O TASTE AND SEE

Psalm 34:1-8, Luke 4:1-13

O taste and see that the Lord is good.

We had watched and waited for the red flag on the boathouse to go down and the white flag on the boathouse to go up: the sign to everyone that the lake was now safe for skating. So last Saturday, late afternoon, we bundled up with hats and mittens and scarves, put our skates in the trunk, and drove up to Lake Carnegie. Even as we approached, we could see that the lake was covered with skaters, and we were glad to be among them. We parked, laced up our skates, and edged our way carefully down the bank--then set off toward Kingston.

There were beginner skaters inching along gingerly, and experts doing gorgeous figure eights. There were hockey games of many varieties, and little children pulled along on sleds. There were skaters in brightly colored parkas, and we saw one skater with a penguin hat. We saw puppies and dogs slipping and sliding, as we sailed down the lake with the wind at our backs.

Then we turned around and by that time it was dusk. And the sun was sinking fast in the west spreading mauves and rose and gold across the horizon and yes, making the wind come up stronger. It was now against us, so we skated full strength--long strides, arm in arm--until finally we got back to the bank where we began. And someone had made a bonfire, and someone else was passing out hot chocolate with marshmallows. "Look! Those folks are putting wieners to roast on a stick."

O taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed are those who trust in God.

The Lawrenceville School celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by taking a day off from classes and taking on a day for community service--all of our students, all of our teachers. Liz Duffy, our Headmaster, figured out it was 2700 hours of community service in that one day. That's sixty 40 hour work-weeks.

I was assigned this year to go to Homefront's Free Store with 16 sophomore and junior boys. We had an inauspicious start. The day began with Connie Mercer, founder of Homefront, coming to Hamill [House] and giving us an introduction on homelessness in Mercer County and the history of Homefront. It was 7:30am. The boys had to get up a little earlier than usual. They were tired and a little grumpy--inattentive--eating bagels. When Connie was finished, one question: "How long will we be there?" Another asked, "When will we get back?" Another said, "How hard is this going to be?" Another asked, "We are going to do what?" But once we arrived at the Free Store, there was this magical change in attitude. They saw this challenge set before them. There was this room Ð some of you may have been there--15 feet by 15 feet by 15 feet. A room filled with garbage bags that were filled with cast off clothing.

The young men got pumped. They organized themselves into stations: men's clothing; women's clothing; kids' clothing; shoes; household items. Some one turned up the music--someone else switched the station. The work became like play: the sifting, and the sorting, and the hanging, and the placing, and oh yes, the tossing. "Heads up for women's lingerie!" And when the Homefront truck, filled full with more stuff, backed into the loading zone, they were not discouraged. The young men of Hamill all lined up and began to chant, "Bring it on...bring it on...bring it on!" Melinda, the Americorp worker, said, "in my two years I've never seen the likes of this...."

O taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed are they who trust in God.

When Haregewoin Tefarra's husband died--and then her daughter died--the two within months of each other, her life was shattered in Ethiopia. She couldn't understand what had happened. It was some strange disease of their immune systems. Grief stricken and heartbroken, all she could manage each day was to shuffle off to Catholic Mass and back again heavy laden with depression and with sadness. And then a priest, who had observed Haregewoin delivered one child, and then another child, and then another child--orphaned children into her care. You've already guessed that this was just at the time when the AIDS pandemic was gaining its grim momentum across Ethiopia--across Africa.

Word spread. Children of all ages began to appear at the door of Haregewoin's modest tin-walled compound: an infant handed by a dying mother; an orphaned brother and sister whose grandfather was to poor to feed them; a little boy, 8 years old, Eslender, whose father died soon after he left his son with Haregewoin. Haregewoin's home became known as the rare place where AIDS stricken parents and grieving families could leave their children, safely. Soon she was caring for 60 of them.

When she began accepting babies with AIDS her friends begged her not to do that. "It would be bad for the other children, Haregewoin." "Don't do this, please." "Ababu--that baby--look--he's too sick to survive." "How can I not take him?" Haregewoin replied.

Today Haregewoin's compound is composed of various shipping containers. One is a school for the children; one is a dining room; one is for those who are sick. Haregewoin still lives with her sadness, but she is no longer depressed. She is a round woman who stands all of four feet eight inches. She has this thick hair bunched under a kerchief. Her coffee-dark skin gleams in the African heat. "Welcome," she says to a visitor who came the other week, and hands the visitor an infant, so Haregewoin can pick up the toddler who is by her side with his hands lifted up.

O taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed are they who trust in God.

The psalm that you read, appointed for today, is a psalm of praise. Walter Bruggeman, the great Biblical scholar, writes that the psalmist has experienced God's goodness. "We don't know exactly what it is. What we do know," Bruggemen writes, "is that it is massive and miraculous, amazing and irresistible. And it gives the psalmist a new orientation." Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. The psalmist wants us to know that the goodness of God is not abstract. The goodness of God is concrete, amazing, irresistible. We can see it--like a frozen lake full of skaters. We can taste it--like a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. The goodness of God is massive and miraculous. Massive--like tons of clothes sifted and sorted and ready for those who need warm jackets and thick socks. Miraculous--like babies and toddlers and children who would have otherwise died, are now being cared for, and being fed, being taught, and being loved. The goodness of God.

O taste and see that the Lord is good.

Now I imagine that some of you may have given up gin for Lent, and some of you may have given up chocolate. Some of you have may given up wine for Lent, and some of you may have given up brussels sprouts. And all that is well and good, that denying and that fasting, but I'm going to suggest a subversive alternative--maybe a supplement to your Lenten discipline: to use Lent as a season to be intentional about experiencing God's goodness as preparation for Good Friday and Easter. God's great goodness to us in our new life in Jesus Christ. Let's look around and taste and see.

There is a custom for those who practice Judaism, and some say it is a commandment, to say one hundred blessings to God each day. One hundred words of praise. One rabbi calls it one hundred wows.

The sight of the first purple crocus--Wow
The taste of snowflakes on your tongue--Wow
The smell of an open fire--Wow
The feel of your grandchild's hand in yours--Wow
The sound of a hammer helping those who need it in Louisiana--Wow
The look of the light in this sanctuary--Wow
The sound of your choir singing, "Be Thou My Vision"--Wow
Your amazing Pastors--Wow

All these concrete evidence of God's goodness to us.
O taste and see that the Lord is good.

Geoffrey Wainwright, the great British systematic theologian, who is now down at Duke University, wrote, "All theology is doxology." Which is to say, all knowledge of God is praise of God. So I want to just end with one irresistible image. There is a group of us, over at Lawrenceville, who exercise early in the morning in John Simar's Field House. 5, 5:30, 6, 6:30. Some of us walk on the track and some of us jog. Some of us run on the track with speed. Many are on treadmills; many are on ellipticals; many have iPods; some listen to NPR. We're rather a grim group. We're there for discipline; we're there to keep up our strength; we're there to keep up with teenagers; we're there to deepen our willpower. We are there lifting weights for our backs and for our abs; we're working out. But there is one among us who is totally different, who always has a wide smile across his face. He's on the exercise bike, pedaling away. He doesn't use an iPod. He only has this aura of joy all around him, in his wide smile. So I asked him once, crawling away myself from the crunch machine, "So, Art, how do you do this?" "Do what?" he questioned. "I'm just happy to be awake, and to be alive."

O taste and see that the Lord is Good.
May we have Lents full of God's goodness. Amen.

February 25, 2007

Sue Ann Steffey Morrow

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