have been and still are suffering employment stress, financial stress, marital stress, family issues, depression, anxiety. Many children are going to need a lot of encouraging to begin to explore outdoor life. Grief is huge as we haven’t been able to say good bye to those who’ve died the way we are accustomed to. People have had to move away. We’ve lost touch. There’s also a lot of anger and discord still over how the pandemic has been handled. Many of us have people in our families and friendship networks that refuse to get vaccinated. Like the people flocking to Jesus had so much need that Jesus and the disciples were overwhelmed, our communities are like that now – full of need. Being available and listening with non-judgemental ears is the best meal we can serve out here in this barren wilderness. Amen.
