Let’s eat more ice-cream
Sermon on 1 Peter 2:2-10
I have recently noticed some interesting patterns when shopping. Every time, I come home with the regular stuff, plus ice-cream and yoghurt. I didn’t even notice it. I just bought it, every time. Until our freezer filled up with ice-cream off all kinds. Strawberry and Caramel for Toni, Pistacchio and Vanilla for Theo, Chocolate and Cookie and lemon and mocha for Philipp and me. The kids love ice-cream, but even they couldn’t eat as much as I kept buying. And our fridge has a battery of yoghurt, there is hardly space for all the veggies and other essentials. I really didn’t catch what I was doing until I read today’s lesson in 1 Peter. “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.”
So, that’s what I have been doing since the shelter-in-place started. I have subconsciously bought soul-food. Every single time.
To always have too much Yoghurt and Ice-cream at home makes me feel safe and home, somehow. And I seem to have already handed it down to my kids, who have been eating way too much ice-cream in the last 2 months. But then, what’s too much of something that’s technically just frozen milk and fruits and a little bit of sugar and makes you happy in a pandemic?
Milk and sugar, or, in biblical terms, milk and honey. That’s what the promised land tastes like. Like the Lord is good. Like life is good. It tastes like the first food we ever drank on this earth, it tastes like home and safety and love. And for most of us it tastes like motherlove or like the love we would have liked to receive or the love we didn’t get but gave. There is no way, a baby can drink anything else than milk during the first months. That’s what it cries for day and night. To gain weight, to get bigger and stronger.
Long for the spiritual milk like newborns, tells us 1 Peter. Cry for it day and night. To grow into salvation, to gain faith-weight, to get bigger and stronger.
Hoarding ice-cream and yoghurt at home, helps me to cry to God day and night right now. Sounds pretty weird, I know. Yet, the comfort of my soul-food is just great enough to calm my heart for praying for more strengths and endurance these days. It reminds me of my mother’s fridge and the large freezer in our basement, where my brother and I would sneak down with a spoon to take a few bites of ice-cream. It reminds me of summer-trips with my brother when we ate ice-cream until we got sick. It reminds me of my grandfather, who loves dairy products more than anything and gave me treats like a slice of bread with tons of butter or buttermilk to enjoy. Soul-food like spiritual milk, that nourishes my soul and my body and my heart.
My troubled heart that tries not to be troubled, that tries to trust more than to worry, this heart mostly stays home right now. And it has lots of time to be built into a spiritual house, like 1 Peter advises. To be a holy priesthood.
I have been emphasizing this a lot and here it is again. Every home can be a church. Always. Every person can be a temple of God’s grace filled with the Holy Spirit. Always. Right now, it’s not a choice or an addition to our church building. Right now, our homes, our world and our hearts are our only churches we can safely enter. But then, there are 7,8 billion hearts beating on this planet right now. 7,8 billion living stones to worship God and to proclaim the Good News in words and deeds: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
Our homes and Facebook accounts and emails can become places full of God’s Spirit blowing through our words and thoughts. Our hands can be busy sewing masks or dialing phone-numbers or writing letters and emails and text messages to people we care about. Our hearts and minds can be filled with prayers, day and night, crying to God for help.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner. What is true for Christ is true for us today. We are all asked to do what would have been super uncool and a sign of a poor social life just 2 months ago: We are asked to stay home on a Friday night and a Saturday night and on Sunday we are asked not to show up at church. Not even I as the pastor. Not even God. Because God doesn’t show up at places just for the sake of being there, all by himself. God shows up where hearts are troubled and need to be calmed. God sits at the table with me eating ice-cream. God walks with me through my neighborhood admiring the most beautiful flowers. God shows up where someone longs for soul-food. Because God’s home is your home and your hood is God’s hood. Nothing in this world is a special place for God, everything is sacred. We just often happen not to see that.
God’s house is easy to find. No maps needed. Just a promise, a word of comfort to troubled hearts when Jesus says: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Whoever knows Jesus, knows the Father, knows God. That’s the great News. It’s wonderful, that Jesus is like God. It’s incredible, that God is like Jesus. A man who taught and walked and healed and sealed the kingdom of God.
We often want to know everything about God, that we miss God’s very self when God shows up in ordinary things like water and wine and bread, the sick and the poor, the Church and even the incarnation.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” says Jesus. He reminds us that faith doesn’t mean to know all about the way but to know the way. He reminds us that faith isn’t knowing all about God; but to know God. Truth is not a proposition. Truth is a Person. And that Person doesn’t always show up in the ways we expect—in our lives or in the lives of other people— so we best keep our hearts open. To see what Jesus is up to today. Under Corona conditions.
Let me tell you where I met Jesus last week: He showed up in cookies, a friend left at my doorstep as a surprise on a regular Thursday morning. He showed up in an unhoused neighbor whom we met at a parking lot. And seconds later Jesus showed up in my son who asked me: “Mom, do we still have crackers? Can I ask this unhoused man if he wants them? Maybe he likes crackers just as much as I do?” “Sure”, I said. “Go ahead.” And Theo walked over to the man and handed them the crackers and talked to him for a little while. When he came back, he said: “You know mom, I had to go a little too close to the man, but it made him so happy.” And I just hugged Theo.
After all, when Jesus describes judgment, he doesn’t give us the image of himself standing, arms folded, in front of the gates to the kingdom declaring, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”
No, when Jesus describes judgment, he says, “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me…”
In other words: “I was right under your nose and you missed it.”
Let those with eyes see. Let those with ears hear. About the soul-food we need and the places that are our churches and about God who is like Jesus and never abandons us. Ever. Amen.
