conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

wedding homily

I have been given five minutes to say something nifty at the service this afternoon. I think I will talk about the Christian discipline of feasting.

We talk about the fast. Prayer, service and other disciplines come to the fore as well from time to time. Richard Dean Foster wrote a great book entitiled Celebration of Discipline. I encourage you all to read it. One thing that does not show up in the book is the feast...at least I don't recall it being in the book. Maybe that says something as well.

I find that, for myself, when the word "dsicipline" comes up, I get nothing but images of struggle and strife, of some kind of abstaining. Not that abstaining is not a good discipline. Fasting is a good thing to practice. Honest. I keep a fast once in a while. I keep a discipline of prayer. I wrestle with these things, but I do not thik I have ever kept a discipline of feasting.

When I was living in Richmond, VA, I had a friend who was a Catholic priest. He would always take me out for a big dinner on Sundays during Lent. That always seemed so strange. Aren't we supposed to struggle, to suffer along in Lent depriving ourselves of chocolate or something? Why should we get a break?

Because we are to celebrate, we are to mark time with a discipline of feasting. Feasting is more than spiritual optimism, a looking on the bright side of life. It is honoring time, it is honoring relationship. It is a way to hold a relationship together. So often we can fall into habits where we say, "This thing about you irritates me. But I put up with you. This is my sacrificie for the realtionship." We will make sacrifices. Compromise can be a great thing. But feasting, celebrating the relationship, celebrating God's gift of grace as it pours out into a marriage. We have to remind ourselves that marriage has within it a dicipline of feasting. It is generous. It is foolish. It is free.

It is the feast for the prodigal son. It is the Wedding feast at Caana. It is the Lord's Supper. It is the feast of Marthan and Mary. It is the feeding of the Five Thousand. It is God's generosity outpoured, the presense of Christ in our midst.

It is a discipline easily forgotten. It is often relegted to the realm of birthdays and graduations. But today, at this feast, we may have before us the reminder that our lives together are a feast, are a grace-filled gift from God...foolish and generous, prodigal in their own right. And the disicpline fo the feast holds us together...

These are my thoughts...I'll have something more coherent in 10 minutes. I just thought I would share. The sewer backed up in the garage this morning. Somehow Sarah wants me to work "poo" into the sermon. I think I might.

Heh.

Posted by tripp at August 13, 2004 03:00 PM | TrackBack