Food for Thought

What are my passions? What do I really care about in this world? These are questions I have been thinking about a lot today. Lately I have been drawn to writing and thinking and away from the siren song of the television and even the Internet (gasp!). But about what should I write? What should I read?

I am inexplicably drawn to books about writing and food, New Testament Greek and spiritual theology. Bizarre, I know. If someone wrote a book regarding insights into the Incarnation and peanut butter cookies, or how coq au vin illustrates the sacrifice of Christ, or parallels between red wine and the Lord's Supper, I would be ALL over it. I'd be up to my elbows in peanut butter, raw chicken, Beaujolais and the gospel of John. Bizarre, I know.

So tonight's meal begins with this great red cabbage recipe, topped off with some bockwurst that I brought home a couple weeks ago. Sort of a spin off of a dish our mothers used to make with red cabbage, smoked sausage and potatoes, sans potatoes. Our world here has been chock full of potatoes lately.

This is what it looked like a couple hours into cooking...


So what does that have to do with theology? I honestly don't know. What I do know and believe is that whether it's red cabbage and bockwurst or chicken or peanut butter, God is found in the particulars, in the real and tangible and relational parts of our lives. As Eugene Peterson writes in his book, The Jesus Way, “The gospel is not an idea or plan or a vision: it works exclusively in creation and incarnation, in things and in place” (Peterson, pg. 189). And maybe that's what this meal points to, that in the simplest, earthy places, molded and formed and chopped and stuffed and soaked through and sent through the fire, that what comes out in the final product is not just a mish-mash of tastiness (or not), but from beginning to end is part of God's creation and means through which that creation can be transformed.

I believe that is God's way with us too.

What connections do you see? Let's hear in the comments.

RKT2 - On the way to May...

May is almost here and in the words of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, "Spring has sprung and joyfully the birds welcome it with joyful song." Except it has not been very joyful. Finally exiting the depths of Lent into the bright light of Easter, I had hoped that the spring would be different. But now crushing May in its tragic grip are two events. One, the devastating tragedy at Virginia Tech University in which 32 young people were killed needlessly by a lone gunman. On the the other side, will be our somber remembrances on Memorial Day weekend, of loved ones who have died and those men and women who have given their lives for our freedom in years past and in the current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is hard to be joyful when we are so surrounded by reminders of violence, human brokenness and betrayal and our own mortality. That Easter happiness seems so far away.

For me, Easter is also where our hope must lie. I remember that before that first Easter long ago, the same deep reminders of violence, human brokenness and betrayal and their own human mortality haunted Jesus' followers. My hope, indeed our hope cannot and should not be in our own ability to vindicate violence, to banish betrayal or destroy death. The Easter promise is not that we have the power to defeat these. The Easter promise is that God does, but not in the way that we want. The Easter promise is that in the life of Jesus Christ, God enters our world, God gifts forgiveness and God creates new life out of the depths of death.

The same is true now. Jesus is alive and that life continues among us. In that life God even now enters those places of violent, hopeless, betraying death whether in Virginia, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and among us. Even now God gifts forgiveness. And our call to faith, is to wait and watch for that surprising Easter moment. When God calls life out of death even today, we are called to run to the empty tomb and welcome it in joyful song.

RKT2 - Teenagers...sheesh!

This past week I have had family visiting from out-of-town, among them a twelve-year-old girl, Kim. Most of the time she has such enthusiasm, it is infectious. So many things are new for her, it is a joy to witness them through her eyes and to hear about what she sees. Often, she sees things that I've missed for almost four years. Amazing.

Then there are those other times - the ones about which parents would shake their collective heads knowingly. Meltdowns over missing french fries. Pouting over unfamiliar foods that they insisted that they liked but somehow did not match their expectations. Anger about being corrected on a crowded bus that NO one cannot hop to a different seat every other stop. And the seemingly quintessential question, "Are we there yet?"

While I work with teenagers a LOT, it's a little different being the surrogate parent for one, 24/7, at least for a while.

I now have some deeper sympathy for Mary and Joseph in this passage from Luke chapter 2,

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house'"

Jesus, a precocious teenager, who wanders off in the middle of a family vacation. With the swaggering voice only an adolescent can muster, he turns attempts to pin the blame on his parents, how could they not known where he would be? Seriously, Mom, like you didn't know. DUH!

If we take seriouly that God was present fully and specially in Jesus Christ, on the one hand, it's hard to take this passage to heart. However, on the other hand, despite all we might be tempted to believe about teenagers, if God indeed was once a 12-year-old, then God too understands them and their mood swings and their pouts and doubts and tears. God knows and loves each and every teenager just as they are, even when they're driving us CRAZY.

God please help me remember!