CCC Blog

Something to Think About this Week - Comfort Food

I love drinking a particular brand of coffee every morning – or as often as I can.  Traverse City Cherry flavored, produced by the “Our Family” line of grocery stores.  It’s a Michigan company, and the product is not available in Decatur.  So every time we go up north to our cottage on Crystal Lake, I hit the two grocery stores in the county and load up on as many bags of it as I can.  I then dole it out, drinking it sparingly, so as to make the batch last until I get back up north again (if you’re wondering why I don’t order some online, believe me, I’ve tried).  I started drinking it decades ago, and doing so reminds me of cool summer mornings, listening to the birds, and watching the sunrise over the lake.

Our family still uses Andria’s steak marinade too.  It’s made in O’Fallon, IL and we first started using it when we lived in Centralia.  For the 8 years we lived in Baton Rouge, where it could not be found in our chain of Albertson’s, we had friends ship bottles of it down to us.  The same could be said for “Slap Ya Mama,” a Cajun seasoning that we came to adore when living in Baton Rouge.  Until we discovered that Walmart in Decatur sells it, we had friends from down south ship it up to us in Central, Illinois.  And since living at the I-10/I-12 split, we can no longer think of spending the winter months between Christmas and Lent without homemade King Cakes, thanks to a fantastic recipe Amy learned which uses Crescent Rolls for the dough.  

We’ve had three significant moves in our family life and each time, it has been hard to change some food habits we developed along the way.  It shouldn’t be surprising.  It really is called “comfort food” for a reason, because we are biologically hard-wired to form strong memories around food.  Flavors that we taste are tied to the areas of the brain where emotional memories are storied.  No wonder, then, that the food we consider “comfort food” is the kind of food that not only makes us feel good, but very likely is food that reminds us of enjoyable parts of our past.  If we eat a plate of “Mom’s Meatloaf,” we are likely to be flooded with a host of memories from our childhood.  

I understand that any conversation about food can be triggering to some who live daily with challenges related to this.  But I lift this up to illustrate how profound a thing our spiritual ancestors did; something described in Acts 15.  In building the church and growing the Christian movement in the years after Jesus left them, the early Christians essentially abandoned some long-standing food practices.  Certain foods they previously avoided eating were now considered acceptable.  Ways of eating and ingredients used in meals, which had been acceptable previously, were now considered unnecessary.  If the saying is true that “Old habits die hard,” imagine how much harder it would be to change them if they were related to food and the memories we associate with them and… if the habits were part of food-related rituals believed necessary for salvation.  That would really be something.  And it was.  

So when those early Christians, stuck and in danger of splitting and being divided over food practices, came together, discussed these issues together, and agreed together that everyone should make changes to help the church move forward as one body, they really did a powerfully, inspirational thing.

                                          Blessings – Michael    

A Reflection on Psalm 6

1 O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger,

or discipline me in your wrath.

2 Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing;

O LORD, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.

3 My soul also is struck with terror,

while you, O LORD—how long?

4 Turn, O LORD, save my life;

deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.

5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;

in Sheol who can give you praise?

6 I am weary with my moaning;

every night I flood my bed with tears;

I drench my couch with my weeping.

7 My eyes waste away because of grief;

they grow weak because of all my foes.

8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,

for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.

9 The LORD has heard my supplication;

the LORD accepts my prayer.

10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror;

they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame.

Too often in our world today, we try to go it alone and are made to think that asking for help is a sign of weakness.  With each passing year, layer upon layer of practiced  self-sufficiency covers the most basic instinct within us – the unrestrained asking for help. Think about how a baby’s first action is to cry for help.  When it is hungry, it cries; without calculating beforehand what others might think.  Even as a toddler, when a child is hurt, it runs crying to mom or dad with arms held high, never once thinking how it is perceived by others.  Unabashedly asking for help – throwing heads back, sending arms skyward - is our most basic human characteristic.

The apostle Peter gives us an ideal example of this.  When Jesus stood on top of the stormy water and invited Peter to walk on the water toward him, Peter momentarily did so (Matthew 14:29-30).  But when Peter began to sink, he threw up his arms and cried out “Lord, save me!”  Without giving a second thought to what the other disciples might have thought, or how history would perceive him, he unashamedly asked for help.  This is the courage expressed by the psalmist in Psalm 6.  Brutal honesty brings forth the words, “I am languishing” (v. 2).  Not stopping there, they confess how they are shaken to the core, physically and spiritually, by whatever it is that plagues them.  Maybe they feel as though they are drowning in a stormy sea of guilt and shame; caught in the undertow of regrets and wished-for do-overs.  Whatever it is, things are so bad that they spend every night crying themselves to sleep and can barely see straight due to the grief that engulfs them.  Psalm 6 is honest – brutally honest – about the pain we feel in life.

