Sermon — October 24, 2021
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Do you remember the best meal that you’ve ever eaten?
Maybe it was the first time you tried a new cuisine and fell in love, inspired to learn more about a new place and new people. Maybe it was your grandparents’ Thanksgiving dinner, the smell of the pie baking as you loaded your plate up with family recipes that you’ve never quite managed to make as well as they used to. Maybe it was a good dinner at a great restaurant with friends, a perfect night that you’ll always remember fondly when you think of them.
I remember mine.
It was about two or three years ago. Murray was, I want to say, a little more than a year old. One night for dinner late in the week, a little low on groceries, I’d thrown together some lentil soup: carrots, onions, celery, some lentils, some chicken broth, some rice. Some toast, a salad. Nothing too complicated.
This was not the best meal I’ve ever eaten.
No, the best meal I’ve ever eaten came a couple hours later, from ShakeShack.
Now, don’t get me wrong; homemade lentil soup and toast would’ve been a feast for a couple of monks in mid-to-late Lent; but it was not Lent, and I have the appetite of six or seven of your average monks. And so later that night, somehow unsatisfied by my spartan soup and several helpings of Stoned Wheat Thins from the pantry, I fired up GrubHub on my phone. Let’s see: what would hit the spot? Maybe… one double cheeseburger with lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles, spicy brown mustard to be added at home. And… why not? A side of fries.
And then, knowing that the food would arrive when it was still slightly before Murray’s bedtime, and that there’s nothing worse than a toddler who wants your dinner, I wisely added a second burger.
So it was, as I stood side-by-side at the counter in my three-foot-wide galley kitchen, with my fifteen-month-old child in the learning tower beside me, sleeves rolled up, absolutely devouring a couple of cheeseburgers together, that I thought: this is one of the greatest moments of my life.
Maybe your tastes are a little more refined, but no matter what, the same things matter. Aroma, flavor, texture—these are the things that make food delicious. But the things that make a meal truly memorable are usually a little different: not just the food itself, but the emotions and relationships that surround it. You may have eaten the same thing a hundred times, until once, you’re just hungry enough and just relaxed enough and the company is just good enough that you remember it forever. Or, more often, the other way around. You love something you ate, and you get the recipe, and you try to recreate it but try as you might, the experience is never quite the same. Because it turns out that the secret to Grandma’s gravy wasn’t that drop of Tabasco sauce at the end. It was that there’s nothing better than to be an eight-year-old on Thanksgiving afternoon, surrounded by the people you love and full of mashed potatoes.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good,” writes the Psalmist. (Psalm 34:8) “Taste and see.”
Last week, after enjoying Shops and Louise’s baking at coffee hour, I was chatting with one of our fellow parishioners. (For the sake of the story, I’ll let her remain anonymous.) And she made a joke to me about how she doesn’t just come to St. John’s for coffee hour, but… it’s mostly for coffee hour. And I said to her, “You know, if you want to sound really pious and spiritual while also being completely honest, just say: ‘You know, I just come here to be fed.’”
Spiritual life, after all, isn’t so different from a meal. Most Sundays, when you come here to worship, most weekdays, when you sit down to pray, it’s probably like an ordinary home dinner: solid, nourishing, and forgettable. And it should be. I’m a professional church person, and I’d struggle to tell you about ten sermons I’d ever heard, or written; ten worship services where I’d felt profoundly moved. I enjoy the music, I’m happy to sing the old familiar hymn, I’m sometimes reminded of what a preacher said about this reading three or six or nine years ago; but for the most part, we come, and we’re fed, and we go home, full, but not on fire; satisfied, but not transformed.
But then there are those meals—then there are those moments of worship, or preaching, or prayer—that catch us by surprise. Those moments when God reaches out through the ordinary bits of church business or spiritual life, of liturgy or music, and takes us by the hand. For whatever reason, we’re in the right state of mind, or with the right people, or standing at the right kitchen counter and suddenly we “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” We have the kind of extraordinary experience that only happens once in a while, but that can sustain our faith for years.
