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Transcript of Homily
I suppose appropriate for brat-fest
..you know, when you think about it, our
religion, it has a lot.. Of course, being said by someone my size.
But our religion has a lot to do with eating.
Really does...
It’s just, it’s all about eating.
Look at the garden of Eden, what was the
Garden of Eden about.
You may eat from all of the trees, the
fruit of the trees, in the garden.
Save the one in the middle.
That...
There’s an old German folks song, that
it was “eating” not “drinking that got us kicked out of paradise.”
It starts with eating, then of course,
you move on to Abraham who was childless, he’s a wealthy man,
And three strangers come to visit him,
and what does he do, he makes a meal for them.
And then you on to Moses and manna in the
desert, and the last.. the Passover supper.
And then.. It’s a little obscure, but
I think it’s a very important idea for our faith... the temple itself
Was built on a threshing floor.
The Holy of holies where the arc of the
covenant rested.
Which had some of the manna
That’s what they put in the arc of the
covenant.
The tablets of the law, that God had given
Moses, the staff that Moses used... and a jar of the manna, which had fed
them in the wilderness.
Those were in the arc of the covenant and
this was put in the Holy of Holies, but the Holy of Holies was built on
the threshing floor of ( ? ? ), the citizen of the town of ( ? ??
) Which became Jerusalem.
( ? ? ? ) the ( ? ? ), and a threshing
floors, of course, about making wheat.
Making flour.
That’s the first step.
You take the grain and you thresh it.
You separate it from the chafe
In order to do that you have to crush it.
And that stone pavement, that stone, high,
it has to be way up on the hill because the wind helps you separate the
light chef from the heavy grain.
So.. That threshing floor... of around
the (????) Was the foundation of the very Holy of Holies.
And to this day you can see carved into
that rock, which is still visible, under the dome of the rock in Jerusalem.
You can see carve into that rock, a flat
space, where the arc was put so it wouldn’t wobble.
It was carved into the rock.
Excuse me...
Then of course Jesus took bread and wine
and we have been using bread and wine ever since.
I’ll never forget when a.. excuse me...
when a friend of mine who was not Catholic was visiting me.... and we had
a confirmation... and of course in confirmation you use oil, and of course
bread and wine and water is necessary for the mass..
..but I don’t know if you know this..
But...
Dry bread and lemon juice is a great way
to get oil off your hands.
It’s sort of, sort of a ....an embracive
and it’s an acid... and that’s the traditional way to get oil off your
hands...
So I was putting out the bread, and the
wine, and the water, and then the dry bread.. And the lemon, and the Holy
oil and this friend of mine looked at me and said, “What are you doing,
making a caesar salad?”
It occurred to me that if you go to a Protestant
church there is no food put out before the service that’s necessary for
worship...
We can’t possibly worship if there isn’t
food present.
And, I... that’s, we never think of that.
But it’s, it’s about eating.
Now... in our modern world...
..I got on the scale this morning, of course..
And just.... oh dear, it’s not... the
news is not good.
Food has become the enemy, hasn’t it?
Now think about it.
When I was a boy in another century when
the wooly mammoth roamed, you ate food..
Now we seem to eat ingredients, you know?
There was a simplicity and beauty with
food.
I remember it was always so much fun to
go up to my Uncle Ed’s cottage, up in Canada, across from Detroit, because
it was Summer...
And the cantaloupes were in and the tomatoes..
And the... you know the cucumbers, it was a food fest..
The ladies went up and they started to
pickle.
I mean, it was nourish...
It was the rejoicing over the food that
came in.
Now of course you get tomatoes all year
long that are stripped mines somewhere in Texas.
You know that there was a cycle of life
that revolved around eating..
Well, what’s this about... what’s the
sermon about.
We have become, in our society, people
who are overfed on things that do not nourish.
Physically as well as spiritually.
Well, that.. the good things that God has
given us are neglected...
And instead we choose things that are not
nourishing... you know?
We’re busy... we’re late... we dry
by the McDonald’s and we super-size it, or whatever the Burger King,
and there’s fast food and there’s always this available and there’s
always that.
Instead of the beauty of living with Thanksgiving...
Maybe I’m just getting too old, but...
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