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Sermon: The Third Sunday of Easter, Year A
The Community Church of Wilmette
April 6, 2008
Food and Creative Love
Alleluia, the Lord is Risen!
The Lord is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!
Big hand came and struck me down,
Blood started to flow, blood started to flow.
Big hand, well, here he comes again
I wanna heal, yeah , yeah, yeah,
I wanna heal, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leap from the wounds
Leap from the wounds
Leap from the wounds of your fears
Leap from the wounds
Leap from the wounds
Leap from the wounds of your fears,
I said All I want is food and creative love,
All I want is food and creative love,
All I want is food and creative love,
All I want is food and creative love.
-Rusted Root, Food and Creative Love
I love the band Rusted Root. They sing and move and drum and virtually chortle their way through their songs. There’s such a joyful drive to even the most sour lyric. The constant repetition builds to a fervent cry.
"All I want is food and creative love!"
If only I could escape my fears, the wounds that they represent...pretend that all is well, that no wrong will come - that no pain will surprise me. I love this song because it expresses that desire so clearly. All I want is food and creative love. No more. No less. It’s a profound desire. And the song encompasses that for me. It shouts it to the hills. "All I want is food and creative love!"
I hear this song to be an Easter proclamation. It’s a Communion proclamation, a Eucharistic hope.
Food and Creative Love will have the last say.
Leap from the wounds of your fears.
Anthony Bourdain speaks of this idea of Food and Creative Love in another way. Anthony Bourdain is a chef, author and television personality. He travel around the world and eats what is given to him. He proclaims the virtues of culinary courage and kitchen piracy. I love this guy.
One of his books is entitled "The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps and Bones." It was loaned to me recently and I have been enjoying it greatly. It is a collection of articles and essays Bourdain has written that cover the gamut of his opinions and experiences. Its a motley mess. So, of course, I love it.
Bourdain is famous for statements like, "The best cooks are ex-dishwashers." and, "Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it - not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits." This is how Bourdain appears to live as well.
He wants to know people who have lived in the dirt. He wants to work with people who know how to endure. Life is not just the sirloin. It is also the wonderful nasty little bits...and sometimes the wonderful nasty big bits. He wants to taste all of it.
Bourdain wants us to have courage. He wants us to honor the entirety of what sustains us, and not simply the pieces we would prefer to honor. Let’s honor the whole cow and not just the prime cuts. This is generosity and thanksgiving. Name what has been given to us. Let that naming lead to the transformation of something unsightly like bone and marrow. Let it be transformed into a feast.
The two disciples were on the way to Emmaus. They were walking and wondering about what the previous days had brought to them. They were stuck in the midst of their fears. Their friend had been executed. The one they hoped would be the Messiah...was gone. There were strange stories about an empty tomb and Jesus appearing to the other disciples. And they simply did not know what to believe.
They met a stranger on their journey. And the stranger told them of the promises of scripture and the stranger blessed bread and wine. Then in the blessing and in the naming, as if a curtain is lifted,
They Recognized Christ.
The story of this meal is the way that the early church begins the tradition of the Last Supper. This is the first time the disciples gather with the Risen Christ and share a meal. And it marks a long tradition that we honor today.
The Lord’s Supper is a mark of Food and Creative Love. It is also in the redemption of the "nasty bits." "On the night that he was betrayed" begins Paul. The Lord’s Supper does not deny the betrayal. Instead it provides the context for Judas’ betrayal, saying that in the end the last word belongs to a Risen Lord. Food and Creative love will have the last word. The nasty bits are real. And they won’t go away. But they can be transformed. Last week, if you recall, the Risen Jesus still bore the wounds of his crucifixion as he appeared to Thomas. And at the site of those wounds, Thomas praises God.
In some way, these are the "nasty bits" that Bourdain would have us remember and honor somehow. They cannot be forgotten. To do so is to lose the whole of the Creature that sustains us, to misunderstand the nature of the Gift that is Life. Christ comes to us Wounded and accepts us in the same way. But in his appearance in our lives, in our own Emmaus Walks, he reminds us that the wounds do not have the last word. They are present. They are not to be forgotten. The past is not erased. Instead it is given a new context, the context of God’s grace and healing.
Once upon a time I thought that forgiving meant forgetting,
and that forgetting was the same thing as forgiving.
Once upon a time I thought that making peace with my enemy erased the past.
Once upon a time I thought I could live behind the walls of some convent
and all my pain would go away.
Today I know differently.
Today I know that making amends is the beginning to forgiveness but not its fruition.
Today I know that forgetting the past might actually be a dishonor to the people who lived it.
We are to name our wounds. We are to uphold them in prayer. They are proofs of the Resurrection for people like Tomas – for each of us. They can be the vehicles to compassion. Because in the end, the wounds and the fears do not have the last word.
God has the last word.
God’s love and grace has the last word. We pass the peace after the Lord’s Supper in proclamation that God’s grace sustains us. And though we bear scars and wounds and memories locked away in secret places in our hearts, God’s peace wins out. God’s Love sustains.
We have Food...and Creative Love.
Alleluia! The Lord is Risen!
The Lord is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!
Interesting. I like the idea of We have Food and Creative Love in the eucharist.
Hadn't thought about the chefs in our world today.
I don't know the chef you quote, but he sounds like my kind of chef.
Don't know the band whose music and words you quote, but i like them too.
Posted by: revabi at April 5, 2008 04:35 PMI guess the vegetarian version would be...the rind, not just the juice or husk, not just the corn...
Thank you for your thoughts on forgiveness, forgetting and the things that "sustain us"...the best and the worst...