Covid, the Beatitudes, and the Food Box
- Sarah
- Feb 15, 2022
- 5 min read
Scripture
Gospel reading for Epiphany VI, RCL Year C: Luke 6:17-26
Sermon
Back in the early pandemic times of March and April of 2020, one of my neighbors started a sidewalk food shelf. As I was recovering from COVID, stuck in the basement guest bedroom and glued to social media, people were losing their jobs in massive numbers overnight as cities and counties and then whole states went into lockdown. My neighborhood is a mix of economic statuses; some kept their white-collar jobs and just went remote and were materially fine, but families who worked primarily in the service industry were out of luck. The formal safety nets hadn’t kicked in yet. Going to the grocery store was fraught for both reasons of expense and worries about the virus. We had very little information beyond horrific news stories about what was happening in Italy, and then New York. The nation was scrambling. It was scary. And in the midst of that chaos and uncertainty, a neighbor put out a call on social media to say: I have some extra food and it is in a box by my sidewalk. Please come take some if you can’t go to the grocery store right now.
In the coming days, people responded to the post saying they’d added Rice-a-Roni, or pasta, or even milk or eggs. The food disappeared. More food was added. As I regained my ability to drive, I dropped off canned soup. This went on for weeks, until some sort of equilibrium was achieved with helping each other with grocery trips and making those first cloth masks and formal unemployment benefits starting to kick in.
Not only is this one of the only times I’ve ever seen a social network like NextDoor used for good rather than for occasionally hilarious but definitely petty ill, it was to me a real-life example of the alternate way of being community that Christ calls us to over and over in the Gospels.
In reading Luke this past week, so many questions went whirring through my head, many of them old and intimidating and the subject of lifelong study: What does healing look like? What is power? What does it mean that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, but the rich have already received their consolation? Are these things related at all?
Just previous to today’s reading, Jesus had spent the night on the mountain, praying, and then the following morning named the twelve apostles. Our part of the story today begins with Jesus and the newly-minted apostles coming down from the mountain to stand “on a level place” with the rest of his disciples and also a “great multitude” of people who had come from all over the region to hear Jesus’s teachings and be healed. It is on this level place that he heals those in the great multitude – we learn that everyone is trying to touch him, “for power went out from him.” One might think he would need a nap at this point, but the power going out from him proves to be power of the inexhaustible kind, the power of the Kingdom of God. And instead, on that level place, in and amongst the multitude and his disciples and not over or above them, he looks at his disciples and begins preaching the Sermon on the Plain.
“Blessed are you who are poor,” he begins, “for yours is the kingdom of God. Woe to you who are rich,” he continues, “for you have received your consolation.”
It’s upside down. It’s either comforting or upsetting, depending on who and where you are when you hear it. I am always terribly tempted to metaphorize Luke’s beatitudes, to make them more like Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” but that’s simply not what’s being said here. The Kingdom of God involves a completely different way of being, an uncomfortably different set of values and assumptions.
A little later in Luke, in response to a question about where the Kingdom of God is or will be, Jesus responds, somewhat infuriatingly, that it’s not going to be in this location, or over there. You can’t point to it. It’s not a place. Rather, he says, “the kingdom of God is among (or within) you.”[1]
Something about those early weeks of pandemic allowed us ears to hear and eyes to see some small piece of the Kingdom, and to participate in it: to give and to receive without want for recognition or praise, as if on a level place. I would love to be able to proudly tell you all that I was having deep thoughts about the food box as a sort of sacrament, or a making present, of the Kingdom right there in the moment, but I was too wrapped up in logistics to be thinking deeply about much of anything. It wasn’t until several months later that I thought about the food box as the sacrament that it was. No one was talking about who “deserved” the food they had or lacked. There was no talk of “earning” or “meriting” a box of pasta or a half dozen eggs. The neighborhood simply saw that some households had food and some did not, and responded from that level place. The world shaded, or a veil briefly lifted a few inches, and the reality of our shared humanity drove our actions rather than the calculations of merit more common to our public lives together. It was all the more moving for how un-commented-on and un-self-conscious it all was. It was just something people did: fear and anxiety abounded, and in response someone determinedly put a cardboard box on their front lawn under an umbrella with “Free Food – Please Take Some” magic-markered on the front.
I wonder when you have experienced the Kingdom. I’m certain that you have, even if you didn’t recognize it in the moment. What was it like? Did it surprise you? Did it make you wonder in turn?
I believe that the Kingdom of God is incarnational. That it is indeed among and within us – us, who are baptized into the Body of Christ, a mystical Body which transcends but most definitely includes this time and this place; these people, and these bodies – yours, and mine, too.
Christ has no body but yours, St. Teresa of Avila wrote[2],
No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which He looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which He looks compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
If we are, each of us, baptized into the body of Christ, and if the church is the sacrament of Christ in and for the world, then we’re called to open our eyes. It is the season of Epiphany, and the light of Christ is out in the world. We are out in the world. Who might be reaching out to touch the Body, for healing of this kind or of that kind? Will we embrace them? Will I? Will you? For the power of the Kingdom of God is within us, and it is intended to be given away.
Notes [1] Luke 17:20-21: Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” [2] This is the traditional attribution. Officially, the author is unknown.
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