Yet the psalm ends with a declaration of certainty.  Just as surely as Jesus’ hand was there to lift Peter up from the drowning waters pulling him down, the psalmist reassures themselves, and us, that the Lord hears our cries for help; our pleas; our prayers.  There is no shortage of messaging in the world today encouraging us to believe in the nobility in going it alone.  But for those that would be disciples, there is no greater expression of faith than to throw caution to the wind and arms up in surrender.  There are no two more powerful words than “help me!”  Whatever it is that may cause your body and spirit to be grieved or pained, may you find the liberating power of the words “Help me.”  Our loving God, who hears the sound of our weeping and accepts our prayers, stands ready to offer the only help that can truly save us.  

God of healing help, thank you for hearing my cries and accepting my prayers.  Grant me the courage to confess my need for help.  And may I, through the grace of your Holy Spirit, experience the help that only you can provide.

Did You Know... Week 2

Did You Know… that the only thing needed to become a member is a confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior?  Both our primary founders, Alexander    Campbell and Barton Stone, believed that the church should structure itself on the practices found in the New Testament.  That is, if the New Testament gives evidence of the early Christians doing something, the church of today should do it.  Likewise, if there is no evidence of the earliest Christians doing something, we should refrain from doing it today. 

When Campbell and Stone looked around, on the western frontier of the    United States 200 years ago, they saw people joining other churches  (e.g.    Lutherans and Presbyterians) on the basis of that church’s creed.  A creed is a document that spells out that church’s beliefs.  Stone and Campbell were not against the substance of a creed.  That is, all creeds said that there was one God and that Jesus Christ was the son of that God.  No one would dispute that.  But Stone and Campbell felt that the Holy Spirit couldn’t be contained in the words of any one creed.  The Holy Spirit cannot be restricted and confined in this way.  Moreover, they saw how these creeds were used to divide Christians when, in essence, all Christians believed in Jesus as the way of salvation. 

Most important, however, was the fact that when our founders read the New Testament, they didn’t see people coming to Christ by means of a creed or an explanation of their faith.  Rather, they were saved by a confession of their faith.  They pointed to Matthew 16:16 where Jesus asks the disciples “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter replied, “You are the Christ (the savior), the son of the living God.”  That was enough for Jesus and it was enough for Campbell and Stone.

As the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) today, we still base membership on this Great Confession of Peter.  We are more concerned that you believe in  Jesus as God’s chosen instrument of salvation than we are with in what way you understand him to be simultaneously fully human and fully divine; or with how you think Jesus relates to the other members of the Holy Trinity (Father and Holy Spirit).  Should you come forward one Sunday to join the church, we will ask you one question – the same question Jesus asked Peter in Matthew 16:16.  We believe this is what God intends – an emphasis on what unites us more than the distinctions of how we articulate our faith, which can divide us. 

Blessings – Michael

Did You Know... Week 1

Did You Know… that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) almost didn’t exist? 

In 1801, Barton Stone and five other Presbyterian ministers split from the Kentucky Synod of the Presbyterian church to form their own independent Springfield Presbytery.  They had been inspired by an event that had occurred recently at Stone’s congregation in Cane Ridge, KY.  Thousands of people, representing different Christian denominations, met together for a weekend of fellowship, preaching, and the Lord’s Supper.  Prior to that time, Presbyterians only served communion to other Presbyterians.  But over that weekend, Stone watched as the Holy Spirit brought people together for worship and inspiration, regardless of their denominational affiliation.  When Sunday arrived and it came time to serve communion, Stone felt it was impossible to withhold the Bread and Cup from the Methodists, Lutherans, and Baptists who were also there, since they had been moved by the same Holy Spirit as the Presbyterians were.  He broke with the tradition of his Presbyterian Church and served communion to all who were gathered.  

Shortly thereafter, he and the other like-believing Presbyterian pastors formed their own Springfield Presbytery, which focused on the unity of all Christians based on a shared belief in Jesus as the Christ.  Unity, Stone would say, should be our “polar star” that must guide us in all things.  Over the next few years, 15 congregations in Kentucky joined the movement.  But then, not even three years later, the six pastors – led by Stone – published a document called “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery.”  They wrote: “We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling.”  They disbanded the very thing they had created, believing that creating a new church was not bringing people together in Christian unity, but rather adding another layer of division.  They envisioned that all congregations would be independent, only refer to one another as “Christians,” and focus on what they had in common with other congregations and not what was different among them.  

Barton Stone and others would continue this independent “Christian” movement for many years until one day joining with Alexander Campbell (who was leading a movement calling themselves “Disciples”) to form the Christian-Disciples Movement.  Though this would one day become the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), it never lost the desire to promote Christian unity and to emphasize what we have in common with other Christians and not on what distinguishes us from them.  

- Blessings, Michael