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February 22, 2009
First Friends
1Corinthians 11:17-26
‘Pitch-in’
Doug Gwyn
One of Garrison Keillor’s best Lake Wobegon stories is about a
controversy in his little Church, the Sanctified Brethren. The
congregation was locked in a debate that became more like a feud.
It turned on the question whether or not the sanctified should reach
out in aid to the sinner. Both sides piled up biblical verses to
fortify their position. Those in favor of helping sinners were
called the ‘Cup of Cold Water Party’.
Months of stalemate passed, and the congregation was in danger of
splitting. Finally, a matriarch of the congregation invited the
key combatants to her home for dinner. The two old patriarchs who
were the principals of the conflict took positions at either end of the
table, staring gimlet-eyed at each other. After the group sat
down, they entered a time of silent prayer before the meal. It
went on and on – each side engaging in a silent filibuster, to
see who was the holiest. Finally, as the rest of the group kept
their heads stubbornly down, the hostess got up and brought the roast
chicken to the table. The aroma of the chicken slowly worked on
the group. It smelled so inviting. In each heart, it
brought a flood of memories of childhood, family, and Church occasions,
melting even the stoniest hearts around the table. They finally
broke the silence and began to pass the dishes around. As the
meal began, the controversy faded.
Keillor’s story captures something important. We know it in
various ways from our own experiences. It also captures something
that Paul gets at in the passage Ann just read for us. Paul is
taking the Church at Corinth to task for the way they’re
conducting their pitch-in dinners. The problem is, they’re
not pitching in. Individuals and families bring their own food
and eat it separately. As Paul bluntly states it, “When you
come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s
supper.” You’re each eating your own supper. No
wonder you have factions. Once you start feeding yourselves, you
start suiting yourselves in every other way as well. But the
worst part is, the poor people in the congregation aren’t getting
anything to eat this way. As Paul summarizes it, when you come
together this way, it’s not for better but for worse.
This passage gives us another snapshot of the early Church. Down
to this day, every congregation does well to look at it again now and
then. I’m happy to say that this is an area where First
Friends excels. I’ve never been part of a Friends meeting
that enjoyed feeding each other so often, and in so many ways.
Our Fellowship Committee is perhaps our hardest working group –
offering refreshments after worship, putting on receptions after
weddings and memorial services, organizing the Hanging of the Greens
meal in December, and the Lenten Soup-Supper with the Catholic
Community every year (it’s coming up again on Wednesday, April 1,
by the way). Then our Commissions do an elaborate dance of taking
turns at feeding us. They provide refreshments on third Sundays
before Monthly Meeting. They provide a simple soup supper for
Commissions Night each month. Those are strategic food occasions
in our congregational life. We sit together at round tables,
enjoying food and fellowship before we embark on the business of our
Meeting. That gives us a chance to renew the bonds of friendship,
enjoy the fruits of God’s creation, and fortify ourselves for the
work of listening to each other and listening for God’s leading
together.
And Family Ministries does a lot of this work too. There’s
the chili cook-off for the Souper-Bowl Party, refreshments for
Pumpkin-Fest, and the annual Sunday School Kick-off/Cook-out in
September. And they organize our Friendly Feast groups, still
more pitch-ins, where we have the opportunity for smaller-group meals
and more extended conversations in one another’s homes. All of
these are important occasions for renewing friendships, getting to know
new Friends, folding newcomers into the life of our Meeting.
First Friends Meeting is very pitched in.
But, at least in American society today, congregations tend to attract
mainly people of similar economic class. Very seldom does anyone
come here looking for their next meal. Now, we could bewail the
fact that we’re such a comfortably middle-class
congregation. But that itself is a very middle-class piety of
hand-wringing and breast-beating. Until we find a way to be a
broader Church, we can work to extend the blessings we enjoy on to
others in the wider community. Years ago, Friends here were key
actors in starting the Community Food Pantry. First Friends is
still one of the mainstay congregations supporting the Pantry.
Many of you make contributions to the Good Samaritan Fund, which
responds to a variety of people in Richmond with urgent needs.
And last summer, First Friends fronted the money to start Open Arms
Ministries. It’s a clearinghouse ministry to coordinate and
optimize the way churches in town respond to people in need. This
week was the first week Les Williams and his group of volunteers
started a three-month trial period for Open Arms. Perhaps we
could find better ways to enjoy real fellowship with Richmond’s
neediest citizens. But the things we do are good.
Henri Nouwen reflects that, as we come together to eat, as we bring our
dishes together, as we pass them around the table, and invite people to
have more, in a sense we become food to one another. Beyond the
physical food we share, nourishing the physical body, we also share of
ourselves. And that feeds the soul. This is what Jesus did
with his closest friends at that Passover meal, the Last Supper, the
evening of his arrest. As he passed the bread and the wine around
the room, he became food and drink to his friends. I don’t
think he did it so that someday we would pass around silver and gold
platters with little wafers, and drink tiny vials of grape juice and
spill it on our ties. The Church got hold of the wrong end of the
loaf when it created such a ritual.
It’s much more about the kind of meal Paul describes. The
early Church moved from the Last Supper to the Lord’s Supper,
from Jesus sharing food with his friends, to the Friends in Christ
sharing food with one another. It’s about sharing from the
Christ in me to the Christ in you. By pitching in, by sharing our
food with each other, we become the body of Christ. Quakers got
away from the ritual of the Lord’s Supper and got back to the
living reality of it. We got away from the wafers and grape juice
and got down to a real meal, shared together.
Paul writes the Lord’s Supper proclaims the Lord’s death
until he comes. That can be any meal we eat, together or
alone. When we take a moment of silence before a meal, it’s
a time not only to be thankful for this food and for other blessings in
our lives. It’s also an opportunity to be mindful and give
thanks for the greatest blessing, the gift of life that we enjoy as
part of the body of Christ. We can take a moment to remember that
Jesus died to bring together the likes of us. To take us past our
many differences. When we eat together with that level of
awareness, the Lord has come among us. Christ is at the table
with us. At our best, when we pitch in, when we lay our dish on
the table, we can remember how Jesus laid down his life for us.
When we refill one another’s cups with coffee or instant
lemonade, we can remember how Christ poured out his life in the form of
a servant for our sake.
This fellowship binds us together at many levels. There are
conscious levels of intention and planning – like remembering to
prepare and bring something for that meal coming up. But our
table fellowship also unconsciously evokes cherished childhood
experiences at the family table, productive working lunches on the job,
and many other occasions of our lives. It’s a very
integrative activity – it integrates the different parts of our
lives and it bonds us together at deep, unconscious levels.
Nevertheless, disagreements will occur. Friends of good faith and
best intentions will diverge in their convictions now and then.
In this passage, Paul accepts that there are divisions at
Corinth. He even suggests that they need to have some divisions,
in order to reveal who is genuine. That surprised me. But
notice, he’s not saying it reveals who is right, whatever the
bone of contention may be. Whatever our viewpoint on a given
issue, we are genuine as we are genuine with one another and honest to
God. As we pitch in, we keep showing up for each other, keep
reaching out to one another. That is genuine. Christian
faith, Quaker faith & practice – these bring us to the
fundamental paradoxes of human existence. Paradoxes are
combinations of great truths that belong together, even though we can
never work them out in neat and tidy ways. Living with the great
paradoxes of our faith, we’re bound to have disagreements.
But we’re also bound together as we gather together and ask the
Lord’s blessing on the Friendly Feast that is First Friends.
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