Book Report: Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

I bought this book at my local, independent bookstore  (shout out to Forever Books in St. Joseph) because, I thought, if I am going to drink from and frolic around Lake Michigan, it was time I learned something about it.  Dan Egan states the case well and makes the reader aware just how high the stakes are.

97 percent of the globe's water is saltwater.  Of the 3 percent or so that is freshwater, most is locked up in the polar ice caps or trapped so far underground it is inaccessible.  And of the sliver left over that exists at surface freshwater readily available for human use, about 20 percent of that--one out of every five gallons available on the planet--can be found in the Great Lakes.  p. xiii

Egan does an impressive job of sharing the history of the Great Lakes from the time the colonialists arrived on Turtle Island to the present.  He shares how the want for greater trade and commerce led to substantive, human-made geographical changes in the Great Lakes so that ships could make their way from all over the globe, into the Atlantic Ocean and then further south into these surface freshwater resources.  

Here is what led to one of the major threats to the Great Lakes.  As these ships made their way, the ballast water they had taken on to balance their ships while at home port, would then be dumped in the Great Lakes.  A diverse, biological bonanza was dumped into an ecosystem that had developed an ecological harmony and balance over thousands of years.  In particular, zebra and quagga mussels threatened to kill the lakes with the way they destroyed ecosystem infrastructure without any real predators.  

Though the Clean Water Act had brought the Great Lakes back from filth, fire (remember when Lake Erie was set on fire) death, and extinction, the exceptions for ballast water had left the door open for these intruders.  Efforts to stem this invasion have been half-hearted and lacked enforcement.  Stewards of the Great Lakes have also been concerned about advancing carp populations and how they might wipe out lake life and take with them the Native whitefish, trout, and walleye that were staple fish which used to be so plentiful in the Great Lakes.  

One of the other major contributors to lake pollution and die-off has been agricultural run-off.  Those of you who know me must wonder if all I do is blame our food system for any number of troubles in the world.  Climate change, immigration, and now the death of the Great Lakes!  C'mon, MIke!  Find a new story!

We continue to use fertilizers and pesticides at alarming rates which then run off into our water systems.  I'm not sure we can have any other system but chemical agriculture as long as capitalism is what we turn to deliver goods and services.  Capitalism requires more and more and more--consuming beyond what it means to be engorged.  Farmers look for higher yields and are blitzed with advertising to go bigger, grow more, and extract what they can.  

Egan ends his book with hope for the courageous decisions necessary to reverse the death-giving we give and allow for in the Great Lakes.  He is not romantic without a critical analysis for multivalent solutions needed to meet these challenges.  Yes, courageous decisions will need to be made but some of the native fish within the Great Lakes have already made some evolutionary changes to begin thriving.  Science may contribute a way to end carp reproduction and therefore stem the threat they pose.  

Threaded throughout his book are personal stories each person (scientist, fisherfolk, professor) has in their history of enjoying the relationship they had fishing or swimming or just being in relationship with their family at the Great Lakes.  Not unlike Bill McKibben, who believes we must develop relationships with the particular to really build our muscle for climate change, Egan believes the will for balance and health in the ecosystem of the Great Lakes must be found with those relationships.  He ends his book with a photo of his son having caught his first fish.  

I wish Egan's book was required reading for every local church found along the Great Lakes.  We need people with that relationship to incorporate this critical analysis into their love relationship with a resource that will become more and more necessary as climate change becomes more severe.  We should also remember, as Nick Estes reminded me, when the day comes that climate change comes close to the point of no return, we must not blame Mother Earth.  We are sewing violence into Mother Earth with our economic systems (like food) every day.  I pray that we are not too late to reap only violence.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, Sixth Sunday in the Food Justice Sermon Series, February 14, 2016

Lent 1 Food 6 BFC 2016

I Corinthians 12:4-7, 13-15, 22-26;  Luke 24:28-31

February 14, 2016

          We began this food justice sermon series with the creation stories in Genesis.  We come to a close with one of the most well-known resurrection stories—the road to Emmaus.  The two disciples, mourning the death of their friend and teacher, only know the Risen Christ when he shares food with them.   At the core of the Christian message then is the idea that the Risen Christ is found as we share, we feed one another, build community, knit together the social fabric God intends for us.  The nexus between that resurrection story and the first story of creation in Genesis is found in a Buddhist prayer which says, “Innumerable beings brought us this food.  We should know how it comes to us.” 

