single persons, people
of all races and families
of every kind.
Sunday
Service:
Holy Eucharist
at 9:30 am
Child care is available
Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
Fax: 201-863-1474
Mark A. Lewis,
Vicar
MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 20
Aug 00
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
The Church of
Our Saviour
in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey
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The Food
That
Nourishes Your Soul
Reflections on the
lessons for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Proverbs 9:1-6 / Psalm 147
Ephesians 5:15-20 / John
6:53-59
I heard an interview this week on National Public Radio by a chef and organic farmer from Long Island, Ann Cooper, who has a new book out, one with a very sensational title that even she admits was chosen to push up the sales figures:Bitter Harvest: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It.
The purpose of the book, though, is pretty sensational itself. The way Ann Cooper sees it, we have become a nation that doesn't think very much about what we eat and how it makes its way to us.
"How is it that we came to believe that the only important thing about food is that it always be cheap and easy? Our mothers used to feed us. Now we don't know who feeds us from behind drive-up windows. We are very distant from our food. When we think of food, we see it in plastic packages, not in dirt. God didn't make boneless, skinless chicken breasts."
When I was very young I can remember seeing my mother and grandmother and aunt spending a day preparing rabbits and chickens for the freezer. I'll never forget it. I eat out of the supermarket now, but I'll never forget the gory and backbreaking work -- and the picture of three women with hatchets and knives -- noisily executing a year's worth of Sunday dinners. Honestly, I kind of enjoy my distance from my food. If I had to be my own butcher, I'd go vegetarian.
Which makes it all the harder to come to church and hear Jesus talking about eating flesh and drinking blood. It makes me want to skip right over the whole concept and concentrate on the bread and the wine part. The body and blood imagery is more than distasteful to me. It's nearly repulsive.
I suppose the point must have been easier to grasp for Jesus' friends -- and for all kinds of people who don't forget that very often something has to die for us to be fed. But it isn't easy for me to grasp.
I wish Jesus would get back in touch with us and come up with a better way of talking about the sacrament of life and death that we get together and celebrate to put ourselves in mind of our connection with one another and with the world -- and God's love that binds it all together. I want a new way to talk about how giving your all to someone else -- someone you might not even know -- opens a pathway to new life.
I don't remember very many days of my mom and my father's mother butchering chickens because not too long after I was old enough to watch such events my parents were divorced. And, as is so common, my mother got custody of me and also got a big comedown in economic security at the same time. She took a job -- a pretty bad one, too -- and started off through quite a few rough years. And I went back and forth between my Dad's house and hers.
No one ever went hungry in either place. But, looking back on those days, I can't remember a single thing I'd eat at my father's table -- and it was all fine, I'm certain. You probably couldn't tell the difference if you were there. But I could talk for an hour about what my Mom would fix. What I'm getting at is that there was just more of her body and blood in the food my Mom put before me when times were hard for her.
And while a nutritionist couldn't measure the difference in how her holy food built me up, a theologian could. As Ann Cooper writes in her book,
"Food isn't just food. It is ritual, tradition, and memory."
As St. John writes in his,
"Some bread is just bread, but you should go after the kind that reaches down deep and feeds you from the bottom of your soul and makes you a better person."
In all my years of preaching I have never ended a sermon -- as Dorothy and many of my colleagues often do -- with a prayer. But there's a first time for everything.
The Lord is with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray.
God, as the food we eat -- at church and at home -- nourishes our bodies may we likewise nourish the world. We give thanks to you, the giver and receiver of all life. Amen.
-- Mark Lewis
Links for further reading:
By purchase from Amazon.com
Bitter
Harvest: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the
Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It
By
Ann Cooper
By loan through BCCLS and the Secaucus Public Library
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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