Christmas 2 Food 1BFC 2016
Genesis 1:9-13;
John 1:10-16
January 3, 2016
Anxious? Worried?
I know I am. Whew. It’s scary out there in the world right now. And it sure feels like we are in a world with
fewer and fewer resources to combat huge problems we can never get our arms
around. And it’s a dog eat dog world out
there. You know what I mean? You had better get yours and get it for the
people you love because people can be so darn selfish. Compete to get ahead. Compete to stay secure. Compete so that the global pie might expand
and trickle down to the poor, war-torn, and refugees of the world.
And
not only are the problems of the world so huge . . . they are so complex. It’s impossible to figure all of this stuff
out. Best to let the complex market
figure it out, experts who really know what they are talking about with junk
bonds, hedge funds, CEOs of large financial, multinational systems. All we can do, as individuals and small faith
communities, is try to fix small pieces, one by one.[1] Hard to have hope.
One
of the only ways I find relief from this anxiousness and worry is to sometimes
step outside and see the expanse of mountain or the shadows and hues of sun
reflected on the rims. I was able to meet Anna Lappé while she was a
visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois. After reading two of her books and meeting
her in person, she immediately became one of my favorite people—so down to
earth, so humble and yet so gifted and knowledgeable. She begins many of her university lectures
with an exercise I would like to try with you.
She asks students to reflect on their last experience of nature.
So now I’m asking you. What was your last experience of nature? What was it like? Where were you? What were you doing? Now here is the other question Anna would ask
students. How many of you have already eaten today?[2]
This is Anna’s observation. Though we have a love of nature and want to
be good stewards of God’s good earth, we do not or rarely make the connection
between nature and food. And that
disconnect, where we no longer recognize the food we eat as part of the nature
and the earth we love, is literally killing us—personally, communally,
globally.
Many
of you may know Anna Lappé’s mother better, Frances Moore Lappé who several
years ago wrote, Diet for a Small Planet. Anna wrote what she believes to be the follow
up book, titled Diet for a Hot Planet. In that book, Anna comes to the conclusion
that food is the number one protagonist for climate change. So if we get food right, our personal eating
practices right, we can solve for pattern, speak to these huge issues, and get
so much in the world right.
As
people of faith, particularly as Christians who come out of a Judeo-Christian
narrative this should not surprise us.
Our story begins with a Passover meal that remembers Pharaoh as Good
Shepherd, King, and divine to be diminished and deposed by the Ever-Present God
who is Liberator and Deliverer. In that
Passover meal, the holiest of holy words are spoken about a God who saves us to
bring our whole community to a broad and spacious land. This sacred meal tells us not only know who
we are, who we are in relation to God, and who we are in relation to each
other, but also who we are in relation to the land that God gives in abundance
for the whole community.
Our
story continues with a Christ who shares the goodness of the land with everyone
around the table so that we all might be sustained and nurtured into the
goodness of God. In this sacred meal, we
not only know who we are, who we are in relation to God, who we are in relation
to each other, but also who we are in relationship to God’s good earth through
the sharing of abundant bread and grape.
Part
of what we need to get right is a daily practice that informs our theology and
a theology that informs our daily practice.
Let’s start with the theology first.
Who
do we think God is and how is God acting in the world? Are God’s good gifts given in a way that
support and nurture an interrelationship with each other and with all of
creation--abundantly? Or are they given
in such a way that if we’re good and moral and right, we can use those gifts to
advance in the world and profit from them because God gives to some who deserve
it but not to the unrighteous—there is a scarcity of God’s goodness and
generosity? What do we know of the
nature and character of God and the way God moves in the world?
Today
we have two Scripture verses that share of God’s nature and character. The Hebrew Scripture is from the first story
of creation in Genesis. As I tried to
relate through today’s Responsive Affirmation, the concise and elegant poetry
of the first creation story is broken by the repetition of the word
“seeds” and seeds of all kinds, makes, and models. The poetry not only reminds us of the
re-generative nature and character of God but also God’s love for diversity.[3] Seeds then reflect God’s intent for
abundance, their diversity a representation of divine love and that diversity now
widely known as a defense against the extremes of drought and flood. In this wide array, there are certainly some
green, leafy things that flourish in flood.