          Benedictine monk, David Steindl-Rast says that

when you put that [Buddhist prayer] into practice and look at what’s there at your table, on your plate, there is no end to connectedness. In the end, for instance, most people don’t think of it, but in the end, we always eat earth. We eat earth. Not in an abstract way, in a very concrete way. This humus is what we eat, or crystals when we eat salt, it’s pretty obvious that comes out of the earth. That’s earth, directly.  When we eat vegetables, well, the vegetables were nourished by all the nutrients in the earth, and then now we eat them, or the fruits of these plants. If you eat meat or fish, then they were nourished by vegetables, and they were nourished by the earth. Always comes back to earth.[1]

It always comes back to earth.  As the first creation story told us, we are made from ruach, divine breath, and adamah, fertile soil, a community image, a connected image, an interdependent image that says we cannot be human alone. 

          As I read more and more content about food and our relationship with food, I am taken with how even secular authors and advocates sound deeply theological, almost Biblical, as they offer solutions to the world food crisis.  So it is with Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé, authors of the book, Hope’s Edge, when they share the five liberating ideas that will help us find our way.  First, they write, we must cut through the scarcity illusion promoted by industrial agriculture and recognize the abundance that is before us.  Second, we must recognize that portraying humankind as primarily selfish materialists is a sad caricature.  We would have never made it as a species if we did not learn how to share with one another.  Third, we must recognize that our science and technology are tools that should not dominate us.  We must use deep values to dictate how our science and technology shall serve us.  Fourth, we must solve for pattern.  We need to make decisions around food recognizing that all decisions create ripples.  Land, soil, farmers, farmworkers, animals, food, transportation, trade, producers, markets, purchasers are all interrelated.  The best decisions will be made with harmony and grace in mind.  Fifth, the status quo should never be seen as all that is possible.  We can create and transform economies, and many of those economies are already created and being created, that respect nature, culture, and ourselves.[2]

          These last few weeks I have been talking about what we might consider our personal or familial rules for discerning how we shall shop, how we might eat, the relationships we want to build around our tables.  As a Type 2 diabetic and part of a family, I, or we, have some food rules that are important to my health and our life as a family.  1) As a night owl, one of my rules is to never eat any food after 10:00 p.m.  2) Tracy and I go out for breakfast or lunch every Friday as a way of building our fabric as a couple.  3) Tracy has done a tremendous job getting us all around the table for many of our dinner meals.  Barb Gulick wrote in with several of the food rules in their family.  Here are just a few of their rules.  1) The Gulicks shop at a local store that grows the economy, not a chain.  2) They regularly compost fruit and vegetable scraps.  3) And, my favorite, they will eat by candlelight to remind themselves of God’s presence in their lives.   John Smillie shared two of his favorite food rules:  1) the taste, nutrition, and ecological value of the food increases as the distance between food and market decreases; and 2) the footprint of the farmer is the greatest fertilizer.

          Those are all great personal and familial rules.  I am sure many of you can echo those.  But the church is this grand enterprise of what we would do together that might ripple out to our community and the wider world. 

What do we want for our faith community and wider community?  For example, do we want a relationship with the farmer or the farm that produces our food?  What values do we want to be a part of the school lunch program at our school?  If we eat meat, do we care about how the animals are treated in the processing of that food?  And do we want it processed in such a way that it breaks several child labor laws to get it to market?

