Epiphany
4 Food 5 BFC 2016
Hosea
4:1-4, 6:1-6; 1 Corinthians 6:1-3, 12-13a
January
31, 2016
I was
the interim pastor of a great church in Wichita, Kansas, that kept shooting
itself in the foot because it allowed the complainers to control the church
dialog, made decisions without building consensus (The older parishioners have
given more to the church and so they should get to decide that the carpeting in
the sanctuary is green, by gum!), and had people forever maneuvering to try and
set themselves up as the power players for the next great church decision. People were hurt. People were angry. And people who were just plumb fed up . . . left.
From 2002 to 2006, Diana Butler Bass
was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline
Protestant vitality. During that time,
Bass, as an author, educator, and independent scholar appeared at almost every
mainline seminary across the country. In
all of these presentations, one of the main studies she related showed the
correlation between vitality and spiritual practice in local congregations. Bass defines “a vital congregation as one where all people—including the
pastor—are growing members of an organic community of spiritual practice.”[1] She points to examples of spiritual practices
like prayer, theological reflection, generosity, storytelling, shaping
community, hospitality, and leadership.
And not that these spiritual practices are merely done in a
congregation, but that they are done with intentionality and purpose in
relation to God and to one another in the wider world.[2]
Across
the board, in vital and healthy congregations throughout local mainline
congregations, Bass found one spiritual practice was
prevalent—discernment. Discernment, or
an intentional way to make decisions as a community of faith, created an agreed
to path, put everyone in the know about how to move through church structure to
get things done, helped to free congregations for the work God intended for
them and helped them avoid pitfalls which lead to power plays, in-fighting, and
estrangement from church leadership.
Because after the senior generation decided on the green carpeting in
the sanctuary, in that Wichita congregation, the younger generation decided
they were going to mount a charge to replace the wood in the back part of the
sanctuary with glass to bring in more light.
(Deep sigh and a shake of the
head)
So
how does discernment begin? How do we
chart a path for church decision-making that can lead to greater vim and
vigor? The apostle Paul starts with
recognizing our diverse gifts and working to determine our common values. We each know we have gifts. We each know that the person who is not like
us has gifts. We know together
we are the Beloved Community, the Body of Christ.
Paul
goes even further in the Scripture passage today. He claims those that are the servants of God
shall be those who discern heavenly things.
But, he writes, why do you then let all people, based in the dominant
economy, decide things for you? If you
are to discern heavenly things, why are you not working out discernment for the
earthly, everyday things in an alternative economy?
As
I related to you in my sermon last week, Paul offers three discernment
questions for what it means to be a person of faith: 1) What is beneficial to you and to your
community? 2) What builds up and
strengthens your community? 3) What
things honor God? I believe those
questions for discernment are all poetic references to the same thing. What honors God is what builds up and
strengthens community and is beneficial to you and your community.
Throughout
Paul’s writing, he follows in the deep Jewish spiritual tradition of
understanding the political as personal and the personal as political. God is not only Liberator and Deliverer from
those nations and empires that enslave us, God is also Liberator and Deliverer
from those everyday things that bind us, make us less than whole, alienate us
from our best selves, our wider communities, and our inherent connections to
all of creation.
Our
Scripture from I Corinthians 6 is a perfect example of that deep tradition
where the political is personal and the personal is political. In I Corinthians 6, Paul offers one more
discernment question. He uses a strong
political word reserved for the power Roman Caesars’ hold over the populace.[3] The Jesus Seminar translates the word as
“dominate.” In effect, Paul is asking,
“Does your food personally and politically dominate you? Or do you have political and personal power
over your food?”
(with crazed look) When I have a
chocolate craving, I become a different person.
When I have a chocolate jones, you would think I worship at the shrine
of the holy cacao bean. Our 12 step
group meets in the back alley of Brockel’s.
In
the passage from Hosea, the prophet sets the stage inside a courtroom. In response to the economic system of
acquisitive greed and gluttony the 1% have built in Hosea’s time, God has
brought a complaint against the people.
Their daily practices are destroying the good earth God has given as a
gift in relationship to humankind. This
extractive, acquisitive, greedy, and gluttonous economy is sickening the earth,
killing the wildlife, and poisoning the water.
As Hebrew Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, an economy of neighborliness
has been exchanged for one that invokes divinely caused misfortune on others,
false witness in court, treating human life as expendable, sharp economic
practice, perhaps wage theft, and reducing human relationships to commodity
transactions. All of this is done in
the interest of profit, dollars, and surplus.[4]
If
you think this is a joke, if you think this is silly, the Living God thunders
from heaven through the word of the prophet to say that our ethics, our practices,
our rules, our whole way of ordering our household must change. If we believe God is still involved in the
work and life on this good earth, if we believe God still is faithful and cares
about us, then we have to ask what is going on with the explosion of obesity,
Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, all of the rampant autoimmune diseases in our
country, and the world-wide climate change that is now on display all across
the planet. The water is poisoned for
profit, the atmosphere is destroyed with our dollars, and the earth is sickened
with our need for more and more surplus.
“We are no longer permitted,“ Brueggemann writes, “to imagine an
acquisitive economy as choosable, as though there were no payback.”[5]
In an
article this past fall in the guardian,
ten green leaders were asked how individuals and communities might best move on
climate change. Three of them pointed to
alternative practices around food as one of the best ways to move on climate
change.[6] Carbon Conscious Consumers points to buying a
Community Supported Agriculture share, from a local farmer, as one of the best
ways to remove our carbon footprint.[7]
Our
political choices around food have ramifications for our personal spiritual
practices. And our personal ethics,
rules, and practices have ramifications for our wider political
spirituality.