Others that take root in the smallest of rainfalls. And, we are told by
this writer in Genesis, these plants are given to humankind and all of life as
food. God’s intent and practice is for
abundance. Seeds and their kinds are
given to overflowing. And seeds are the
promise of life and life renewed again and again and again.
And
so it is in John chapter 1, our gospel text for today. We read the opening of that chapter for our
final Christmas Eve Scripture, John chapter 1, verse 1, “In the beginning” as a Genesis reference, as
a way of telling us that this is once again about God’s creative and
regenerative character and power. UCC
theologian and pastor Nancy Rockwell writes, “John centers his work in the
creation, in a theology of the world being born of one God, within whom Christ
has always lived, and who has sown within creation the life and light that can
respond to Christ.”[4] Rockwell uses the metaphor of seeds to
reflect God’s character, practice, and will for the abundance of light and life
intended for all people. Indeed, the
Gospel of John is rife with God’s abundant gifts. Water is changed into wine for the whole
wedding party. Baptism by water and
Spirit is promised for the whole world that God loves. God, seemingly unconcerned about pious
rituals which separate out the select few, showers, grows, causes to flourish
the abundance of love and light.
As
Ellen F. Davis, Dean and Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke
Divinity School writes,
If the
Priestly poem [found in the first creation story] celebrates the region’s
amazing variety of seeds as God’s beneficent gift, our present agricultural
system has effected a drastic reduction in plant diversity worldwide. Over two-thirds of the world’s cropland is
planted with monocultures of annual crops:
cereal grains, food legumes, and oilseeds. Moreover, the “efficacy” of industrial scale
agriculture depends upon limiting the variety for each crop. While there are in existence some 50,000
varieties of corn grouped in 200 to 300 landraces, U.S. commercial production
“relies on the cultivation of a handful of hybrid varieties from two of these
races.” As plant geneticist Wes Jackson
points out, this is about the same amount of genetic information as is found in
one human couple. The vulnerability of
such a food system was evidenced when, in 1996, the fungus Karnal Bunt
destroyed half the U.S. wheat crop for the year.
In the
industrialized food system, the biblical vision of self-perpetuating fruitfulness
collides with the profit strategies of corporations aiming to control the
global seed market.[5]
Davis goes
on to relate how industrial agriculture giants have actively sought to patent
seeds to prevent farmers from using seeds that sprout upon seeds. In other words, these patents have sought to prevent
farmers from using seeds from a previous year’s crops for the next year. The industrial food giant Monsanto even
developed aptly named “Terminator” seeds which do not regenerate.[6]
If I read Biblical theology right, these
are attempts to limit the abundance of God for the select few and seeks to
create scarcity for profit and gain.
If we had any doubt about what this
means, theologically, industrial food giant Cargill made it clear. Cargill is the largest privately held
company in the United States. It
controls 80 percent of the European market for soybean crushing and a similar
share for animal-feed manufacturing. It owns
Cargill Beef, “the second-largest beef processor in North America, and is one
of the largest commercial cattle feeders in the United States. It is the world’s biggest processor,
marketer, and distributor of grains, oilseeds, and other agricultural
commodities.” Not too long ago, Cargill
ran an ad campaign that I remember seeing over and over again. It related Cargill’s global reach, spanning
from Japan to Illinois. That multi-media
ad campaign, unseating the Genesis story, diminishing and deposing the Creator
of the Universe, was titled, “Cargill Creates.”[7]
Over and over again, industrial
agriculture has told us that they are the only thing that can produce in
abundance to feed the hungry in the world.
In a special report to the United Nations on the Right to Food, however,
Olivier de Schutter, Special Rapporteur to the U.N., stated that more
democratic, diverse, and sustainable food practices were our best hope to feed
the world.[8]
Study after study is showing that small
to medium size farms, using sustainable, organic practices are producing at the
same level of large, industrial, chemical-laden farms and producing even better
at times of severe climate experiences of drought and flood.[9] What we are seeing with urban gardens,
rooftop gardens, edible landscapes, year-round hoophouses, the return to wild,
uncultivated foods consumed by so many rural peoples[10]
and so many other ancient but original food delivery systems are not only an
abundance of food riches but food practices which promote self-determination
and democracy across the planet.