My journey to understand what might be a new kosher, a new spiritual practice around food, was sealed with my work around a more humane immigration policy.  Over a decade ago, Jewish communities from New York emigrated to a rural Iowa community to begin a kosher meat packing plant, Agriprocessors.   The plant was a boon to the small community of Postville, Iowa, and brought undocumented workers from Guatemala into Postville as well.  PBS did a documentary about Postville, “When Cultures Collide,” describing the interesting intersection of rural Iowans, Guatemalans, and an orthodox Jewish community from the big city.[3] 

Almost eight years ago, the largest federal raid in U.S. history happened in Postville, Iowa, devastating the community and embarrassing many Jewish communities when it was revealed how kosher allowed for the breaking of child labor laws.  Small Guatemalan children were exposed to dangerous equipment.  Small Guatemalan children were exposed to dangerous chemicals.  And, as a reward for this victimization of their children, Guatemalan families were then ripped apart by a federal immigration raid.  In this context, was this really what it meant to be “kosher?”

          When kosher is supposed to be about identity for many Jewish people, how can your own identity be affiliated with what is effectively child abuse?  This led many Jewish congregations to a reconsideration of what is kosher, and to discern new food rules in keeping with their values. 

At Mt. Sinai Temple in Springfield, Massachusetts, the congregation developed new guidelines or values for kosher or kashrut to better “embody” their Judaism.  As I read their community food rules, remember that the apostle Paul considered himself a Jew when he offered the discernment questions for food rules, “What is beneficial to you and the community?  What strengthens community?  What honors God?  What shows you to be practicing your faith using your values so that food or science and technology involved with food does not dominate you?”  See if you think their food rules follow the apostle Paul’s discernment questions.  Mt. Sinai’s food rules include:

§  To consider the environmental impact of the meals and food served at Mt. Sinai Temple

§  To consider the way in which animals that provide our food are treated

§  To consider the health implications of the food eaten

§  Plus the way in which workers who have produced our food have been treated.

§  Concretely speaking, we propose that the congregation assign importance to such issues as the use of minimal packaging for food served

§  Plus the use of local and organic foods where possible. 

§  We propose reducing the amount of disposable materials such as paper and plastic used in the kitchen.  

§  Healthy foods (as defined by those preparing the meal) might also be encouraged at Sinai.

§  Finally, we propose that our congregation consider serving only Fair Trade Coffee plus other foods that can be certified “fair trade.”[4]    

As I read over those food rules for the first time, I thought that those indeed follow the discernment questions offered by the apostle Paul.

          Now some of you may think that all this food talk is crazy.  What does this really have to do with life with God and one another?  Isn’t this just Mike getting political?  Do we really have to think about food for our Christian faith?  Why doesn’t the Outreach Committee rein Mike in and make him stop all this foolishness?  And, finally, I wonder if I should go to Red Lobster or Hardee’s after worship?

          And the answers are:  everything, no, yes, because he’s out of control, and it’s up to you.

          The fact is, we have all kinds of food rules at Billings First Church we practice regularly and intentionally.   And you have heard me trumpet some of these as a way we show ourselves to be a people of courage and hospitality. 

·        We regularly invite homeless guests and visitors to worship to Second Sunday lunches or meals downstairs.

·        Many people make it a point to greet, serve, and dine with those homeless guests and visitors.

·        Every two or three months, our congregation participates in a ministry for homeless families that regularly provides home-cooked meals for one to three homeless families.

·        Primetimers and Winetimers are a way that senior members in our congregation bond and build social fabric.

·        We invite people into our narthex for Art Walk where we greet them with food to convey our hospitality.

·        Members of our congregation regularly provide meals for our Wednesday youth group meetings to share our concern and love for our young people. 

·        Every month our congregation is asked to contribute food for the food pantry and stem the tide of hunger in our community.

·        Our congregation liberally gives of its resources to a discretionary fund that often goes to provide rooms for the homeless but also provides meals for people who are down on their luck. 

