Homily for Sunday, May 2, 2010

The story, "Babette’s Feast" begins with a portrait of two elderly and pious Christian sisters. The sisters, Martine (named for Martin Luther) and Philippa (named for Luther's colleague and biographer Philip Melanchthon), live in a small village on the remote and beautiful, but also barren and chilly, western coast of Jutland in the 19th century (1871). Philippa and Martine are the daughters of a pastor who founded his own strict Christian sect. Though the pastor himself has long since died, and the sect draws no new converts, the aging sisters preside lovingly over their dwindling brood of white-haired, rural resident believers. Into this world crashes a French woman, Babette, who has been made homeless by the revolution in France. The sisters take her in and she uses her skill as a chef to make the scanty food delivered to the community’s poor a little tastier. Though the "spice" that is added to the food is considered by the community to be naughty, if not sinful, still all give thanks (and even smile) for Babette’s presence.
The sisters take Babette in, and she spends fourteen years as their cook. Her only link to her former life is a lottery ticket that a friend in Paris renews for her every year. One day, she wins the lottery of 10,000 francs which would surely allow her to return to her former home in adequate style. However, she instead decides to use the money to prepare a delicious dinner for the sisters and their small congregation on the occasion of the founding pastor's hundredth birthday.

The simple folk are aghast as they see the exotic pheasants, turtles, not to mention the wine, all for the coming feast. They do not want to be impolite, but are afraid they will be possessed by some demon if they partake in the feast. In a hasty conference, the sisters and the congregation agree to eat the meal, but to forego any pleasure in it, and to make no mention of the food during the entire dinner.

Unaware, Babette prepares and serves the finest meal they will ever eat. And the meal transforms them. Their bitter disputes and long secret indiscretions dissolve into the peace and harmony of God’s future kingdom, evidenced as they finally leave the meal singing a hymn of praise and faith in that future.

But the prospect of Babette leaving the community with her newly acquired wealth still looms, In fact it is now more bitter, since her gift of the meal. So the sisters approach her and ask her about it. Babette then confesses that she has spent the entire fortune on the one evening meal, so she will continue to stay and serve the community. It is then that you realize the extraordinary gift of grace that is the center of the story. It was not about money, it was about Babette’s gift of self in joy and freedom, about her being a servant, and yet finding the fullness of her humanity in that servanthood.

On the night before his death, when he would give himself over to ultimate servanthood, Jesus takes a moment to teach his disciples, to teach all of us, really, about how we also will find ourselves fully human, and fully embraced by God as we take the servant role, as he did.

When Martin Luther wrote his small catechism, he was reacting to the absence of grace and the need for people to understand the free gift of forgiveness in the sacraments. He was right there, to emphasize these things in his writings, for his time and ours.

But this meal into the personal pietistic feast of our individual forgiveness.

Communion, understood in the context of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, is a meal that exemplifies the statement, "you are what you eat."

Though in this case it might be "you become what you eat."

And by you, I don’t mean individuals, I mean the gathered community.

We are the body of Christ, the Church.

The meal of communion serves to shape us into the very thing that God has called us together to be.

As we share in this meal we become the sign of God’s presence in the world. And that presence is a serving presence.

We are fed and strengthened here to be sent into the world in mission to the poor, the outcast, the lowly.

We are not sent in some patriarchal way, as if we have the goods and we are kind enough to share them with the lowly (how patronizing).

But instead we are sent as lowly among the lowly.

As washers of feet, we do the dirty jobs reserved for the lowest classes of people. We spend ourselves and in the process we too discover what it means to be fully human.

It is this meal, this event that shapes us just this way.

Jesus is right to tell Peter that if he doesn’t participate in the washing he won’t get it. We would do well to heed these words.

When we understand that the Lord of all dares to strip it all off to wash us, to feed us, to spend his life for us, then we, who dare to call ourselves his followers, find our faith leading us to do the same.

For faith means no more nor less than trusting Jesus’ way of being in the world.

Lutheran Christians don’t believe that Holy Baptism is an outward sign of an inward action –

something one does once you have invited Jesus into your heart.

Rather we believe that Holy Baptism is God’s gracious act of choosing us (especially as helpless infants) for Christ’s sake.

We believe, teach, and confess that Holy Baptism is the pattern of our lives until we die. Yes, we are only washed one time with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Yet we believe, teach, and confess that Holy Baptism is a way of life – daily dying to sin through confessing our need for a Savior and daily being raised to live a new life in the power of the Holy Spirit (given as a free gift in baptism).

the words from our scripture this morning introduces us to the shape of this baptized life and the real meaning of discipleship.

We are to do as the Lord Jesus does.

We are to love as our Master loves.

He gives us a new commandment – to give our lives away in humble service even unto death.

Now, needless to say, the inner circle of disciples didn’t get it that night or the next or the next. When Jesus took off his outer cloak and tied a towel around himself and began to wash feet like the lowliest servant, the disciples were taken aback and even repulsed by this kind of deliberate choice. When Jesus was arrested later that night and went without protest, the disciples were terrified and lost heart by this kind of deliberate choice. When Jesus was on trial before the religious leaders and the secular leaders, when he was mocked and beaten, when he was condemned to death, the disciples were in fear for their own lives and disbelieving of this kind of deliberate choice. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, the disciples were grief stricken and utterly disoriented by this kind of deliberate choice.

Only later, after the fact, when they knew the rest of the story, only then would the disciples begin to understand that Holy Baptism is a way of life – the pattern of dying to self and rising to life a new life of humble service in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord Jesus says to us: "Do as I have done – give your lives away in humble service." And we answer back: "You have got to be kidding!"

After all, the culture we live in is far more appealing than the kingdom the Lord Jesus calls us to inhabit. Like those that put the Lord Jesus on trial, we declare that the Lord Jesus is a threat to our culture.

And He is!

He is out to destroy this culture of death. He is out to obliterate its obsession with selfish autonomy. He longs to give us a new life!

That night when the disciples were gathered with him for supper, the Lord Jesus did what every pious Jew does to this day.

He took bread and wine and gave the King of the Universe thanks and praise for it. But on that occasion, the Lord Jesus said: "This my body and this my blood given and shed for you."

His disciples did not know what He was up to, but we baptized Christians know the rest of the story. The Lord Jesus was promising that the life He was about to sacrifice for the sins of the world would be ever after given in bread and wine as we eat and drink, remembering that we were there with Him on the cross. In Holy Baptism, we have already died with Him on Calvary’s tree and now in the Holy Communion He gives us His life as a free gift again and again and again unto eternity.

Left to ourselves, we abandon God and can never love as Christ loves us. But dying to ourselves daily and being filled with that Life and that Love that can never be taken from us, we can give our lives away in humble service just like the One who lives in and through us.