We
are in an era where religious faith needs to pay attention to the revolution in
kosher practice that is happening in secular settings and recognize the way God
is moving outside the four walls of our faith communities. Kosher is food ethic, food practice, food
rules. And writer Michael Pollan wrote a
book not too long ago titled Food
Rules: An Eater’s Manual. You may remember Pollan’s general, seven word
rule from a previous sermon: “Eat
food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Within that general rule, he offers seven
more specific rules in his manual:
1.
Don't eat anything your great grandmother
wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt
tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself,
"What are those things doing there?" Pollan says.
2.
Don’t eat anything with more than five
ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
3.
Stay out of the middle of the supermarket;
shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of
the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods
when it goes bad.
4.
Don't eat anything that won't eventually
rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies
that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
5.
It is not just what you eat but how you
eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules
that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are
four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture
they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"
6.
Families traditionally ate together, around
a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals
with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt
wrong?" Pollan asks.
7.
Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline.
In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.[8]
The only thing missing from Pollan’s rules is solving for
pattern. Pollan fails to contemplate how
the whole economy of soil and gardens and farms is a part of a broad circle
that feeds into diet that feeds into food systems that travels out to producers
and distributors that loops back into our diet that then circles back out to
soil and gardens and farms. But it is
not only Michael Pollan that is weighing in on a new kosher practice. On the back table I have placed a sheet with
the food practices recommended by New York Times writer, Mark Bittman and my
favorite food author, Anna Lappé.[9] As you read those food ethics, practices, and
rules, recognize how profoundly personal and political they all are.
Way back in March of 2009, Michael
Pollan turned to the readers of his New
York Times column and asked them for their food rules.[10] Well over 2,500 rules later, Pollan collected
and compiled some of what he considered to be the best of those rules. These shared rules are not from so-called
experts but from people who had developed intentionality and mindfulness around
food.[11] Again, listen for both the political and
personal nature of these food rules, I would argue, the ongoing process to
develop a new kosher.[12]
Slide 2: Maybe one of
the few rules I may be pretty good at following through on. I’m an avid apple eater.
Slide 3: Perhaps
learning from other peoples and cultures to develop a more wholistic food
practice.
Slide 4: Perhaps my
favorite, self-evident food rule. Right?
Slide 5: A deeply spiritual food rule that has implications for
self-care, love of friend and neighbor, and love of our enemy.
Slide 6: Maybe not everyone would agree with this food rule but
perhaps this one is less about what to eat and more about approaching our food
and food practice without anxiety.
Slide 8: Food and food practice is not only about our personal
spirituality and public politics but also has economical equations.
Slide 9: This practice seems very Zen. Kosher is sometimes just about good table
manners.
Slide 11: A reminder that a good food rule or practice is also about
solving for pattern. A good food rule
does not create an anxiety about food which creates a whole other set of
problems in another place. Think about
how our anxiety about food in the present culture has led to so many eating
disorders.
Slide 12: Again, kosher practice is about right
relationship and alternative economics.
Slide 13: A reminder that good food rules are not only what we eat
during meals but between meals as well.
Slide 14: Finally, the food rule that reminds us that
food, in and of itself, is meant to be a beautiful gift from our benevolent
Creator. When our food does not reflect
that orientation in the world, we should ask ourselves if our food ethics,
rules, and practice reflect a God who is good and wishes goodness and joy and a
quality of life for all of us.
These food rules come from people who are not
the published authors, or health care workers, or leaders of any movement. They are people who have intentional and
mindful practices around food. What are
your food rules? And how do we begin to have a conversation so that we might
develop an individual and kosher practice that feeds all of us?
Food
is such a foundational part of our faith sacrament and story that rarely is
reflected on, discussed and brought home to our individual and communal
tables. We recognize the need to build
our social fabric with potlucks and Second Sunday lunches. Or to meet hunger needs with donations of
food and money. As a historic,
prophetic, and courageous witness, let’s begin to discern how we can broaden
that narrative.
What
I would like you all to do is to share your personal and familial practices around
food and send them to me, via e-mail, letter, or even written on the back of
the bulletin over the next two weeks, so that I might share them with the rest
of the congregation on Sunday, February 14th.
I will do my level best to choose five to ten I think will feed us out
into the future. Then we can take hope,
learn from each other, and share in God’s good gifts.
This
is what we do. We claim our own power
and freedom. We share with others to
build hope and solidarity. And we begin
to learn who we are together as the Body of Christ. God’s good abundance awaits us as we then
extend our personal, economic, and political practice to the world in a way
that recognizes that God not only intends goodness, and joy, and life for us,
but for all the peoples on this good and beautiful earth. Amen.
[1]
Diana Butler Bass, “Intentionality, Practice, and Vitality,” Alban, http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5280
[2]
Ibid.
[3] Luke 22:25
[4] Walter
Brueggemann, “The Earth Awakens: Reading
Hosea in the Age of Climate Change,” Sojourners,
January 2016. https://sojo.net/magazine/january-2016/earth-awakens.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Emma Howard, “10 green leaders on the best ways you
can fight climate change,” the guardian,
October 8, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/08/10-green-leaders-on-best-ways-you-can-fight-climate-change
[7] “C3 Campaign,” New
American Dream. http://205.153.117.210/c3/. Our food
travels an average of 1200 to 1500 miles, and it takes quite a bit of energy to
freeze, refrigerate, and truck that food around.
[8] Daniel J. DeNoon, “7 Rules for Eating,” WebMD, March 23, 2009. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/20090323/7-rules-for-eating.
[10] Michael Pollan, “Michael Pollan Wants Your Food
Rules,” New York Times, March 9,
2009. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/michael-pollan-wants-your-food-rules/.
[11] Michael Pollan, “Your Dietary Dos and Don’ts,” New York Times, October 11, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/11/magazine/20091011-foodrules.html
No comments:
Post a Comment