Those are just some of the things we do that relate our food ethic, rules, and practices.  Presently, discussion is going on to decide how we shall go from here.  This Lenten season, you are invited to join with people from First English Lutheran Church and Mayflower to be more intentional and mindful in your food practice.  Rev. Stacey and I are trying to do the Daniel Fast throughout this time.  I know some of you are doing that or a variation of that as well.  The guidelines for the Daniel Fast can be found on the back table.    Also found on the back table, is the handout, “40 Days for Food Justice.”  I know Natasha Potratz, the Director of Art and Events at the Downtown Billings Alliance, who has been regularly attending our church over the last few weeks, has been following that handout.   Others are just eating more intentionally and mindfully during this Lent.  

Here are some practical suggestions for being more intentional and mindful yourself during this Lenten season.  You can buy a Community Supported Agriculture share from Kate’s Garden. Kate Rossetto, who serves with me on the Yellowstone Valley Citizen’s Council will show up to offer her CSA on Wednesday, February 24^th, during our Wednesday Lenten series at 6:00 p.m. in our Fellowship Hall.  Or maybe, as some food experts recommend to get started, try meatless Mondays through Lent.  Practice meatless Mondays in the same way many Christians used to eat only fish on Fridays through Lent.  Or, finally, decide you will make at least one shopping trip a month away from big box stores or supermarkets to many of the food stores in Billings with alternative values and then extend that shopping to the farmer’s markets when the weather warms. 

For anyone who wishes to participate at any level, purple silicon bracelets with the words “Lenten Mindfulness” are also found at the back of the sanctuary.  I pray it is a way we can join in solidarity with each other and with people from Mayflower and First English Lutheran so that you know you are not alone. 

          I know that for many of you, you are ready for this sermon series to end.  My hope is though, for some of you, this series has given you the perspective and courage to think how your daily practices might be beneficial to your health and the health of our community, how they might strengthen our community, and how they might begin to honor God and this earth God so loves.  I want to end with a quote from a book by Montana native, Liz Carlisle.  Carlisle writes in her book about courageous Montana farmers and the work they are doing, in regenerative farming, the words they use to describe their work—seeds upon seeds upon seeds.  To me, she sounds very much like I Corinthians 12.  Carlisle writes,

But the fact is that biological fertility is more than just a different nutrient management approach.  It's an entirely different way of life--one in which time and space broaden considerably, and the illusion of control falls apart.  Building your soil biologically is not a precise prescription for a particular crop, but a contribution to a larger ecology, subject to independent variables, geologic time, and global biogeochemical cycles.  You will not capture all the value on this farm, in this year.  You cannot individualize your return.  To build biological fertility is to build community--to accept interdependence with other creatures and foster a common benefit.  This way of life cultivates a new kind of awareness, a new empathy.  You have to pay attention beyond this season.  You cannot spray and then forget about it and go to the lake. Planting organic lentils--and all the other crops that go with them--becomes part of who you are, what you are conscious of, how you see the world.  It forces you to listen more deeply, more expansively.  And it softens, to some extent, the borders of the self.  This is the great irony of the lentil underground, or perhaps its secret.  What rugged individualism brought together, only community can sustain.  When I'd ask Casey Bailey to reflect on the biggest lesson he'd learned by bucking the corporate farm industry, he'd paused for a full ten seconds, then answered firmly, "That you can't do it alone."[5] 

You can’t do it alone.  We are made of fertile soil and divine breath, made in the image of God.  We are also the Body of Christ.  One part of the body cannot say to the other I have no need of you.  For God made us interconnected and interdependent.  As we enter this Lenten season, may we walk in this wilderness with an intentionality and mindfulness that begins to remember the ancient practice of kosher in a way that honors God.  And may we do it together knowing we belong to each other and to this good earth God created in love and joy.  Amen.   

---

[1] “Transcript for David Steindl-Rast:  Anatomy of Gratitude,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, January 21, 2016.  http://www.onbeing.org/program/david-steindl-rast-anatomy-of-gratitude/transcript/8366#main_content.

