When I was looking over the readings for this weekend, I thought to myself: well, nobody could be blamed for feeling hungry in the middle of mass. Food is mentioned everywhere. Again and again we hear references to a great feast — how God will provide for us, and nurture us, and nourish us. “Juicy, rich foods and pure, choice wines,” Isaiah tells us.

And, of course, the entire gospel parable told by Jesus centers on a wedding feast.

Jewish culture is one that revolves around food. (They’re like the Italians that way!) This time of year, our Jewish neighbors celebrate a number of holy days in which the sharing of a meal is a vital part of their religion and their identity.

And we, too, gather to share in the great meal of the Eucharist.

But we do it at a moment when we are reminded that so many of our neighbors – our brothers and sisters in the human family – are facing their own kind of famine.
It is happening here, in America, in 2008. And not just among the poor.

Last week, the New Yorker magazine profiled people in Ohio who are being hit especially hard by the economic calamity around us.

The story focused on a single mother named Barbie Snodgrass in Columbus, Ohio. She met the writer at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in a nearby strip mall as she finished her first job, as a medical receptionist, at three in the afternoon. She was about to begin her second job, working nights cleaning the studios of a local TV station. She works some weekends, too. She’s barely making ends meet.

And she had no patience for either of the men running for President.

“Someone who makes two hundred or three hundred thousand a year,” she said, “who eats a regular meal, who doesn’t have to struggle, who doesn’t worry if the lights are going to be turned out—if he doesn’t walk in your shoes, he can’t understand.”

It was sobering to read. The number of men and women like her in America will probably grow as the weather turns colder, and the nights grow longer – no matter who wins the election.

Meantime, in a cruel irony, the people at Nieman Marcus last week released their annual Christmas catalog.

For 10 million dollars, you can buy 12 thoroughbreds and have them stabled, trained and managed by a champion breeder in Kentucky.

If that’s too much, for just one million, you can have a three hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus installed in your back yard.

And if that’s still too much, for just 110-thousand dollars you can buy a training session with the Harlem Globetrotters. You can even play in one of their games.

I don’t think the creators of the catalog had that woman from Columbus, Ohio in mind.

We’re entering a strange and unpredictable time in history. And nobody knows where it will lead. Between the election and the economy, you can feel the earth shifting beneath our feet. A writer in the New York Times the other day noted how widespread the problem is. A crisis that began with a bubble in California McMansions, he wrote, has ended up causing catastrophe in Iceland. The global economy is quaking.

But amid so much uncertainty, the scripture this weekend offers us something certain, and true, and brimming with hope.

Listen again to the words of St. Paul – his final words to the Philippians. He has survived the best of times, and the worst. And, from prison he writes:

“I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry,
of living in abundance and of being in need.
I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

Put another way – in the words of the angel who spoke so gently and reassuringly to a poor unwed mother in Galilee – “Nothing is impossible with God.”

We belong to The One who dwells in possibility.

We are beloved by the Father who invites us to share his feast, to dine at his table.

But are we open to accepting that invitation? And are we properly disposed?

The parable of the wedding feast is about much more than wearing the right clothes. It is about having the right heart. A heart that appreciates the privilege of what it means to be a guest of God. A heart that is full of gratitude — open to receiving His grace.

Those familiar words of the 23rd Psalm, which we heard a few moments ago, take on new meaning this Sunday:

“You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows. “

God pours out His love, and our cup overflows. His table is set with mercy, with generosity, with tenderness. He gives us more than we ask for, and more than we deserve.

He gives us His son.

And He gives that gift again and again, here, in the Eucharist.

This is the ultimate banquet. The definitive feast.

Here, around this table, in this community, we seek from that feast the strength and the hope to face a world where autumn will soon give way to winter, and we will enter the coldest, hardest season.

The almanac can tell us how to prepare for snow and frost. But some things, like the stock market, are impossible to forecast.

But: we can do all things in him who strengthens us.

No matter what may come, Christ is our strength. The Eucharist is our food. And God’s love is the bounty that sustains us.

This morning, we pray for all those who are worrying where their next meal will come from, or how the mortgage will be paid. A lot of us are wondering how we’ll send the kids to college, or even be able to afford to retire.

But we remember, as well, those who hunger for other things – those yearning for love, or understanding or compassion, or hope.

Paul’s words offer us all that, and more. In his letter is the reassurance we need that, after the fall, spring will surely come.

God will sustain us.

Because we can do all things in him who strengthens us.