It was the perfect setup.
On the first day of class we signed in, we found our nametags and then
went into the parish hall. There before
us was an amazing table filled with fresh Hawaiian fruit, milk, butter and
sugar. At the end of the table was a huge
rice cooker full of hot steaming rice. We
made ourselves a second breakfast. I wonder…would you? It was fantastic, all of my fellow guest
students agreed.
We had registered for a short course in Asian
Multicultural Ministry. That just
happened to be in Hawaii. Darn.
J We were to be guests for a week with a
Methodist congregation in Honolulu. The guests, we
were a fairly diverse group of mainstream, religious, well educated American
adults. This was turning out to be the best class ever, and we hadn’t even started!
The members of this congregation were to be our co-hosts with their pastor who was our instructor. They were
mostly Japanese American, and When they saw us making and enjoying our delightful mix
of fruit and sweet and butter and rice…they were shocked. Surprised.
One man needed to sit down.
Food is an intense subject. It is the place where cultures divide and mingle. Food is memory, it is friendship, it is survival. In Japanese culture
rice is roots, it is shelter, it is almost life itself. The words for breakfast, lunch and dinner share the root word for rice. Rice is community. It is nearly impossible to cultivate rice on your own. Growing rice demands lots of people working together, and it may have been this food revolution that brought primordial east Asian tribes together. Rice can have a sacramental-like quality. There are things you do when eating rice and there are things you do not do, and these vary across Asia. Milk and butter and sugar and fruit mixed up with rice? Apparently not. We were guests, and we had thrown ourselves, bellies first, into the things our Japanese American hosts just did not do!
Our host, a Caucasian American pastor who specializes in Asian American ministry, he knew exactly what he was doing. It was a set up. His Arkansan self knew that the student guests would walk in, and we would see breakfast (or second breakfast). He also knew that his congregants would see a table of unrelated food. He was inviting cross-cultural conflict. Not with an idea, or a philosophy, but with something as intimate and important as food.
Paul is
not thrilled with some of what is going on with
the Christians of Galatia. These are men
and women who are Jesus-is-the-Messiah-and-Risen-Lord believers within Jewish diaspora
communities. Beyond the letter is a disagreement
about hosts and guests, about insiders
and outsiders, and about the relationship between outward signs and inward
realities. As you already know, right
down to this very day conventional Judaism is defined by diet, can be defined
by what you wear and more. For Paul’s
opponents, full incorporation, following
Christ within the Jewish community meant following the lifestyle of traditional
Judaism. All of it: head, heart, belly
and body. No exceptions.
Hard as it is for me to say, the hosts, the insiders, let’s
call them the traditionalists, are not entirely wrong. The Judaism Jesus lived seemed indivisible from
the ritual and dietary practices that we might casually refer to as KOSHER. All practitioners of a religion are more
likely to experience the benefits of religious practice when they are steeped in
it, when it is woven into their lives from first breath to
the last. For the insiders, these practices tie them to life, to hope and to eternity. When Jesus challenged the assumptions about what is done, and what is not done. When he wondered aloud about the relationship between what we do on the outside and where our heart resides, the insiders were shocked. Surprised.
The insiders,
let’s call them hosts, in the hope that
they might see themselves that way, the hosts of the Galatian community are grappling with some of the very questions that Jesus’ life demands of us today. This dynamic
of host and guest ties this letter of Paul with our lesson from Luke.
The 70 disciples are sent out two by two to find
hosts and to be guests. Maybe something
in your mind stumbled when you heard 70 instead of 12.
There are many qualities that distinguish the Gospel of Luke from its siblings Mark and Matthew. One of the most important is Luke’s rootedness and expansiveness. Luke is very sure to root the good news of Jesus in pious traditional Judaism, and to grow from those roots an immense plant, like a mustard tree, big enough to be home to all who need it. So whereas Mark and Matthew offer a commissioning of 12, Luke gives us that and a
commissioning of the seventy disciples.
Seventy, which is the number of the nations listed in Genesis, seventy which from the deepest roots of Judaism is a number that is inclusive of everything. So we are sent out in pairs, pairs are required by Jewish law for credible testimony. Thirty-five pairs of everyday men and women who left their nets and followed. Dozens of folks who are now sent out, bearers of Christ. They are to prepare the way and to be humble guests. Guests who journey out to break bread and heal and proclaim the good news. Expansiveness isn’t just about inclusiveness. It is also about servant leadership being the task of all who follow Christ. We are to have deep roots and tall stalks and shady branches. We are to be good guests, and good hosts.
There is nothing
easy about being either a host or a guest.
Both roles, are about being a servant of a greater good. Both hosts and guests will need humility and generosity. The way of the world, the reality of being
humans that make new humans, is that God
willing, there will always be the challenge of being hosts and being guests. Being church insiders means being a good host
for whomever comes knocking at our doors.
No exceptions.
Life together is a constant interplay of insiders, and outsiders, life together is being a host for what was and a guest for what
is to be. Bestselling author John Green once wrote that "imagination
is a kind of nostalgia for the future." Those
of us who are hosts must learn to expand, to love what was and to help what was
become what comes next. Those of us who
are guests must come ready to become rooted, to break bread, to heal and
imagine. Imagination
is a kind of nostalgia for the future.
Maybe this
church thing is like rice. It needs roots, but it also needs strong stalks, lots of water and a community to bring forth its gifts. It travels well, it feeds well, it has found a home in almost
every nation on earth. There are as many
ways to prepare it as there are to be offended by the preparing of it. Yet whether it is beautifully plain or
covered with fruit and butter, it is still good food.
That class
really was the best class ever. Not just
because it was in Hawaii or because we ate a lot of really good food. We were transformed by each other, hosts and
guests. We became a community, we became
friends. It was a course in
multiculturalism for our hosts as well.
Is there anything that isn’t? Can
you remember a time in your life where
you were a host, or a guest; and you
encountered a new way to eat, or work or live?
Can you remember a time when
you were surprised by joy? I can.
Amen.
Episcopal Cathedral of St. John
Albuquerque, New Mexico
July 7, 2013
Season after Pentecost
Ordinary 15C
The whole quote is this:
“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” Later on.."The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." from Looking for Alaska
Evaporation Beyond Belief: In cleaning out my house I discovered a jar of jewelry cleaner that I had forgotten about. You know the watery stinky ones that are not very good for your jewelry. Anyways it was sealed and in a drawer in the bathroom and ALL THE LIQUID EVAPORATED. Through the plastic. Then there is this darling glitter globe ring given to me a decade ago by a young friend. It was a fantastic conversation piece. However after about one year, ALL THE LIQUID EVAPORATED. Through the plastic.