[2] Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Hope’s Edge:  The Next Diet for a Small Planet (New York:  Penguin, 2002), p. 283.

[3] PBS, “Postville:  When Cultures Collide,” Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/video/2365636566/.

[4] http://www.sinai-temple.org/Prayer_and_Celebration/kashrut.php.

[5] Liz Carlisle, Lentil Underground:  Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America (New York:  Penguin Group, 2015), pp. 243-244.  

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Fifth Sermon in the Food Justice Sermon Series, January 31, 2016

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 7:  A sense of ownership and accountability around our food practice.

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 10:  Again, a kosher practice that reminds us that holy and spiritual eating is about living in alternatives to the dominant political and economic power.

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.

[9] https://goo.gl/6rP07d.

[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

[12] https://goo.gl/iaqbRR.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, Fourth Sermon in the Food Justice Sermon Series, January 24, 2016

Epiphany 3 Food 4 BFC 2016

I Corinthians 10:23-31; Luke 9:12-17

January 24, 2016

          It was the Thanksgiving after my dad’s first heart attack and the inevitable conflict was about to take place.  My mom, out of her care and love for Al Mulberry, was trying to change my dad’s diet so that he might continue to live a long and full life, such that he might get to see not only his kids grow but also eventually get to know his strong, intelligent, and creative grandchildren like Jacob, Abraham, and Sophia.  My grandmother, out of her consistent care and love for Albert, had made all of the comfort food known hither and yon among the Mt. Auburn Mulberrys:  turkey, slathered in butter, sweet corn, slathered in butter, and her incredibly thick, yummy noodles, you guessed it, slathered in butter.   This was a Texas cage match waiting to happen, neither party considering the agency of Albert Ervin Pike Mulberry himself, who might say to my mom, “Hon, it is only one day, and this is the way that my mom cares for me,” or to my grandmother, “Mom, I really need to watch my diet after this heart attack.  I love your food.  But I think I’ll take very small portions of some of this good stuff.”  Would that happen?  Could that happen?  Nah.  Texas cage match. 

Because how we deal with food, how we discern its meaning in our lives, is very often tied to thoughts of love and care . . . and how that love and care shall be distributed.  Most of you know the issue has created the most conflict for me on Sunday morning is, “Where are the donut holes?  What have you done with them?  And what squadron do we need to assemble to go out and retrieve them?”  My mom used to refer to donuts as golden rings of death.  But I remember one of the first memories I have about our church was a particular Youth Sunday when the Older Youth shared how they loved this church because of . . . the donut holes.  Food carries messages of love and care and belonging.  And so we necessarily have to discern how we fill those messages of love and care and belonging with content.  I may have disrupted some of that content last week when I shared the ingredients of a McDonald’s strawberry shake.  Some of you have mentioned to me that you will never, ever be able to view a McDonald’s strawberry milk shake in the same way. 

As I have been putting before us these last few weeks, I think Scripture can be helpful in discerning a food ethic, food rules, spiritual practice around food. 

Our gospel lesson for today is one of many food stories found in the New Testament.  When you hear stories like the feeding of the 5,000 in the gospels, what do you hear?  Do you hear a story about the miracles Jesus did?   And if that’s what it is all about, how nice for Jesus.  Or maybe you hear, like I do, those two ancient narratives at work:  one of scarcity and the need to hoard and claw and scratch and the other narrative of abundance where scarcity disappears once we become aware of what we do have and gather our ability and awareness to share?  The disciples are like, “I’m not so sure we’re going to have enough food, Jesus!”  And Jesus is like, “I think we can figure it out.”  Jesus, in a time of food insecurity, acts out of the narrative of abundance.  The story itself never indicates that a miracle has taken place.  It does not have the markers of a miracle story.  So maybe this story, one of the few stories told in all four of the gospels, is about an orientation, an attitude to who is the giver of good gifts, how food creates social fabric and community, and who is welcome to share in that food.  Those are the very questions the Jewish practice of kosher seeks to answer.  Like any good spiritual practice, the spiritual practice of kosher is always evolving. 

