WLSU: Believing and Eating

Of course, a sabbatical does not have to have anything to do with the pandemic. I’m not just taking this time off in order to recover from my experience of serving in a church during those difficult years – though I do hope for some recovery in that time. It is customary for clergy to take time like this off every few years, and after 7 years in my current job, it’s my time.

But the main themes of my time away from Church of the Redeemer were conceived in the midst of that pandemic experience. And I want to share those themes with you. So anyway, here we are and I’m talking about the pandemic again.

Unlike many people I heard from, the COVID-19 pandemic did not shake my belief in God. I don’t say this to brag about my faith – because I don’t consider my faith strong enough for boasting. It’s just a matter of fact. From very early on our lives felt very apocalyptic. And here the Bible teacher in me wants to remind you that apocalyptic doesn’t mean the end of the world. The word literally means revelatory. As in there are true things that often seem obscured, mysterious, or hidden that all of a sudden seem very clearly true and obvious. Something is being revealed about who we are and who God is - and it can’t be unseen.

It’s not the end of the world: It’s the end of the world as we’ve pretended it to be.

In my case, it was not that I decided to believe in God so much. Rather, it was as if it was revealed to me: I do believe in God. I do believe in God it turns out, and what’s more, I sense God’s presence like the color dripping from the brush onto the canvas of a Pollock painting. God in chaos and truth, in love and judgment, all over the place in everything that is happening. God’s uncomfortable presence and honesty seemed to be embedded in every aspect of what I was experiencing.

My thoughts turned to the first time I had really experienced that apocalypse. Hiking the trails in Cinque Terre, Italy as a homesick, lovesick 20 year-old, I looked out over the big blue sea and felt so profoundly insignificant and temporary and fiercely loved. In that moment God revealed to me that I believed in them whether I wanted to or not. This moment, it turned out, could not be unseen, and I have spent the last 24 years seeking to understand this revelation more fully.

So there I was in 2020 and 2021, cloistered and claustrophobic in my house for months on end and I thought, if this ever ends, I want to go back to that place where I first found out I believed in God. It helps, I think that it happens to be in an unspeakably beautiful place, but I digress. That place, that time in Italy was a moment of conversion for me – one where all of a sudden I knew I believed. And now here I was again, in a very different time and place, knowing again that I believed.

And I thought, I want to walk that path again, and I want my family to walk it with me.

So that’s what we’re going to do, my family and me. We’re going to go to Italy and hike that trail. I don’t expect another apocalypse. And I don’t need one. And I don’t need my wife or my kids to have that moment too. I just want to be there with them because when I am with them the holy things seem holier. We will be in Italy for a month, then Barcelona for a week. Throughout our time there, we’re going to some other holy sites too, both religious and not-so-religious. Conversion cannot be confined to the times and place I expect. I look forward to wherever it may be next.

At the back end of the pandemic, we tiptoed back into real life. At Church of the Redeemer the very first gathering we had outside of masked worship was on the front porch of our church. We had a taco truck parked out front and we invited everyone. I will never my whole life forget that night. A hundred people showed up and ate tacos and just smiled at each other. “Look at us. We’re sharing space. We’re together. We’re eating.” It’s all so simple isn’t it? I don’t ever want to take it for granted again, the being together.

I was angry a lot during the pandemic. I may have believed in God but I wasn’t so sure I believed in people anymore. I had hoped that this health crisis would be an opportunity for people to unclench our fists and look out for one another – to cross political lines, to take seriously the danger and uncertainty before us, to love one another in practical ways. I did not see that happening, and I found myself succumbing to my own judgmental nature and cynicism.

The taco truck reminded me how much I love people. And maybe that’s just how good the tacos from Los Cunados Taco Truck are – they’re the best in town. But it was the smiles and the gathering around the food that re-membered me. We weren’t alone. We aren’t alone. Even though we had been isolated, even though I had began to think awful things, that night on the front porch put me back in my right mind, placed the people I love before me and opened my heart.

And I thought about that food. Food had been a big part of my pandemic experience. Yes, I did a lot of stress eating and gained a lot of weight. But besides that, it was during the shutdown that I began making bread. The experience of mixing the dough and watching it rise and bubble and take shape was strangely powerful. But it was when I began to wrap it up and drop it on people’s porches that it really began to change me. A big part of my job is when people gather round the altar and I give them bread and tell them it’s Jesus. I was not able to do this for over a year. But I could make some bread of my own and pray over it as I shaped it, and then give it to people. Still though, I could not eat with them.

The night of the taco truck we ate together, and I realized how much we needed that to really be community, to really feel like we belong to each other. And I began to see that conversion is not just a single moment. Like nourishment, conversion is ongoing. God is working on our hearts and in our lives all the time, giving us this day our daily bread, giving us one another, giving us Jesus.

So I decided that on my sabbatical I would learn more about food and community. I will be visiting New Orleans, guided by a chef who will take me to where communities are shaped by the food they share. And I will take several baking classes while in Italy, and intern in the kitchen of a local restaurant for a few weeks. I have no idea how it will shape my attitude towards food, towards church, towards life. But I believe that it will.

Last week I wrote about the rest I need. That is still true. But the sabbatical time is also about my renewal. For my renewal, I am seeking out the holy places and holy meals that continue to convert me – those things that reveal to me that I believe in God, that remind me that I believe in you, and that transform me so that I can better love you both.