This morning we're talking about food, and I would like to begin with two riddles:

Question: What type of cheese is made backwards?

Answer: Edam! Edam is “made” spelled backwards.

I’m sorry, that was very cheesy.

Question: You throw away the outside and cook the inside, and then eat the outside and throw away the inside.  What are you eating?

Answer: Corn on the cob!

I apologize for that, it was very corny.

Outside and Inside Wellness are Intimately Related

I want to speak this morning about the relationship between the outside and inside; what we put into our bodies, and the processes and systems that are outside of our bodies, and how they are intimately related. I would also like to encourage wellness in the way you eat. But more importantly I want to emphasize that your wellness will always be related to the wellness of others, and to the wellness of the planet.

As we seek to be more mindful, we will come to understand the power that we have to make choices that lead to healing, both healing within, and healing in the world.

This has always been the case with food. All of the major religious traditions have systems that revolve around eating and identity. All the religious systems have a “purity system”- certain foods can be eaten and certain foods cannot, and there's a way to prepare those foods in all of these systems in an attempt to create mindfulness within the community.

The details to the purity code are less important in hindsight than the fact that there was an order to it. Each community was marked by its particular system; the system marked the boundaries of the identity of the group.

Food and Religious Universalism

In the first century Christian church these boundaries became blurred. Now you had Jew and Gentile forming community together. You have to understand that for people of strict Jewish background, anything to do with Gentiles was unclean and utterly impure. Whether it was the food eaten by Gentiles or food prepared by Gentiles, to Jewish people of strict observance these foods were unclean.

To even associate with a Gentile was to render yourself unclean, let alone to be in their home and sit at their gentile table.

The deep division of the first century might be best summed up with the bumper sticker that says, “Jesus loves me but can't stand you!” That's the sentiment in the first century, that Jesus loves us, but cannot stand your food, your homes, or your very presence.

And yet it was this deep tension and division that offers the context for the powerful transformation experience recorded in Acts 10 (text below). Peter was one of the central players in this transformation that would identify Christianity as a universal religion, and food and eating both symbolized and became a practical expression of this pluralism.

Peter, a man of strict Jewish observance, found himself in the home of a Gentile tanner. Of all trades, to be a tanner was one of the most unclean. This was the type of occupation were you were handling animals bodies and blood of all the time.

For a strict Jew to be in the home of a tanner, and to eat with this person was unthinkable in the first century. But this was where Peter found himself. And the experience was so profoundly overwhelming for Peter that it's as if a large sheet dropped from the sky and hovered over him with all manner of creatures, a smorgasbord of clean and unclean animals.

This hallucination or day dream or whatever it was reminded Paul of what his core vision already had been; bringing people together, Jew and Gentile, sitting down at the same table, sharing food, eating food prepared even by Gentiles. Food and eating were both the symbol and the practice around which Christianity began as a universal religion. Acts Chapter 10 is the pivotal story around which this universal vision hangs. Peter showed himself to be a true progressive, more interested in relationships than dogma, more interested in treating people right than being right.

It’s no wonder that heaven is so often described with imager of food and banquets in the New Testament. These banquets are open to all, and have no purity code attached other than a pure heart and a willing spirit.

Expanding the Circles of Inclusion

In a community such as this, we are already on this journey, as most of us already practice a universal religion. Most of us already share that vision for coming together across ethnic and religious boundaries. We have already taken that leap. So how can Acts 10 inspire and challenge you this morning? How might you expand your circles of care? How might you increase your inclusiveness beyond just ethnic difference to even the difference between living and non-living? How might your consciousness, your world view, expand to the point that you include processes, even the past, even the structures that bring our food to us?

In the Sufi tradition there's a parable about a man who comes to a banquet in torn and tattered clothes. He is seated way in the back because of the way he is dressed. The big food platters are passed along a line, and by the time they get to this man there's no food left on the plates. The man sits there for a while, and gives up eventually. He goes to see a friend who's very wealthy and asks to borrow some of his finest garments. The man goes back to the banquet dressed in these fine garments and this time he's placed at the very first table because of the way he's dressed.

What happened at this point is quite extraordinary- as each food platter is passed, he takes from it, and for every mouthful he eats himself, he smears the next mouthful on his clothes. This goes on for several minutes until the host of the party can stand it no longer and comes up and says, “What are you doing, ruining these fine clothes with such fine food?” And the man answers, “It is only because of these fine clothes that I got to sit at this table. It only seems fair that the clothes should also partake of this wonderful banquet.”

The clothes could well be symbolic or representative of all non-living matter. I want you to consider what the clothes are in our context. What does it mean to feed and seek the wellness of even that which is not living? The parable brings us to the core spiritual principle, and that is that no one, no thing, and no situation is ever separate from any other one, or thing, or situation.

If we think any thing or person or situation is separate, we're deluded. Our core spiritual principle is that we are all intimately related to the wellness of others and to the wellness of the planet.

So how can we seek to expand our inclusiveness to include even the care of that which is non-living? I want to suggest that there are two ways. The first is that we might minimize the harm of our consumption, and the second is to maximize the healing of our consumption. Maximize the healing, not just of our own consumption, but the consumption of the whole world. And we have the power to do it.

Minimize the harm of our consumption

Buddha told a very stark story about a couple who took a trek into the desert, and went with their very young son, and with several days' supplies of food. They thought that there was enough food to get them across the desert, but when they got half way across they found their food had run out, and they were left with this horrendous dilemma. So the parents discussed it and decided they needed to eat the child to get to the other side of the desert.