          Kosher is rooted in basic assumptions with God as the giver of all good things: God giving with an abundance and love for diversity.  God creates all plants as food for humankind and all of the rest of creation.  In the wilderness, kosher develops as a practice when we recognize we will necessarily have to bring mindfulness and intentionality to our food practice so that food insecurity does not lead to a food desert.  The wilderness is a fierce landscape where we might have to be patient and attentive to learn how God’s abundance is being made manifest.  Finally, last week, we had before us the story of Daniel, who defines himself as a Jew, first and foremost, through his kosher practice of eating vegetables and drinking water as an alternative to the offered meats and wine of Empire.  In keeping with Daniel, John the Baptist and Jesus do not eat of the bread showered on high by the Roman Empire but eat off the grid from the abundance of God, eat from bread and fish shared not from above but across the table.

In Paul’s letters to the communities of Corinth, he addresses three issues which had come to define the dynamic spiritual practice of the Jewish people—circumcision, food, and sexuality.    The question for the Jewish people was, “How do we live faithfully, in the day to day, with the traditions, ethics, rules, and practices we have been given—many of them given out of love for us, many of them given out of love for our neighbor?”

That is a deep and holy question, rooted in the spiritual practice of discernment.  Too often Christian churches have failed to see Jewish and Christian communities in the first century struggling to practice discernment.  Instead of doing the hard work of discernment, many Christian communities have taken one side or another of two extremes.  One extreme says that the spiritual practices should be brought straight across from the first century and interpreted literally.  The other extreme says we should just throw the baby out with the bath water and not take theses spiritual practices seriously at all—scrap them altogether.  Paul, a Jew, engages ethics, rules, and spiritual practices that identify what it means to be a Jew in his day to ask how God was acting and moving in his day. 

I want to invite us to the same journey of those first century Jewish and Christian communities, to take on the holy practice of discernment to decide how the ethics, rules, and practices should be understood and lived out in our day and age.  I believe if we do this, we will sometimes end up in the same place as our faith ancestors were on some issues, nuance the ethic or spiritual practice on other issues, and totally contradict the ethic, rule, or spiritual practice on others—much like the apostle Paul did.

          Kosher practice identified a faithful Jew.  At its broadest, kosher was about being clear who gave food for the life and well-being of the whole community (not some idol or another god or a king claiming to be a god); kosher was about the health and well-being of the entire community through how food was prepared and eaten; kosher was about building the social fabric by being intentional with whom you shared meals.  Too often what Christians have historically seen in kosher rules is an exclusionary practice that forbids some people from coming to the table.  The actual intent was to not allow conquering nations to use meals as a way of building the social fabric for the worship and practices of their own gods.  Meals were so important to building culture and faith that it mattered with whom you were dining.

Animal sacrifice was done in such a way as to give thanks to God or, in other faith practices, the gods for the food.  Slaughtering animals was to be done with much reverence, care, and gratitude.  Spiritual practice and ritual was sometimes a worship experience that dictated how food should be prepared in such a way as to make it safe for consumption. 

Jesus engaged and chafed at some kosher practices that became less and less about the health of the individual and community and building the social fabric and more about shaming the poor.  Choices about dinner companions, washing hands, and eating meats on a regular basis were often luxuries reserved for the very wealthy.  What if you do not have the money to keep the long-held practice?  Does that make you an unfaithful Jew?

Jesus also had to ask himself and his community, “What if you are breaking bread, as a good Jew, at someone else’s table, and they offer you the delicacy, the luxury, of meat sacrificed and offered in gratitude to the gods of a different faith?”  Do you push yourself from the table?  I can imagine it would be like being a guest at a friend’s home when they bring out the fine wine and you might say, (in Thurston Howell III voice)  “Yes,  Lovie, I drink wine, but I’m not so sure I should drink your wine.”[1]  You come off as ungrateful to the hosts and snobby to the rest of the guests.  And a primary Jewish value is hospitality which recognizes the need to not only be gracious to your guests but also to be gracious as a guest.  But spiritual practice dictates that food sacrificed in gratitude to other gods is idol worship.  How does a faithful Jew live out of two great spiritual values that seem to be opposing one another:  hospitality and the refusal to do idol worship?  What do you do? 

