Sermon from September 21st 2008 ...

It is said – you are what you eat?

In this season of putting out gardens to bed and harvesting the bounty of our backyard gardens and our rolling fields of potatoes, grains and other foodstuffs, it is a good time to reflect on the fullness of this notion.

With the rise of organic, and fair trade, the 100 mile diet and numerous other initiatives that seek to inspire us to reflect on where our food comes from and what is in it – particularly with the lingering listeria crisis, these notions have gained added momentum as we begin to realize that our food is fundamental to our wholeness and wellbeing.

But even more than that, “you are what you eat” is a reflection of the very values we hold dear as a people and a culture … Take a moment to think about the last major road trip you made … whether it was out to the BC coast for a break from the rolling prairies, to Calgary to visit family, south to the warm climes of Arizona, to Ontario or even a quick dash into Winnipeg to do some shopping … take a moment to reflect on the food outlets you passed along the way …

When I was a child we had favourite stops when we were driving the hour and a half up to the village where much of my extended family lived. Fish and chips, or friend chicken from the little restaurant at the junction just outside of Clifford Ontario was a treat, ice cream for the kids and fresh coffee from one of a dozen road side stops was an even more appreciated treat. It was not that long ago, but it was before the tsunami of fast food franchises washed over the countryside of Southern Ontario.

There was no Mac’s, Tims, Kings or bright neon signs to intice you off the highway – instead there were mom and pop operations that reflected the local flavour and that offered the original “slow food” to a traveling public.

I realized the negative impact of fast food one day when I walked out of a international franchise to find a sign in the parking lot that read simply – “Customer Parking: 15 minute maximum”

15 minutes?

You were to enter, order your food, consume it, and be gone in 15 minutes … Now, the cynic in me recognizes that to maximize the “taste” of the food, it must be consumed fresh and hot, so the 15 minute window was apt … but I come from a family that lingers over the meal, talking, laughing, getting caught up on life … Conversation has been as much a part of meals in my life as the consumption of food … food is secondary to the process actually …

So, 15 minutes is counter to the conversation … you don’t have time to talk, and eat and LINGER when you have 15 minutes … yet, that’s the value system of our modern society … We rush in, grab our meal wolf it back without consideration of where it came from or even what it really is, then we rush back out the door to our busy lives …

We’re caught up in a rat race, and we’ve lost sight of what we’re racing after and even why …

So into our busy lives breaks through the whisper that says – “what is it?”

This bread from heaven – this bounty that was all around them … what is it ?? and the reflection on how we live God’s abundance and bounty in our modern world …

Theologian Walter Bruggeman notes in an essay on scarcity and abundance that:

The majority of the world's resources pour into the United States. And as we Americans grow more and more wealthy, money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less and less generosity -- less and less public money for the needy, less charity for the neighbor.

In our busy world this “truth” becomes more and more real as the gap between the haves and the have nots widens …

We get caught up in the notion of FAIRNESS that Jesus touches on in our Gospel reading – ensuring that we get out fair share of what is offered as pay … it’s the whole Protestant Work Ethic in action – you have to work hard, and those that are hired first should – NO MUST – be made more than those lolly-gaggers who showed up at the end of the day … to pay those hired in the afternoon the same as those hired in the morning is an affront to our beliefs and our values … and yet, here is Jesus saying – “does it really matter?”

The parable is about money – and how incredibly unimportant it really is … what is important is ensuring that EVERYONE has enough to meet their needs … it’s about seeing the world from God’s perspective – NOT ours …

We live in a world of plenty and bounty, yet the words of Bruggemann ring far too true … we are concerned about scarcity and about protecting what we have, rather than sharing with those who have not … We’re all guilty of it – myself included …

We’ve been conditioned to work hard – to be part of the rat race and to chase after that lump of cheese that lies just around the next corner – and in the process we’ve lost sight of what is important … we see ourselves in a desert of scarcity and yearn for the easy life back in Egypt, rather than trusting in God’s generosity and care …

We have become the Israelites complaining in the desert and failing to see the presence of a caring God … Bruggeman writes of the story of Manna:

When the children of Israel of Israel are in the wilderness, beyond the reach of Egypt, they still look back and think, "Should we really go? All the world's glory is in Egypt and with Pharaoh." But when they finally turn around and look into the wilderness, where there are no monopolies, they see the glory of Yahweh.

In answer to the people's fears and complaints, something extraordinary happens. God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?" -- Hebrew for "What is it?" -- and the word "manna" is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy.

Three things happened to this bread in Exodus 16. First, everybody had enough. But because Israel had learned to believe in scarcity in Egypt, people started to hoard the bread.

When they tried to bank it, to invest it, it turned sour and rotted, because you cannot store up God's generosity. Finally, Moses said, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to do what God did in Genesis I. We ought to have a Sabbath." Sabbath means that there's enough bread, that we don't have to hustle every day of our lives. There's no record that Pharaoh ever took a day off. People who think their lives consist of struggling to get more and more can never slow down because they won't ever have enough.

When the people of Israel cross the Jordan River into the promised land the manna stops coming. Now they can and will have to grow their food. Very soon Israel suffers a terrible defeat in battle and Joshua conducts an investigation to find out who or what undermined the war effort. He finally traces their defeat to a man called A'chan, who stole some of the spoils of battle and withheld them from the community. Possessing land, property and wealth makes people covetous, the Bible warns.

We who are now the richest nation are today's main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God's abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity -- a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.
The conflict between the narratives of abundance and of scarcity is the defining problem confronting us at the turn of the millennium. The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being.

We are what we eat … if our diet doesn’t take time to sit at the kitchen table and reflect – really reflect and converse on issues in our lives that are important, then we will fail to live the abundance that is ALL around us and we will foolishly covet that which is unimportant … Fast food scarf-ed back in less than 15 minutes may feed our bodies, but it will never feed our souls … God calls us to table where the conversation, the relationship – the revolution takes precedence over the simple consumption of food …

I wonder if we dare to hear these words and follow … or will we, like our spiritual ancestors remain hard headed and stubborn, grumbling our way to the promised land that flows with milk and honey … a promised land we walk through every day …

Twenty five years ago travel meant stopping along the way and taking time for our coffee and our meal … today we use drive thrus and fast food outlets that prioritize getting the “food” into our hands and sending us back on our way … it’s up to us to ponder which way is better …

But as I consider my meal choices, I think about poet Robert Frost who said –
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood,

and I--I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

When it comes to food, it would seem the path less traveled, the one with time to converse over the table does indeed make all the difference …

What is it? It is food … but it is much more than simply food … it’s a way of seeing and experiencing the world in God’s vision …

May it be so – thanks be to God. Let us pray.