What we are finding is the abundance
in the created earth itself. As I have
related in historical sermons, the Genesis story says that we were created out
of fertile soil. Kristen Ohlson writes
in her book, The Soil Will Save Us,
that we could dig up a teaspoon of healthy soil from our garden, a city park,
or a weedy strip alongside a highway and find something like 1 billion to 7
billion organisms. There are more
microorganisms in a healthy cup of soil than all the humans who have ever
lived.[11] Ohlson relates that while people who work
with the atmosphere are pessimistic about our ability to stem climate change,
those who work with the soil believe we can reverse global warming—a continuing
sign of God’s abundant grace.[12]
Farmers in Montana who are actively
working toward a way of planting and harvesting seeds that is not based on
industrial, corporate agriculture refer to what they do, not surprisingly, as
regenerative agriculture. These same
farmers refer to industrial agriculture as extractive or chemically dependent
agriculture.[13] I would argue that one is farming based on
values of regeneration and the other is farming based on values of profit and
production.
I can imagine that as I went through
this sermon your eyes glazed over and you asked yourself, “Oh, please, what
does this have to do with me?”
Everything. The world needs a
movement, a change in direction and focus.
As Chinese author, Lu Hsun wrote,
Hope
cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist.
It is just
like the roads across the earth.
For
actually there were no roads to begin with,
but when
many people pass one way, a road is made.[14]
Some
of what I will argue over the next few weeks is that if we can begin to change
our personal and communal food practices, show our faith in a God who so
abundantly provides for us, we can begin to live healthier, knit together our
social fabric, recognize our connection to each other and to the soil, and make
a road of hope.
There is so much fear out there: the longest war in U.S. history, the violence
between races and peoples, the increasing devastation being wrought by climate
change, and people of other religious stripe hoping for apocalyptic,
world-ending scenarios. These are
real. And it can lead to so much anxiety,
to a hopelessness that there is no way out.
What we have been given, however, is an abundance, seeds
upon seeds, love and light, a diversity of possibilities that are forever
making a way. The poet Denise Levertov
wrote: “But we have only begun to love
the earth. We have only begun to imagine
the fullness of life. How could we tire
of hope?—so much is in bud.”[15] So much is in bud.
Today we shared in God’s abundance through the food we
ate in bread and grape. I hope, over the
course of this sermon series, you begin to experience that bud coming to flower
in you. Amen.
[1]These are the five major thought traps which prevent
us from moving on these issues according to Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Hope’s Edge:
The Next Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Penguin, 2002), p. 23
[2] Anna Lappé,
Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork
and What You Can Do About It (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2011), p. 61.
[3] Ellen F. Davis first made me aware of this poetic
“break” in her text, Scripture, Culture,
and Agriculture (Cambridge, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 48-53.
[4] Nancy Rockwell, “The Light of All People v.
Evangelical Fury,” The Bite in the Apple,
December 27, 2015. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/biteintheapple/the-light-of-all-people-v-evangelical-fury/.
[5] Davis, Scripture,
Culture, p. 52.
[6] Ibid, p. 53; Kristin Ohlson, The Soil Will Save Us: How
Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet
(New York: Rodale, 2014), pp.
173-174.
[7] Lappé, Diet for a Hot Planet, p. 94.
[8] Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to
food, Olivier De Schutter, http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20140310_finalreport_en.pdf.
[9]http://www.unep.org/dewa/agassessment/reports/IAASTD/EN/Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_Global%20Report%20(English).pdf; “Anna Lappé & Food MythBusters -- Do we
really need industrial agriculture to feed the world?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uem2ceZMxYk.
[10] Across the African continent, rural people consume
more than 500 wild plants, Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Hope’s Edge:
The Next Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Penguin, 2002), p. 285.
[11] Kristin Ohlson, The
Soil, p. 28.
[12] Ibid, pp. 16-17.
[13] Kristin Ohlson, The
Soil; Liz Carlisle, Lentil
Underground: Renegade Farmers and the
Future of Food in America (New York:
Penguin, 2015).
[14] Lappé, Hope’s Edge, p.
1.
[15] Lappé, Hope’s Edge, p.
299.
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