Food for the Hungry, and the Soul

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The fourth Saturday of every month, the Lutheran Urban Mission Society serves a hot meal at 373 East Cordova Street. Before the gate opens, pastor Brian Heinrich serves mass to the volunteers at St. Paul's next door.

Today, the volunteers are from a Protestant youth group in Burnaby, 15 to 20 of them, mostly teenagers, and not quite sure what to make of it all. They are in unfamiliar territory -- Canada's poorest neighborhood, a Catholic church -- and before them stands the imposing figure of a pastor well over six feet tall, sporting a Mohawk, and with both earlobes full of cobalt blue spiral earrings.

Brian invites them to come closer, into the front pews. 

"I need your help," he says. "I'm not going to do all the work here. I want you to listen to the text. Then I'm going to ask you some questions."

A boy gets up to read from Jeremiah.

"For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place... then I will dwell with you in this place..."

Then a girl comes forward to read from Mathew, the parable of the man who sowed good seed and his enemy who came and sowed weeds among the wheat.

"What do you hear God saying to us?" asks Heinrich. "Come on, you have to help me."

There's a long, awkward silence. Heinrich can't wait too long. There are people to feed.

"The stuff that we do in here in God's beautiful house," says Brian, "has everything to do with our everyday lives. If worship is separate from what's happening outside, as if our lives have no connection to this source -- don't think God doesn't notice that. Many say the church ought not to concern itself with politics. But Jeremiah says act justly with one another. Do right things in the world. If we make war or take advantage of others -- is that connected to what we do here in church? I think not.

"And the parable of sowing seeds -- what's that about?" he asks.

Again a silence, but this time one of the volunteers ventures an answer, and from that follows a bit of a conversation, though cautious.

"Does God want us to be fruitful?"

"Yes."

"Do we want to be wheat, or do we want to be weeds?"

"Wheat."

"Sometimes it's too easy to say, 'We are wheat, and they are weeds.' The truth is we are each both. It'd be easy to pull up the weeds and burn them. That judgment is not ours. We're all mixed fields. The time we're in is full of opportunity. Seize the time and be fruitful. The parts of us can be whole and integrated as we live out in the world."

Going next door

Heinrich concludes by acknowledging his listeners.

"This way of preaching may be different from how it's done in your church," he says. "Thank you for being gracious."

Before serving communion, Brian says, "This is preparation for what we are about to do next door. Here we can practice generosity as we offer each other the body and blood of Christ."

Next door, we take our places. Everybody has been assigned a role: food server, plate carrier, table wiper, dish washer. They need someone to circulate with coffee, so that's what I'm assigned. I have two plastic pitchers, one for black coffee, the other for coffee with milk.

Brian opens the gate and lets in the first 43 people with free tickets in hand. It's a bit chaotic at first -- who to serve what first? Some get coffee first. I pour coffee into cups for people who really want juice. Some don't speak English, so I lean over and let them look into the jug.

"Juice over here," I call out. We are angling around each other and there are some near misses.

Pasta with meat sauce. Pasta without meat sauce. Juice. Coffee. A bag of three cookies. Ice cream in back and a small bag of fruit to take home.

"Coffee!" I head over to a table. "Not black. With milk."

"Anyone for black coffee here?" I ask. "Yes? Okay. I'll be right back with the coffee with milk."

"Where's the sugar?"

"Already on the table. Right there."

"Thanks."

"More juice over here," I call out and then head back to the counter to get the coffee with milk. But which table wanted it? And someone over there hasn't been served a plate yet. Where's a food server? Never mind. Not my job. They can handle it.

Not everyone is finished when Brian lets in the second group. Some in the first group have shoveled pasta into plastic bags they brought and are calling for more.

'There's more cooking!'

The pace picks up with each new wave of people. It's hot. People are impatient. They're hungry. Also gracious, grateful and obliging. The kids from Burnaby are steady, unflappable.

Each seating seems a little more chaotic than the one before, and yet we begin to meet the increased confusion with a kind of grace, a rhythm in our bodies, as we learn to work together as a team by instinct.

"Hey!" a man shouts. "Hey. She's had three meals! She's stealing."

When I go over to him, he grabs my arm and pulls me toward him.

"It's those Chinese," he says. "Rob you blind. Tell Brian to stop letting them in. It's not right. It's just not right."

"I'll tell him," I say, and pour him a cup of coffee.

When I'm near the door, I peer out to see if the crowd is thinning. All I see is more people.

Then suddenly there's no more pasta.

"We're not out! We're not out!" shouts one of the cooks. "There's more cooking!"

A grim irritation settles over the room.

"Welcome," I tell the newcomers. "Have a seat."

I keep pouring coffee.

Someone brings out the new pot of pasta, and the servers are at it again until, after eight seatings, we have fed more than 300 people.

As the crowd thins out and we start cleaning up, a woman approaches me. She's wearing a hoody and several bright scarves. She unwinds one of them, a fine, delicately coloured one made of something like silk, and presses it into my hand.

"Give this to Brian," she says.

I thank her and assure her I'll pass it on to him.

"Tell him it's from Luella. He doesn't know who I am."

"He will, Luella. Keep coming back," I say, "and he'll know you."