Buddha asked the question, “Do you think they enjoyed consuming the flesh of their son? Do you not think they wept with every mouthful?”

I thought hard about whether to include that story in the sermon. Its discomforting, and yet in the end to not be mindful of the interrelated web of our food system is to consume people and processes.

When we consider our consumption, that other things, sometimes people, processes and situations had to suffer in order for us to consume, it changes the way that we eat. We cannot any longer eat the same way because we realize the consequences, and we realize the processes that brought that food to our table.

My call today is that you may be more mindful of the sources of your food. Get to know where your food is coming from, and if you believe that your food has come from an abusive source, either abusing animals or people, for you to partake in that food is akin to eating your own child.

Minimize the harm of your consumption by being aware of the source, and knowing where food comes from, and knowing what brought that food to you.

Consider that the average product travels 1,500 mi. to get to your plate. And the more ingredients, the more miles it takes. When you become mindful of the source of your food, it's impossible to eat the same way again. If you need to buy products that are not local, consider the weight of the products. Consider it's better for the environment to bring import nuts than it is to bring watermelons because they weigh so much and have such a heavy water content.

Think about your food and where it comes from and minimize the harm.

For some people this might require becoming vegetarian, for others it might mean being vegan and for others it might mean giving up bananas which so often come from Eucador (even the organic bananas, and with little information about organic standards in that place)

I’m not telling you what to do or what to eat, just asking that you consider becoming more mindful of the source of your food and minimize the harm. Mindfulness is a process and we all have a long way to go, so I am not intending to overwhelm anyone. We could all point out practices that are inconsistent with each other. The point is to make some small changes and know that they make a big difference.

Maximize the healing

If you like, consider the first point a “Thou shall not” and this second one a “Thou shall” because it emphasizes the power that we have as consumers.

When I was on vacation last week I read a book by Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Vegetable Miracle, and this book was inspiration to me. I recommend it to absolutely anyone. It’s beautifully written and left me hugely challenged about the way I consume.

Here is a short excerpt, in which Barbara Kingsolver makes the point about the power that we have, and she uses the wonderful metaphor of Noah’s Ark and the animals that arrive on the ark of taste:

You can't save the whales by eating whales. But paradoxically you can help save rare domesticated foods by eating them. They’re kept alive by gardeners who have a taste for them and farmers who know they’re going to sell them. The consumer becomes a link in the conservation chain by seeking out the places where heirloom vegetables are sold, taking them home and whacking them up with knives and learning to incorporate their exceptional taste into personal and family expectations. Many foods placed on the ark of taste have made dramatic recoveries thanks to the seed savers and epicurean desperados who defy the agents of gene control, tasting the forbidden fruits, and planting more.

Isn’t that beautifully written? Barbara Kingsolver has given us power as consumers. If you believe in buying organic, you’re encouraging the whole organic market. If you believe in buying and eating locally produced and seasonal fruit and vegetables, then you're encouraging the that market. You have power to build a market around responsible wholesome healing products.

After reading this book, I have come home with a different sense of what food means for me. I've long been a “food bimbo.” I can tell you that story another time, but let me just catch you up on the very latest in my journey with food. Since reading this book, I've decided to take a complete audit of what goes into my body. Now, I don't do anything in halves, as many of you know, so when I decide to do this, I’m really going to do this.

For the next three weeks, nothing but fruit, vegetables and nuts are going to enter my body, and as much as possible, local and seasonal fruit and vegetables.  And as much as possible, raw fruits and vegetables. But that wasn't enough for me on it’s own, and so I decided that for these three weeks I had to stop watching television.

So for three weeks I'm becoming mindful of everything that I take into my body, whether it's food or  media images. For three weeks my family has become more mindful of what we take into our bodies and where our food comes from.

So I wonder if you might consider joining us on the Sweetwater Market 100 mile food challenge. For one week in September, eat only local food, and then on September 16th after the service on Sunday morning, be part of our local food potluck lunch. Come and celebrate with us the power of choice, the power of choosing what is healthy for us, and the planet.

If every American family ate just one meal per week that was locally produced we would reduce the country’s oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels per week. That’s a small change that makes a huge difference. Just one meal per week.

I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm not here to tell you to become organic or local necessarily. I'm here to encourage you to become mindful. Be mindful of what your sources of food are, and to make decisions and choices about food that grow out of your core values. And not just the messages the media is feeding you about convenience and speed. Be mindful and make choices for health.

The Giant Picnic Rug of Interdependence

Let me finish with one last riddle.

I never have been and ever will be.
I’ve never been seen and never will be seen.
And yet I am the confidence for all to live and breathe on this spinning ball.

What am I?

Tomorrow.

The choices that we make today create the world of tomorrow. The choices we make today will impact our children and our children's children tomorrow.

It’s going to look for us like the giant sheet in Acts 10.  Let’s think of it as a giant picnic rug. On this giant picnic rug is everything that our consciousness could comprehend. The eaters and the eaten, the producers and the farmers, laborers, truck drivers, legislators, retailers, processes, all things together on this giant picnic rug. And there you are as well. There you are knowing that the choices that you make, the food you eat is intimately related to everything else on this giant picnic rug.

The choices you make as you sit on this inter-related web, on this picnic rug, affect tomorrow's children and their children's children.

What a wonderful opportunity we have, moving in the tradition of Peter and universal Christianity, bringing people together. But more than that, bringing all things together in this interrelated web of which are a part.

Acts 10 (NRSV)
Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. 12In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. 13Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” 14But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” 15The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”