Sermons

“God’s Love Language”

Micah 6:6-8; Luke 24:13-16, 28-35 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 2, 2016

World Communion Sunday

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, our hearts might be opened to your presence in every one with whom we break bread. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Some of you may be familiar with the book that marriage counselor Gary Chapman put out in 1995, or at least with its main idea. Chapman described the existence of five “love languages”, that is the way that people express and experience love. His theory was that if you can figure out and learn to “speak” your spouse’s love language, then your marriage would be stronger. This idea made sense to a lot of people, it seems, because his book has been on best-seller lists for years.

Now I haven’t read Chapman’s book, but I have a little familiar with the concept. The five love languages he names are words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, and physical touch. You may be sitting here right now, thinking about which one of these is the most powerful for you, or for your family members. The idea is that if you can observe how someone expresses love, then you can tell what sort of behavior toward them is most likely to make them feel loved. The flaw in Chapman’s system, from my perspective, is that he’s missing one of the most common love languages of all, the one I want to talk about today: Food.

It didn’t take long, after Chapman’s idea of love languages was out there in the culture, for me to figure out that my mother’s love language is food. When I’ve made arrangements to travel home, two months out from the trip, she’ll start asking me on the phone what I want to eat while I’m there. Two months ahead of time! Lucky for me, my mother is an excellent cook, plus she’s an incredible gardener, so there’s lots of fresh everything. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cherry pie or maybe peach, homemade apple sauce, these are the vocabulary words in my mother’s love language. I used to think it was adorably quaint. Then, I realized I do the same thing! I don’t have much time to cook or bake these days, but it’s still usually my first instinct when someone is hurting. Lasagna or brownies, maybe a nice pasta salad.

As I was preparing for today, figuring out how we should celebrate World Communion Sunday, I realized that food is part of God’s love language too. The passage we just read from Luke is an unofficial but unmistakable communion scene. Jesus took the bread, he blessed the bread, he broke the bread, and he gave it to them. And suddenly their eyes were opened. They recognized him in the breaking of the bread. This is God expressing God’s love for us. This is why we reenact this meal every Sunday, as a reminder of God’s love. What’s more – we don’t just do it in ritual fashion here in the sanctuary as an act of worship. Food is the love language of the church. It’s why we have coffee and donuts after worship. It’s why we have potlucks. It’s why we carry casseroles to the sick and those who are mourning loved ones. It’s why we feed the hungry.

There is something special about food as a love language, and I think it’s because food is so vital to our existence. Without it, we would die. Breaking bread together is a way of both noting our mortality and of expressing love for one another by caring for one another’s mortal flesh. And if we can take the hint from this story of the disciples in Emmaus, it’s how we recognize Christ in one another as well. That is, breaking bread together is how we truly begin to see and get to know other people. On a day like World Communion Sunday, when we want to remember the parts of the Body of Christ that are far away from us and distant to our understandings of the world, it is good to remember that it is through breaking bread that we get to know others best.

As with many years, when we come to the communion table today, we will have representations of the many kinds of bread eaten around the world. Tortillas, rice cakes, pita bread, and rolls help us remember that this table welcomes not just us but all of God’s children, from so many different cultures and culinary traditions. But I want to tell you a story about a time when the “bread” that was broken was even more different than a rice cake.

Many of you know that when I was 20 years old, I was part of a nine-month long Global Ministries program called Project Oikos. This program took 16 young people on a trip together through the United States, Canada, the Philippines and Germany. Often, we were split up into groups of four. This is a story about my group of four when we were in the Philippines, which included me, John the Filipino, Felix the German, and Liz the Canadian. This one time, we went to visit a really remote village. When I say “remote” what I mean is that we got up really early and got on a bus. After riding that bus for four hours, we stopped in a smaller city, where we had lunch. Then we got on a jeepney, which is another form of public transportation in the Philippines that’s kind of a cross between a bus and a taxi. We rode in that jeepney for another two hours, to an even smaller town. After that, the roads were too rutted out for a jeepney, so the four of us, plus our guide and another random guy who was going where we were going and everyone’s overnight bag, all got onto two motorcycles for the next hour of our trip. Once the motorcycles had taken us as far as they could, we hiked through the mountains for another hour. Finally, about 5 pm, we came to the edge of a rice field, and across the field, we could see the village we were headed for.

After carefully walking across the rice field – you have to keep to the edges, so you don’t fall into the watery part – we arrived just before 6 o’clock. It’s important to remember here that the Philippines is near the equator, so the sun goes down at 6 o’clock pretty much all year around. And upon our arrival there at dusk, we discovered that our hosts – while they’d known we were coming in theory and at some point – had had no idea we were arriving that particular evening! But what could anyone do? It was nighttime. There was no way we could turn around and go back the way we’d come. So, of course, they took us in, and we stayed for the next three days.

I have to be honest, this was one of the hardest visits for me in our whole time in the Philippines. We were sleeping on the floor, in a room with the whole family, at least one of whom snored. There was no electricity, so at night, light came from bottle lamps burning kerosene through rags stuffed in the top, which created horrible smoke. We washed in the river. We had to ask for help each time we went to the local bathroom, because we didn’t know where the water was kept that you would use to wash your waste down the hole. And then there was the food. I’m sure some of it was recognizable. But there were a number of dishes that we couldn’t quite tell what they were, and the flavors were unfamiliar, and to my taste buds, unpleasant.

But here’s what I learned later, from our guide: The people of that remote village killed their goat for us. And that was a big deal. They hadn’t even known we were coming, and they killed their goat for us. I’m pretty sure that means we were the prodigal sons and daughters. They killed their goat for us, and we recognized the face of Christ. That broken bread that was really roasted goat in some strange-tasting sauce was a sign and symbol of God’s love for us. This was one of the hardest visits for me of the whole trip, but it’s the one I remember the most vividly. It’s the one that still humbles me and reminds me that Christ is everywhere.

Is there someone you have gotten to know better because you broke bread with them? Has there been a meal in your life that made you realize, even if it was after the fact, that Christ was present, that that meal was a reminder of God’s love for everyone around the table? We do this every week, hoping to truly feel God’s love and recognize the presence of Christ, when we gather at this table and break the bread. But today of all the days we come to this table, we come, remembering that we break bread here with people around the world, sharing in the act of God’s love language with them, praying it will help us know God and those other people better and love them more deeply.

The goal and purpose of this day, obviously, goes beyond us giving a moment’s thought to other Christians around the world. The hope is that if we have broken bread with others, we become invested in their welfare. Clearly, we cannot have a literal meal with everyone around the world. But perhaps the meal we share today can push us to see Christ a little more often in the faces of those we might otherwise dismiss as too different from ourselves to care about. They may show up in our lives unexpectedly, or they may be only stricken faces on a screen. Today we come to Christ’s table, hoping that by breaking bread here, we will be more likely to recognize him in all the other faces in our world; hoping that God’s love language can become our love language, and we can share meals of blessing with all peoples. Alleluia and Amen!