Friend
Peace be with you.
In a previous life, I was a short order cook. I wasn’t very good at it but I did it every morning during one of my summers at college starting at 6:30 and going until 2:30 and possibly 3:00. It was a particularly difficult summer, too, because I also drove medications to nursing homes from 5:30-10:00 or 11:00. I’d get home just in time to fall asleep and wake up and do it all over again the next day. I found the cooking job frustrating and rewarding at the same time. My boss would come every day and bail me out if I got behind but he wanted to sit out front and entertain people so I always felt guilty asking for help. I can remember one day when I just kept seeing more and more tickets going up and more and more people coming into the restaurant and I kept falling further and further behind. There were several points when I wanted to open the door to the kitchen and ask for help but I just kept working and falling behind until the owner finally opened the door and asked, “How are you doing? It looks like you could use some help.” I said yes and stepped aside as he took over and bailed me out. I became his assistant watching the old master put out perfect over easy eggs with hot buttered toast and a crispy hash browns. After about an hour, it slowed down and he turned and asked if I could handle it from here. I assured him I could and he said, “Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help.”
We all know what it’s like to be hungry. We all know what it’s like to be thirsty. I would guess that, in this time of covid-19, we’ve also experienced being hungry somewhere and thinking that we would ordinarily stop somewhere to get a snack but we should probably just wait until we get home. God is speaking through the prophet Isaiah to very hungry people, people in exile from their land, people facing a “new normal”, a phrase I’m sure we all hate by now, a people in slavery to their neighbors, the Babylonians. In every way, God should be telling them how disappointed he is in them and how they need to take their punishment for their wickedness. But, instead, he is inviting them to a feast. Now, this isn’t just significant because it’s food. It’s significant because you only invite your friends to feasts. So, God is reminding them that they are still his people, that he still has a close relationship to them even if they feel isolated and alone.
Similarly, in the gospel, Jesus sets up this banquet in a deserted place for people who have come to him to be healed. Notice, by the way, that Matthew starts by saying this is how Jesus responded to the death of John the Baptist. Remember that John’s death also happened at a banquet, but Herod’s banquet was filled with powerful people and ended with a drunken murder of a murder. Jesus’ banquet is filled with people who were sick who had come to be cured and ends with a miracle.
So much of my life, I think good things happen to me because I’m holy or moral. Or at least I’m not as bad as other people. Isaiah reminds us that it’s the lost who are closest to God. Jesus reminds us that the sick are the ones called to this miraculous feast. We come here injured but not broken and longing for the healing that only Jesus can provide in his body, blood, soul, and divinity offered to us in this Bread from heaven.
