THE FEAST OF FAT THINGS
October 9, 2005
Texts – Isaiah 25: 1, 4-9
Philippians 4: 1-9
Let me begin with a personal word of gratitude for the many kindnesses you have extended to Donna and me during these past two weeks. Your cards and letters . . . your emails and phone calls . . . have meant a great deal to us.
My father’s death twelve days ago came as a great shock to us. Death is never a welcome visitor; I know that all too well from having walked beside many of you into that dark valley over our years together.
Dad was 85 years young. He was blessed with vibrant health. A week ago Tuesday he played 18 holes of golf, then came home and spent several hours collecting money from his sponsors for the CROP Walk which he had helped organize for the past 20 years down in Greensboro, North Carolina. After supper, he went to a lecture by Karen Armstrong, a theologian and author. He got home about quarter to ten . . . an hour later he was in a coma in the emergency room, and he left us at 5:30 the next morning. It doesn’t get a lot better than that.
My Dad got what he had long hoped for – a mercifully quick transition from this life to the next. We do not grieve for him, but we do grieve for my mom and ourselves. It is shocking and painful.
When we walked into the church for his memorial service last Saturday afternoon, we were surprised to find a beautiful bouquet of flowers from you. It seemed a tangible reminder that we were not alone . . . a lifeline back to faith, hope and love. We thank you.
* * * * *
“On this mountain,” our text from Isaiah this morning says, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” [Isaiah 25: 6] In the King James Version, it reads: “. . . a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” I’ve always thought that would make a wonderful Lee Family motto! We are the makers of fat things – rich food and well-aged wines. There’s something to aspire to, don’t you think?
I heard a wonderful story this week about a woman who shared that dream. She was asked to bake a cake for the church bake sale. Our Fall Bazaar is next weekend, by the way – there’s always a table right in the middle of the fellowship room which is filled with homemade cakes and pies and jam and cookies. It is a veritable feast of fat things. You won’t want to miss it!
Well, Alice was to bake a cake, but she forgot until the very last minute. So she baked an angel food cake, but when she took it out of the oven the center collapsed. “Oh dear,” she thought, “what am I going to do now? There’s no time to bake another cake.” So she looked around the house to find
class=Section2>something to build up the center of the cake. All she could come up with was a half-used roll of toilet tissue. So she stuffed the roll of paper into the sunken center and then covered it all with icing. The finished product looked beautiful, so she set out to rush it to the church. But before she left the house, Alice gave her daughter some money and instructions to be at the Bazaar . . . I mean the bake sale . . . the minute it opened. She was to buy the cake and bring it home. But when the daughter arrived at the sale, the cake had already been sold. Alice was beside herself. There was nothing she could do about it. She thought to herself: “At least my name is not on it.”
Well, the next day Alice joined two tables of bridge at a friend’s home. After the game the hostess served a quite elegant lunch, topped off by the cake in question for dessert. When Alice saw the cake, panic set in. She was about to rush into the kitchen to tell her hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, one of the other women said, “What a beautiful cake.” Alice sat helplessly as the hostess, a prominent member of the church, said, “Why thank you. I baked it myself.”
Don’t you love it? It’s got all the ingredients of a true story, and it most certainly is a story with all the markings of the Biblical style. Alice is you and Alice is me . . . Alice is all of us as we strive for perfection in the eyes of others. And sometimes the only thing that saves us from ourselves is our neighbor who is just as driven to seek the approval of others. “Why thank you . . . I baked it myself.”
“The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things,” scripture says. It is the promise of a banquet, of a feast of immeasurable bounty. All people are invited, the prophet says. All. Everybody loves a party, and everybody is exactly who is invited.
A friend of mine – Bob was an Episcopal priest (he liked to call himself a “Whisky-opalian”) . . . Bob used to say that life is like a gigantic poker game. The stakes are high; the chips are costly. There are winners at the table, and there are losers. The only thing that separates the Christians around the table from the non-Christians, Bob used to say, is that the Christians know that no matter who wins or who loses there’s free beer and pizza for everybody at 11. He called that “the doctrine of grace.” It works for me.
“The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things.”
