Sameera is an Indian Muslim woman who lives with her husband, children, parents and grandmother in a bungalow on Chicago's Northwest side. She is also a grant manager for the American College of Surgeons, and it is in this capacity that Erica and I first made her acquaintance.

Halloween before last, Sameera invited Erica and I to her home to meet her family and to share with them in that day's breaking of the Ramadan fast; what Muslim's call Iftar. Anxious to deepen our relationship and to experience what we had heard was absolutely incredible, homemade Indian cuisine, we readily accepted her invitation and took the hour-long trek (utilizing the train, then the "L" and then a bus) out to Sam's house. As sundown approached, the pace of preparations steadily increased. Sameera disappeared for longer and longer periods of time into the kitchen, while Shaad, her husband, repeatedly checked his watch against the Sunday paper's reporting of when sundown would occur. At the appointed moment, everyone gathered in the dining room, silent prayers were offered and everyone was provided with a single date and glass of tap water - the traditional food of fast-breaking in the Muslim faith. Sameera's dad, making the most of the opportunity to impress and educate his non-Muslim guests, told Erica of how the prophet Mohammed had broken each of his 40 days of wilderness fasting with dates and water, thus establishing a model which Muslims across the world would follow for nearly 1500 years.

As if on cue, a veritable mountain of food began to flow from Sam and Shaad's tiny kitchen. Onion and pepper fritters, papadum, tomato chutney and mint relish, ground beef kebabs, hot parthas and samosas, enough food to feed a small army - or a rather large family of Indian men and women who hadn't eaten all day.

As Erica's and my plates were filled and re-filled, Sameera's husband Shaad leaned over to me and whispered, "You know, this isn't really food."

I smiled, not knowing what to think. It certainly looked and smelled like food. And though the flavor combinations were new and exotic to my western palate, it most definitely tasted like food. Perhaps I had missed something; perhaps there was some deeper religious significance to these particular dishes, which had been lost on the non-Muslims in the room. Perhaps, like the dates and the water, these dishes were also symbolic of tenets of the faith too difficult to explain in one setting or perhaps these particular dishes were somehow significant to the regional of familial culture of this particular gathering - the Hyderabad equivalent of my mother's Chili con Carne over Spaghetti, a Callaham Christmas Eve tradition.

I remained silent, though the pensive look on my face must have tipped my hand to my new found friend. "Don't worry," he said with a wink and a smile, "this is just the stuff we eat to stop being hungry."

What Shaad meant was that all of the food which was being set before us was not the full dinner. These were simply the appetizers - the entrees would be brought out in another hour or so. And boy, were they. I will spare you the details of the meal that followed; save to say that I have rarely eaten more, or better in my thirty years. What I want to raise up for us today, however, is how remembering Shaad's comment, in the context of today's Gospel reading has changed the way I think about the relationship between food and faith.

Now, I don't know what this says about me, but I think a lot about food. It is no secret that I love to cook, and that I like to eat too. But my interest in food goes further than that, and recently the news media and the general trends of popular culture have had much to offer that has "fed" my interest in what and how we eat. Before Erica and I left Chicago, the city council banned the sale of certain delicacies, specifically the fattened goose liver which the French call fois gras. Across America, as we head back into this school year, school boards and state governments debate the banning of snack machines and the redesign of school lunch offerings. Just this week, the BBC reported that obesity has officially passed starvation as the world's number one food related health problem.

But some of you may be asking yourself, "How are these things matters of faith?" This is a good question, because for many of us the relationship between what we eat and what we believe appears to go no further than the grace said before the meal. However, I believe the connection goes much deeper than it may originally seem. I offer the following examples as an inroad to our understanding that there may be no more intimately linked parts of the human condition than the "spirit" and the "stomach": Easter Dinner, Christmas cookies, "Comfort Food", "soul Food", Coffee Hour, Wedding cake, "Let's go out to dinner and celebrate!", "I sat home, ate a pint of Hagen-Daaz and cried my eyes out", the guilt of packing on a few pounds, the joy of loosing it again, eating disorders, obesity and those starving children in Biafra.

The Spiritualizing and Psychologizing of food is not strictly a product of contemporary culture. We, as my Father would say, get it honest. Our core narratives and our religious rhetoric is laced with commentary on food and spirituality. Every Week we celebrate the feast of victory for our God, we dine on the bread of heaven and drink of the cup of salvation. We are invited to taste and see that the Lord is Good. Holy wisdom sets a banquet before us and the land promised to our spiritual was said to be flowing with milk and honey. But all is not the promotion of consumption in the Bible, many of the authors seem equally anxious to keep us from eating and enjoying food. Over indulgence is seen as tantamount to debauchery, fasting leads to spiritual enlightenment, and in an odd twist of prevailing logic, those who hunger are blessed more than those who are full.

No wonder we are, as a people, so conflicted about food and subsequently have some many food-related problems. Food is bound-up in not only our cultural but in our spiritual identity. Food is both hailed and damned as the cause of and solution to many of life's problems. Somehow the notion of "you are what you eat" has been taken to a dangerous extreme. For good or ill we are "defined by" what we eat or don't eat. It's enough to make you want to go home and break out the Hagen-Daaz - or go on a diet, I don't know which.

In the midst of all of this confusion, however, Jesus interjects his clearer vision of the Truth and a pathway toward freedom. To me, he sounds a bit like Sameera's husband Shaad. "All this stuff we eat, it's not real food, it just keeps us from being hungry. The real food comes later."

Now, unlike Shaad, Jesus is not speaking of another course, waiting in the wings, another heaping helping to be added to our plates, already overflowing with anxiety. He is talking about a new understanding of what it means to eat. "My Flesh, he says, "is true Food." All of that stuff which you put in your mouth, the stuff you chew and swallow, it doesn't do what you think it does. Sure, it stops you from being hungry, particularly if you haven't eaten in a while. Sure, it will keep you healthy, and you probably need to have some - in moderate amounts - every day. But the real food, the real nourishment, the comfort food, the soul food, the place to drown your sorrows and to find release from your guilt, you won't find that at Wegmans.

My Flesh is true food. My Flesh, my Body, my church, the company of faithful people is the real source of nourishment. Calories, vitamins and minerals are important, yes, but real sustaining energy for the road ahead comes from our participation in the Body of Christ. We meet to eat, but it is from the meeting and not the eating that we garner what we need to carry on. Whether is it the coffee hour tables, stacked high with cucumber sandwiches, or the Eucharist's simple spread of unleavened bread and watered down wine, it is the relationships that feed us, it is the body of Christ which is to be our food.

This is the truth. And this is what I learned from my Iftar experience in the Ali household. Sure, the meal was great, it cemented my love for good Indian food and it certainly kept me from feeling hungry again until the middle of the next day. it also gave me heartburn, and aggravated my stomach for two or three days. But the real food, that which came after the appetizers and before the main course, the opportunity to experience my new friends and to learn about these fellow worshipers of the one true God sticks with me to this day. It gives me comfort, and it gives me hope.

Amen.