April 8, 2017
Luke 24:36b-48 and Acts 4:32-35
By: Jennifer Garrison Brownell
At a neighborhood health food cooperative in St. Paul Minnesota where I worked in 1990, our clientele was fairly predictable – gentle middle-aged hippies there for the hummus and the organic carrots with the greens still attached. That’s why one evening, a particular gentleman in my check-out line really stood out.
Tall and deep voiced with a great shaggy head of hair, big rings on several fingers and well-defined cheekbones; he looked like a rock star. “I just moved here from New York City,” he told me as he was checking out. I’d lived in Minnesota my whole life up to that point, could not imagine why someone would leave there to come here. “Why?” I asked.
“All my friends died of AIDS, and there was no left to take care of me, so I came here so my mom can take care of me until I die.” This was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and he was the first person I’d met who’d openly acknowledged that he had the disease.
“All my friends are dead.”
I bagged his groceries.
“All my friends are dead.”
As I handed him the change, I touched his hand and looked into his eyes.
That was the day I learned that when you feed people, you see Christ. (That I kept seeing Christ in the grocery store was ultimately the reason I got out of grocery and into church work, but perhaps that’s a story for another day.)
By 1990, the folks at Martha’s Pantry already knew very well that when you feed people, you see Christ. “In the early 1980s, AIDS was devastating the local gay community as well as others with the disease. They not only were fighting for their lives, they were facing financial ruin because they just couldn’t work.
A small group of concerned people in Vancouver decided to take on the task of helping these individuals and families in any way they could. It started with buying food, driving to the homes of those in need and distributing it out of the trunks of their cars. As I was guided around the current Martha’s Pantry rooms at a small church on MacArthur Boulevard, Pastor Ken Kerr pointed to an energetic gentleman. “He was one of those who delivered the food in the early days and he still volunteers,” Kerr shares. “He’s in his 80s!”
The effort grew as more compassionate people took up the task of providing food, clothing and cleaning supplies, as well as emotional support and friendship.
Another focus is clothing. “Our clothing closet is named Michelle’s Closet after the volunteer who started it,” explained Kerr. “Michelle, who ultimately died of AIDS, was an involved volunteer who saw a need and worked to fill it…
There are activities and special events such as arts and crafts, games and distributing Christmas dinner baskets.
But the main reason Martha’s Pantry is so needed is that those with HIV/AIDs often don’t feel welcomed when they go to other programs.”
What makes Martha’s Panty special is that a lot of what goes on there looks like…just hanging out.
Today we heard that the disciples were all of one heart, and one mind. This is the result, but for those of us who like steps to follow, we discover that the process isn’t even a process, it’s just the slow unfolding of the delight of conversation and relationship.
Maybe Christ isn’t so much in the feeding people, as in the human connection that comes from feeding – and that human connection requires a lot of what looks like just hanging out, saying a prayer, passing plates, telling jokes, wiping tears, talking, goofing around. .
Speaking of orderly lists, this week I went to look for an orderly list of post resurrection appearances. Couldn’t find one. I found lots of analysis. On the one hand, the analysis says, Christ’s appearances are meant to be proof to believers of the resurrection. On the other hand, the appearances often directly contradict each other. And in these appearances, nothing really…happens. There are no dramatic healings; no water into wine. Just a touch, a conversation, a meal together.
Of course they are contradictory and seem to be breaking out everywhere at once. Christ cannot be contained.
In a recent Daily Devotional, Mary Luti wrote, “Forty days. The risen Jesus could’ve used that time to tell his disciples what it was like being entombed in airless rocks, or with what divine mechanism the angels rolled away the stone, or how he felt when he saw Mary in the garden alone…
He could’ve addressed post-ascension practicalities, equipped them with doctrines, vision statements, and achievable goals for the early church…
But no. Here he is, a new creation fresh from God’s morning, yet not a single new topic comes out of his mouth. He’s still talking about what he talked about pre-crucifixion at the lakeshore, on the mount, in the temple precincts, at Capernaum, on the road to everywhere.
(Instead, he told stories, the same ones he had told them before) – of debts cleared by mercy, small things of infinite worth, mighty things reduced to dust, broken bread instead of broken bodies, tiny sparrows, counted hairs, banished demons, truth declared to tyrants, put-away swords, found sheep, found coins, found children, a hidden way inside, a buried pearl, living water, branches and vine.”
But this time, their minds were opened. And they heard.
Our conference has recently unrolled the Starling Project, an opportunity to share how our conference can be more intentional about covenant and community. Groups are invited to gather to just…talk. For those of who like a process, a set of steps, it can seem sort of, I don’t know, meander-y. But listen, through the Starling Project, we are just doing what Jesus did every time he met his disciples in those confusing days after resurrection. A touch, a conversation, a meal. May it open our minds as it opened theirs. Amen.