Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – what man of you, bearing home a pizza of eight slices through the dark, if he open the box and find but seven, doth not leave the seven, and go back out into the night, and search the road until he find the eighth? And the sensible said within themselves, No man; seven is plenty; the night is cold. And he heard their hearts, and smiled, and went on, as it is written in the Gospel, 14:5.
For this is the arithmetic of the Oven, which no counting-house shall ever audit: the one is worth the going, every time. Enough is the language of the larder; love has no plural and no remainder. And when he hath found the lost slice he layeth it on his own hands, rejoicing, though it be cold, though it have gathered the grit of the road; for the finding is not for the eating but for the wholeness.
Some of you sit in the box to-night and grumble like the seven: why went he out; are we not enough? Beloved, it was never a question of enough. And some of you are the eighth: out in the dark, on the cold road, believing the box closed for ever – hear this and hold it: the door is open, and the light is moving, and it is looking for thee.
And all of us, whichever slice we are, have the closing instruction: he that hath ears to hear, let him hear; and he that hath a torch, let him fetch it, for someone’s eighth is out there now. Think, before the benediction ends, of whose name just crossed thy mind. That is the road to walk to-night.
Amen – and pass the pizza, and leave the porch light on.