The Ketchup Church
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
My parents didn't put up with a lot of foolishness. Two rules stand out: At the dinner table, I often heard, "Don't play with your food." At church, still more frequently I heard, "Sit still."
There's a certain amount of logic behind the first rule. If you think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as those times when you stop to refuel your body, then you should probably get on task, refuel, washup, and get back to your chores.
If, however, the family meal is thought of as something much more than one of three pit stops during the day to take in organic energy, if it's thought of rather as a time for conversation, connections, and community, then playing with your food isn't nearly so serious.
Playing with your food. Today, corporate food providers are encouraging just that. Food and eating, traditionally so boring, can now be fun, fun, fun. For example, ketchup used to be red, like tomatoes are red. Then Heinz came up with the idea of using yellow and blue dyes to create a new product line called "Blastin' Green" ketchup. Within weeks they'd sold 10 million plastic squirt bottles of the stuff and kids all across America were plastering their burgers with green ketchup and grossing out their parents.
Heinz went on to produce a "Funky Purple" ketchup, and now ConAgra Foods is marketing blue and pink margarine. You can now get Mott's applesauce in turqoiuse, red, and acid green colors. You can get Oreos with an orange filling which, when dipped in milk and stirred, creates funky swirly patterns.
All of this, of course, is culinary heresy. Most of us know that ketchup is not green; it's red. It's always been red. Margarine is not blue, it's yellow. (Actually it's white, and some of us can remember having to peel open a little yellow dye packet and stir the coloring in.) These basic notions are imprinted on our minds, and squirting green ketchup on our cheeseburger or spreading blue margarine on our toast just doesn't do anything for us. We're not supposed to play with our food.
It's this same mind-set behind my parents' frequent admonitions to sit still in church. Like food, church was a time to refuel spiritually. So even at church, you don't play with your food.
Perhaps. Is it possible that God is trying to break through traditional notions of worship that are imprinted on our consciousness? Go right on down the list from stained glass windows, pipe organs, steeples, pews, to Sunday school, and it becomes clear that these old traditional patterns and experiences, beloved by many, have no appeal to those who like to play with their food.
So the next time you see a drama sketch during worship, or glance over at someone in the chair next to you sipping a Starbucks latte, or watch a video clip from Spiderman, or listen to the keyboard synthesizing some new tunes -- rise, shine, and give God the glory. Children of the Lord -- they're just playing with their food, and God is loving it.
There's a certain amount of logic behind the first rule. If you think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as those times when you stop to refuel your body, then you should probably get on task, refuel, washup, and get back to your chores.
If, however, the family meal is thought of as something much more than one of three pit stops during the day to take in organic energy, if it's thought of rather as a time for conversation, connections, and community, then playing with your food isn't nearly so serious.
Playing with your food. Today, corporate food providers are encouraging just that. Food and eating, traditionally so boring, can now be fun, fun, fun. For example, ketchup used to be red, like tomatoes are red. Then Heinz came up with the idea of using yellow and blue dyes to create a new product line called "Blastin' Green" ketchup. Within weeks they'd sold 10 million plastic squirt bottles of the stuff and kids all across America were plastering their burgers with green ketchup and grossing out their parents.
Heinz went on to produce a "Funky Purple" ketchup, and now ConAgra Foods is marketing blue and pink margarine. You can now get Mott's applesauce in turqoiuse, red, and acid green colors. You can get Oreos with an orange filling which, when dipped in milk and stirred, creates funky swirly patterns.
All of this, of course, is culinary heresy. Most of us know that ketchup is not green; it's red. It's always been red. Margarine is not blue, it's yellow. (Actually it's white, and some of us can remember having to peel open a little yellow dye packet and stir the coloring in.) These basic notions are imprinted on our minds, and squirting green ketchup on our cheeseburger or spreading blue margarine on our toast just doesn't do anything for us. We're not supposed to play with our food.
It's this same mind-set behind my parents' frequent admonitions to sit still in church. Like food, church was a time to refuel spiritually. So even at church, you don't play with your food.
Perhaps. Is it possible that God is trying to break through traditional notions of worship that are imprinted on our consciousness? Go right on down the list from stained glass windows, pipe organs, steeples, pews, to Sunday school, and it becomes clear that these old traditional patterns and experiences, beloved by many, have no appeal to those who like to play with their food.
So the next time you see a drama sketch during worship, or glance over at someone in the chair next to you sipping a Starbucks latte, or watch a video clip from Spiderman, or listen to the keyboard synthesizing some new tunes -- rise, shine, and give God the glory. Children of the Lord -- they're just playing with their food, and God is loving it.