We are driven, some of us, to strive for perfection. We want to be winners at the great poker table of life. Some of us measure that in dollars and cents. Some of us measure differently. All of us, when we’re honest, fall short.
We were sitting around my mother’s living room last week, meeting with the clergy who would conduct my Dad’s memorial service the next day. “Are there scripture readings you’d particularly like to hear?” Reverend Horner asked. “Did Al have any favorite passages from the Bible?” I couldn’t help myself. I just had to make a joke of it. “Sure he did,” I quipped. “It’s in Matthew 5: 48; just three words – ‘Be ye perfect!’”
It is not a text unique to my family; we have no monopoly on it. “Be ye perfect” is emblazoned upon all of our hearts from childhood onwards. Oh, some of us may have a disproportionately large dosage of it, but we all own a piece of this. Guilt and self-doubt are its inevitable by-products.
“Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving,” the old saying goes. Certainly it is what guarantees Adrianne and I (and others like us who have seminary degrees) perpetual job security! Garrison Keillor insists that guilt is important. “Sinners are the ones who get the work done,” he quips. “A strong sense of personal guilt is what makes people willing to serve on committees.”
“Be ye perfect” indeed!
Eugene Kennedy is a former Roman Catholic priest and professor emeritus at Loyola University out in Chicago. He writes:
“The first principle of being human toward ourselves is based on the universal and exception-less truth that nobody has it all together. It only looks that way. And it only looks that way to us because we are glancing at other people from our own angle. We see them from the outside and compare them to ourselves and judge that they have outwitted life, found the secret of youth, or lead totally untroubled lives. We tend to judge ourselves more harshly (he says), give ourselves fewer breaks, and generally less credit. We cannot see the inner world of struggle that besets persons who seem so posed and confident to us. They are almost maddingly at peace with the world as far as we can see.
Sounds about right, doesn’t it? But Professor Kennedy goes on –
The truth is . . . that nobody does have it all together and most people don’t feel that they do, although they think everybody else does. . . . There is a dynamic involved in real life, however, that means it is essentially impossible ever to get it all together.”[1]
Eugene Kennedy knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t he? Some of you look at me – and at others who stand in pulpits like this on Sunday mornings – and think, “Surely he has it all together! Surely she does not grieve like others do.” Would that it were so . . . but it is not. I weep as you do when death claims my beloved. It matters not how old he was or how blessed his life may have been. He is gone and I want him back. I want more. Don’t we all? More time . . . more opportunities to prove ourselves worth . . . more chances to “be ye perfect.”
But there is no more. Sooner or later we all run into this reality . . . into this impenetrable wall that says – “Beyond this you may not go.” And we are not perfect – not by a long shot!
“On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined,” the old prophet says. It is a promise to hold onto when your path leads into the valley of the shadow of death. But Isaiah doesn’t stop there. He goes on:
“And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, . . . he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces . . . It will be said on that day, ‘Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him . . . . Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’” [Isaiah 25: 7-9]
Nobody has it all together; all of us have yet a long way to go. As the folk singer Arlo Guthrie might have said years ago, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant” . . . but beware the angel food cake – it’s stuffed with toilet paper!
Do you remember what Jesus said to the disciples when they were confused and confounded by his teaching? “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” is what he had just said to them, and it scared the daylights of them. After all, being rich – then as now – was just about as good as it can get this side of Paradise, and they knew themselves to be far short of that goal. “Who then can be saved?” they asked. Who among us can ever measure up? He replied: “With human beings it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
“With God all things are possible . . .” With God the feast of fat things is not just a promise “by and by in the sky when we die” but an abiding reality here and now as we trust his forgiveness and rely on his grace. There is a banquet table spread for you and me. It is here and now, all around us in fact if we but have “ears to hear and eyes to see.” It overflows with unconditional love. It is suffused with a loving Father’s wide open embrace and never ending delight in his beloved – and make no mistake: that means you and me.
“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved,” Paul says. Then, lest we miss his point, he goes on to say – This means: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, . . . will be with you.” [Philippians 4: 1, 4-7, 9]
May it be so. Amen.
[1]Eugene Kennedy, On Becoming A Counselor, Revised Edition : A Basic Guide for Nonprofessional Counselors and Other Helpers.