MEDITATION TITLE: SEASONAL SOUP

A sermon by Reverend Jay Schrader 

SCRIPTURE TEXTS: Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 8 St., John 6: 1 – 14

Introduction

I have a simple proposition for you… Faith is Soup. Ok, I know its sounds a little sacrilegious. But we accept other such abstractions that are shaped by metaphor. God is love, Christ as Pascal Lamb, The Spirit as Comforter…Faith is soup. It is nourishing, complex and simple at the same time, it takes time and patience and no two pots or portions are the same – Faith is Soup. It is found in its making and by sharing.

Before Eliot’s illness the kitchen was not a very active place in our house. With the kids most grown and gone, Gloria and I didn’t take much time in meal preparation. We grabbed a bit here or picked up something there. Meals were just not a very high priority most of the time. We would go out with friends, or pick up take out for our busy kids, or we look for something quick and easy without much clean up or time taken. But, when I think about what I most dearly would wish to eat, it is seldom gourmet restaurant fair, it is a hearty bowl of Soup Saturday soup, served with warn fresh break, rich cheese, a little green salad and a glass of table wine. So what kind of Soup is our faith? I think that there are a least four possibilities – in fact, if the metaphor works for you the possibilities are unlimited, but this is a sermon after all and I may already be in deep consommé with four rather than the usual 3 points, but four it is.

BODY

A. Our Faith is Sacred Stew… like we read about in 2 Kings last week with Elisha and the prophets. It is a extraordinary stew full of ancient and secret ingredients discovered in sacred writings and traditions. The potage that was Esau’s price for birthright. It is a miraculous food with celestial properties. Manna-like substance feeding ancient multitudes of wandering Israelites. Our soup is akin to a mountain-moving and utterly amazing elixir. Real soup that our fore bearers lived on. It is the soup that inspired and empowered magic moments and heroic deeds. Some say that the receipt for sacred stew was lost or forgotten, but the taste live on in memory and deeds of a faithful remnant. Sacred Stew is almost always Grandma’s receipt.

B. Faith as Special Soup for contemporary time… A new soup for our modern age now appears on our tables. Anyone here know the names Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen? They are the purveyors of a contemporary soup. Mr.’s Canfield and Hansen are the co-authors or co-editors of those self-help bowls of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Their books are anthologies of uplifting stories or vignettes meant to do for the human spirit what homemade chicken soup purports to do for the body. How good it must to the masses.

There is C. S. for the soul (1-6) C.S. for teens, for Nurses, Gardeners, Couples, Kids, College Students, Women, Singles, Cat and Dog Lovers, Baseball Fans…and A Christmas Treasury Soup. Self-Help is pretend Soup that is long on inspiration and short of perspiration. Alas, No C.S. for the soup of a Vegetarian or a Skeptic – I am both. It is just not my cup of broth with or without Chicken. That trendy soup leaves me hungry, its to easy, it requires nothing me. It looks like homemade in the same way that Campbell’s in the quart jar looks, but isn’t. The missing ingredient… there is no family, no community, no church to share with.

C. Faith as Holiday or Important Occasion Soup The Soup that is served at significant moments in our annual calendar. The faith of special ingredients served but infrequently. We get out the best linen and cutlery and the most special and uplifting times. It is the soup of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. It is the Holiday or Holy Day Cheer and festivity that give it its remarkable and rich flavor. It is served in time we most feel like sharing, though those times are regular but not frequent. Our soup pot is bottomless at those times of good cheer. Unfortunately, living on that soup alone leaves one hungry much of the time.

D. Faith as Simple Seasonal (Du Jour) Soup. Faith as a soup for all season and everyday.

In 1766 a Scottish Novelist named Tobias Smollett was ordered by his doctor to leave Scotland and travel to the warmer climate of Italy and Southern France for health reasons. He reported on those experiences very unfavorably. He scornfully ridiculed those whom he encountered. Contemptuously he wrote that those people “…live on soup, and bouille (Pureed Veggies), Fish and Salad.” He truly distained the why they lived. What he said kind of resonated with my Anglo-Saxon Meat and Potatoes Heritage up to the time I became vegetarian. Now that simple daily diet containing soup sound both right and healthy to me.

Especially in the use of that French term …soupe du jour… The soup of the day. Whatever you decide each day…those everyday soups are both simple and subtle. Good soup served regularly does not need to cost lot. The requirement for Soup Du Jour is time to mix and blend and cook and most important a willingness to share. No drive through Happy Meal here. The Faith we work at on a day to day basis…that is what sustains us, what nourishes up.

I am so looking forward to soup and salad day. God is Love, Christ is the Pascal Lamb, the Spirit is Comforter, and Faith is Soup…Bon Appetit!