As the folks from the Jesus Seminar shared with us just two weeks ago, the apostle Paul never understood himself as anything other than a Jew.  What he was trying to do, as faithful people in each age do, is discern how to engage his tradition for a new age.  As a result, he ended up with three different ethics to determine how circumcision, sexuality, and food practice should be measured and discerned in a new age.  Originally, I had chosen I Corinthians, Chapter 6, to be read for this Sunday because it contained one of Paul’s discernment questions for faithfulness.  When I read the recent translation of Paul’s letters in Art Dewey’s recent book, however, I saw all three discernment questions for faithfulness.   Paul writes that all is permissible, we are all given freedom, nothing is really forbidden.  He writes it as if someone authoritative has said it to the community.  And then he measures it.  He writes, “Yes, all things are permissible, but not all things are good or beneficial for you and the community.  Yes, all things are permissible, but all things strengthen community—are for the welfare of you and your neighbor.  Yes, all things are permissible but not all things honor God.”    I hear my mom and my grandmother’s voice in those pages, “Yes, you could eat or not eat those noodles, but if you do or do not, does it show you still love me.”  Oh, the guilt!

Paul goes on to talk about this freedom and its measure to decide how a faithful Jewish person engages in a kosher ethic, practice, or rule in this day and age.   

So this is what we are called to do, in this day and age.  We need to figure out what to do with those noodles before Thanksgiving even arrives.  Ethics, rules, spiritual practices that are deep and vital are engaged and critiqued in each age to remember how and why they charted a path in the first place—how they provided landmarks for our journey.  We ask those discerning questions asked by Paul:  1) What food practices or rules are beneficial for you and your community?  2)  What food practices or rules strengthen your community—are for your welfare and your neighbor?  3)  What food practices or rules honor God? 

For example, we might ask in this day and age, engage and critique the kosher practices and rules to ask, “What food practices or rules are sustainable for the environment?  What food practices or rules treat farmers and food workers with justice?  What food practices or rules direct our purchases toward increasing economic democracy?” 

Next week I am going to share with you some food practices and rules that other individuals and faith communities have incorporated into their faith and life.  And then I am going to ask you what the food practices and rules are that you have.  To then also take stock of our church and ask what our food practices and rules are.  What do we want them to be far out into the future that would show our commitment to a God of abundance, a God who requires our intentionality and mindfulness to be healthy?

This week you have in your bulletins something I am also going to share in the newsletter and have available during Lent.[2]  Our congregation is going to join with Mayflower Congregational and First English Lutheran Church to enter into a Daniel Fast together during the Lenten season beginning with Ash Wednesday on February 10.  Lent always begins with the Scripture verse that tells of Jesus walking out into the wilderness or desert to begin a fast on the First Sunday of Lent.  Many congregations are using Daniel Fasts as a way of helping their congregations get right with food, recognize their own power, and root their lives in the Heart of God.  So take a look to see if you would like to join in this high level of commitment.  If not, take a look at the sheets at the back of the sanctuary that ask for an everyday observance of food and its relation to our faith.[3]  If even that is too high of a commitment, you can join with all of us by just promising to be more intentional and mindful with your food practice, a form of fasting, during the Lenten season.  My hope and prayer is that we walk out of this Lent knowing that we have walked in the wilderness or desert with God and with our community, with two other Christian communities, and, in so doing, we might be able to say, here are our food ethics, rules, and spiritual practices for this day and age.  Amen. 

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[1] Wine handled by Gentiles is considered unkosher.

[2] https://goo.gl/wpNcLg

[3] https://goo.gl/qvEkRC