And we tell people about these experiences, right? Just like we’d tell a friend about a great new restaurant in town, just like you told me when I got here that Jenny’s Pizza was the place to go, just like I told you just now about the best hamburger I’ve ever eaten in my life. We meet God in prayer and then we “bless the Lord at all times,” as the Psalmist says, and “his praise” is “ever…in [our] mouth[s].” (Psalm 34:1) We say to one another, “Proclaim with me the greatness of the Lord; let us exalt his Name together.” (34:3) We “look upon” God and are “radiant,” and we “let not” our “faces be ashamed.” (34:5) We come to church and encounter something awe-inspiring, we “taste and see that the Lord is good,” and when our friends ask us how our weekend was, we answer them, “Well, let me tell you this Sunday. ‘Let the humble hear and rejoice… I sought the Lord and he answered me…’” (34:4)
Right?
…Right?
As a matter of fact, I think most of us don’t. We “taste and see that God is good,” but we don’t, like, talk about it. Perhaps our spiritual lives seem too personal, or private. Perhaps our friends or colleagues aren’t religious, or it would feel inappropriate. Perhaps we worry that if we talk about Jesus, the people around us will start treating us like we’re that guy who stands down by Fenway after games with the T-shirt, “Jesus is Lord — Repent & Believe!” while 30,000 fans studiously avoid catching his eye. It can feel like, well, evangelism. And “evangelism” can be, for us, an uncomfortable word.
But all that “evangelism” means is “sharing good news.” Look again at our psalm. We don’t often talk about the plots of the psalms; they’re songs, or poems, not stories, and as often as not there’s no plot at all. But each one comes with a superscription, an introductory sentence that sets the scene. This week’s says, “Of David, when he feigned madness before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.” (A reference to a story from 1 Samuel.) It’s not just a generic song of praise: it’s David’s song of thanksgiving for a narrow escape from a neighboring king, who he thinks may be about to lock him up. “I sought the Lord,” David says, “and he answered me, and delivered me out of all my terror…I called in my affliction and the Lord heard me and saved me from all my troubles.” (Psalm 34:4, 6) David invites us into worship— “Taste and see!” “Proclaim with me!”—but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. It starts with a specific story of a moment when David tasted and saw that God is good, and he wants you to taste it too. David has some good news—there’s something amazing here!—and he wants to share it. And that’s all that evangelism is.
If that’s all that evangelism is, then maybe it’s something we can do, too. It isn’t trying to persuade someone that your beliefs are right and theirs are wrong. It is, as a common saying goes, “one hungry person telling another where she found some bread.” It’s like sharing the amazing good news about that restaurant that just opened down the street. And I don’t mean just talking about how wonderful St. John’s is, or how wonderful the Episcopal Church is—I mean talking about how wonderful God is, what incredible encounter you had with the Holy Spirit, what lesson Jesus taught that really made you think. It’s about telling the story of a time when you were fed, inviting someone else who’s hungry to give it a try: “I’m not sure whether this is what you’re looking for or not, but why don’t you ‘taste and see’?”
If you want to know what this looks like, pay attention this fall. Some of the members of our church have written reflections that we’re printing and sharing, in News & Notes and in the bulletin. Because it’s October, we’re calling these “stewardship reflections,” but they’re a kind of evangelism too, a way of sharing and hearing stories of good news, of the gifts they’ve been given by God and this church. Laura Scoville wrote the first one, for this week, and—not to embarrass her—it’s really, really, good. So read it if you haven’t had a chance. Think of the times when you’ve felt God’s love made real to you through the life of this church.
And then share those stories, with one another and with the people in your life who might need to hear them. Because I suspect you have those stories. I suspect you’ve had those moments, when God drew near to you; those perfect spiritual meals that you will never forget. If you are here today, it’s not by accident. It’s because somewhere, at some point, you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. So why not “Look upon him and be radiant, and let not your faces be ashamed?” Why not be like David, and tell the story of the time you “sought the Lord, and he answered”?
Or maybe just tell someone that you come here to be fed, however literally that may be.