What’s for Dinner?

Food is basic.  Not only is it the staple of life, it is the culinary glue that binds cultures together.  It is warm memories of satiation.  It defines a culture. It is fellowship around the table, or, in some cases around the campfire.  In short, life.

“What’s for dinner,” usually the first words out of my mouth as a boy returning from late afternoon play when the streetlights came on.

Many Americans who live in my neighborhood, have never questioned its availability.  They’ve never known hunger.  Not real hunger.  Not starvation.

We may have had moments of stomach-growling hunger.  Like the time our Boy Scout troop went to a big area-wide jamboree near San Diego.

The event was held on a huge military base.  Each patrol was to spend weeks ahead of the event preparing.  Unfortunately, upon joining the troop I was placed in a patrol with the least competent leader, a young boy a couple of ranks above “tenderfoot.”

And his parents didn’t sit in on our meetings to see if we were attending to all the necessary stuff.  Like, maybe a balanced diet and sufficient food for the week of the camp-out.

When it came time to cook our first evening meal, we had already each packaged what was called “campfire stew.”  That went fine.  By the second meal things went downhill from there.  No one got the fire ready.  They had not even gathered sufficient firewood.

A kid the patrol leader sent out to gather firewood came back over an hour later, only to announce that he didn’t find any snakes.  James was so fixated on catching snakes, snake obsessed, that he had forgotten what he’d been sent out for.  All the while, there was wood lying all around our camp!  Snakes, for the love of Pete!  By this time our stomachs were growling.  Disgruntlement ruled the campsite.

There was no time to cook the potatoes and carrots, so we ended up gnawing on them raw. 

In the middle of the night, two boys in our pack raided the food supply and ate the link sausages raw, so there were none the next morning. 

A most wonderful culinary week, indeed!  Yes, our patrol spent much of the week hungry, though a couple of others gave us some food out of pity.  And the scoutmaster told them to do it.

I totally get that a major complaint Moses had to face from his disgruntled band had to do with food.

“Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

For their rebellion and grumbling, their failure to trust God, so the tradition goes, God sent a batch of poisonous snakes.  Such would have served James and his band of supposed wood gathers right.  But no snakes.

Incidentally, one of the advantages Robin Williams listed upon becoming an Episcopalian: no handling of dangerous serpents in church!  But I digress.

Back to Moses and his poisonous reptiles – the remedy, according to the story, was to affix the image of a bronze serpent on a pole and whoever had been bitten, upon gazing up at the image would be healed.

This is not some magical operation.  In gazing up at the image was the acknowledgement of the sin of mistrust of God’s providence and repentance.  That contrition is what brought healing.

John’s gospel draws on this story from Numbers to make a similar but slightly different point.

Jesus in John is “Revealer.”  As such, he opens a way of life that is eternal.  A way of life overflowing with blessing, with joy and purpose.  In John’s gospel, that blessing is expressed in various metaphors.  But, for our purpose, juxtaposed to the bad food story out in the desert wanderings of Moses’s people, I want us to think of the saying: “I am Bread.”

And what is this, Bread?  It is the nourishment of shalom, of humility, of justice, of forbearance and generosity.  It is life laid down that deeper life be lifted up.

Our Lenten journey is to trod the same path, that Christ be lifted up in us.  As is said, our lives may be the only Gospel some folks will ever encounter.  As Christ is lifted up in us, as Shalom is lifted up.  As Justice is lifted up.  As Humility is lifted up – indeed God’s desire for all to live together in harmony takes root.

The other day, grocery shopping at Stater Brothers, the woman bagging my purchases noticed I was having a bit of difficulty.  It was late in the afternoon and I wasn’t doing so well.  She was a middle-aged Black woman who had the most infectious smile and warm personality.  Robin was her name.

She asked me if she might help me take my groceries out to my car.  Not wanting to put her to any trouble, I demurred.  “No, thanks, I can get them.”  She persisted and said she would just go out with me to take my cart back.  Actually, she helped me get them all into the back seat. 

She was an absolute joy that brightened up my entire day.  In her, Christ was definitely lifted up, and I was refreshed just like Moses’s snake-bitten followers.  I was so moved, I had a difficult time, through tears of gratitude telling Jai about her when I got home.  Lifted up Christ was, in this delightful woman.

Lifted up, not as dogma or ritual, not as doctrine, but brought to life, present-day, in the warm-blooded living flesh of those who walk the Way.  The only version of the Gospel that really counts in the end.  That all who follow this Way might have Life Abundant, a small taste of eternity.

This is the True Bread, Wonder Bread, served up, baked fresh and steaming warm every day by those in the Jesus Movement.  No snakes here!  (Not even in the grass).  The same Bread served up on the path from Nazareth all the way down to Golgotha, where it was elevated for all to behold.  A Way of Life that all might be made whole.

As the question goes, “You may claim the mantle, ‘Christian,’ but would your church treasurer know it?”  Would your checkbook, credit card, know it?  Or your appointment calendar?

Unfortunately, around the world, most journeys do not conclude in such happiness as mine did this last afternoon.  As most of ours do.

Dr. Nick Maynard tells of the torn bodies of those children arriving at the few remaining hospitals that have not yet been totally destroyed in Gaza.  Yes, there is unspeakable tragedy all about.

The wilderness abounds with vipers and other deadly creatures – mostly humans.  And while we have agency, the ability to bring change, to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice, we have our limitations.

IN THE MEANTIME, IN THE MEANTIME — if Christ be lifted up, there is Bread for the Journey.  Cause for great rejoicing along the way.  Spend a few moments in spiritual daydreaming before getting out of bed.  It is quite likely, if Christ be lifted up in those seconds, you too will be overcome by an “attitude of gratitude,” joy beyond measure.  Yes, REJOICE!

I have a wonderful wife who is adapting to my infirmities’, warm and toasty at night, and who cares for me, and I for her.  Yes, again I say REJOICE.  Love for fifty-seven years.  REJOICE!

Our youngest son was named Christopher, meaning Christ-bearer.  I am flooded with thankfulness when I witness the tender care he shows for his new wife Alexis, and the love she gives back to him.  And the joy this couple brings to friends and family.  That they are moving back here to be with us is a joy beyond measure.  Yes, REJOICE!

Considering our team working on House of Hope in both West Virginia and San Bernardino, I am flooded with gratitude for their efforts and personal support.  Especially, Jim and Verity.  They’re the “Secret Sauce.”  The venomous bites of the sidewinder of delay and toxic politicians who don’t give a rip, the Risen Christ in this team will overcome.

Though I’m told that dialysis is much, much sooner than I had hoped, and a big pain in the patoot, I’ll have plenty of time to read and write during it all.  Another sting of the adder that the present-day Christ lifted up in my heart will allow me to transcend.

The other night I had a dream of wandering through some crowded urban landscape, coming to a dead end of this dirt road.  When I looked to my right and took another byway, I had arrived at an ocean bay, a verdant marsh with a golden sun slowly setting on the horizon.

A sign, that when it’s my time to depart, I might hear, I pray, those words, “Servant, well done.”  Christ lifted up — cause for ultimate rejoicing at the end-time feast.   Always, that I might have been Bread for another’s Journey.  Amen.

March 3, 2024
4 Lent
Laetare Sunday – the Pink Sunday

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22;
Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

“What’s for Dinner?”