In the name of Jesus; amen.
On Tuesday I started doing something radical: I went on a detoxification diet and I’ve been complaining about it ever since. For 3 weeks all I can eat is fruits, vegetables, simply cooked lean meat, organic eggs, brown rice, and these special shakes that are nice and grainy. My only saving grace is that I am also allowed to have sea salt and extra virgin olive oil (within reason). And since Tuesday I have been cranky because of the lack of all the wonderful things I usually eat like bread and chocolate and coffee.
So yesterday, while others were here at church doing the spring clean-up I was in Torrington at the first Mission Area Assembly for the southwest part of our synod. I got there right as worship began. It was an interesting service.
St Paul’s in Torrington has a puppet ministry and a youth group which does a contemporary kind of liturgical dance which they performed for us in place of a sermon. But my heart was only half into the service until we got to the beginning of communion and I realized that I could drink the wine. I was only slightly disappointed that they had wafers instead of a huge loaf of bread which might likely have made me start to speak in tongues right there in the pew in which I sat.
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation- if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
There have been other times when I have yearned for communion; times when I’ve gone to church and needed to eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I remember the Sunday before the funeral for the father of one of my dearest friends. Scott and I were on our way to Virginia to mourn his terrible loss and had spent the night with his mother and went to church with her before hitting the road.
I needed communion that day, but they only served it every other Sunday and this wasn’t one of the “on” Sundays. I felt starved for the spiritual food that is the holy supper as we headed for 95 South that afternoon.
There have been many, many times when I have needed that sustenance and perhaps, hopefully, you all can say the same. Sometimes the food of communion is the only thing that will satisfy what is missing inside, but never, never before have I cared so much about what it tasted like.
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation- if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
These words of Peter may very well have been spoken to new Christians, those who had only just been baptized and joined the rest of the community at the table. They would have been like infants, newborn in the faith and the words of Peter would have been good advice to them: long for the pure, spiritual milk the way that newborn babes long for their mother’s breast. Long for the sustenance that helps you grow into salvation, because you know, if you have already tasted it, that the Lord is good.
The Lord tastes good and everything else follows after that. Tasting that the Lord is good helps us to hand over to God our very spirits as the psalmist writes: “Into your hands I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.”
Tasting that the Lord is good makes us living stones, building blocks that form a house, a dwelling place for God in this world.
Just as God, the Father, makes dwellings for us in the next world, we are created to be dwellings for God in this world.
Tasting that the Lord is good satisfies us and our need for mercy. The food that is God makes us a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that (we) may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called (us) out of darkness into (the) marvelous light.”
Yearn for it, this stuff that tastes like mercy. It is the stuff that nourishes our souls so that we may grow into the salvation that God so wants for us.
May it delight your senses; tantalize your taste buds, and fortify your will to serve God and neighbor.
Amen.
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