The Rev. Keri T. Aubert Song of Solomon 2:8-13

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Brentwood, California  Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10

August 30, 2009      James 1:17-27

Proper 17, Year B, RCL     Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I recently saw the new film Julie & Julia. In it, actress Meryl Streep portrays cooking icon Julia Child. She does so with an enthusiasm that made me want to run home to my own kitchen and whip up some beef bourguignon. Apparently I was not the only person so affected by the film: Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, first published in 1961, landed on today’s edition of the New York Times best-seller list, at No. 1 in the advice and how-to category.[i] In my favorite scene from the film, Julia and her husband Paul have recently moved to Paris. They’re dining in a restaurant, raving over the food and discussing Julia’s frustrating search for a hobby to occupy her time. Paul asks Julia, “What is it that you really like to do?” Julia replies, “I like to eat!”

I can completely relate. I grew up in south Louisiana, in a family that is predominantly of French heritage. As you might know, it is a culture that is socially centered on food. Most of the women and many of the men in my family are marvelous cooks within that tradition. I grew up eating things like jambalaya and gumbo, foods that can be made with whatever ingredients happen to be available. This was important to a people who often had little. When my father was growing up during the Great Depression, he and his friends would go out to the Mississippi River levee and hunt robins to use for making gumbo. I can’t even imagine that, but both my parents say that robin gumbo is excellent. Because their families were poor, they had to be resourceful, but they still found joy in cooking and sharing good food.

I live in Vermont now and work for an interfaith social service agency called the Joint Urban Ministry Project, or JUMP. JUMP operates a drop-in center where people can get help with things like transportation, medication, utilities, IDs, and food. Last year, over one-third of all the assistance JUMP provided was in the form of food. Clearly, some things haven’t changed since the days of my parents’ childhood: people still need to eat, and there are still some people who don’t have enough food. But other things have changed drastically over that last couple of generations, things such as what we eat and where our food comes from. These shifts may have occurred for very good reasons, but it’s becoming clearer that we can no longer ignore their less desirable results.

This is a subject that has been getting increasing attention in recent months, with the help of writers like Cal Berkeley’s Michael Pollan and the feature film documentary Food, Inc. It’s also the target of this week’s Time magazine cover article, “The Real Cost of Cheap Food.”[ii] According to the article, Americans spend a lower percentage of their incomes on food than ever before.[iii] The problem is that food carries hidden costs that we need to start factoring in. For one thing, cheap food depends on cheap corn, and we have cheap corn because corn crops are heavily subsidized. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re also paying in terms of our health, because cheap corn is used to produce cheap but high-calorie sugary and fatty foods, and so we’re eating more things that are bad for us. Corn is also used on factory farms to feed animals that aren’t meant to eat corn. The animals are sick and crowded, and there is concern that the antibiotics used to keep them healthy will lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.[iv] 

There are also environmental costs. Those highly productive factory farms produce large amounts of manure waste, which smells bad and sometimes overflows into waterways. Chemical fertilizer is used to generate record yields of corn, but runoff from fields in the Midwest ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, where it contributes to a 6,000-sq.-mi. seasonal dead zone “that has almost no oxygen and therefore almost no sea life.”[v] Our eating habits also factor into global climate change, because “our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.”[vi] The question for us might not be whether we can afford to eat better, but rather, whether we can afford not to.

Jesus had some things to say about food. In today’s reading form Mark, Pharisees and scribes question Jesus about why his disciples eat without conducting the required ritual hand washing. Answering their implied criticism, Jesus expands the conversation and, in effect, completely dismisses the dietary laws governing what Jews may eat. The whole conversation centers on the issue of defilement. There are lots of Jewish laws governing defilement. Taken together, they form a sort of rulebook for daily living, with particulars governing every aspect of a person’s life. The point of following all these rules is to avoid defilement, which we might understand as uncleanness or impurity. The problem with defilement is that it results in separation from God. A defiled person is separated from God. It’s an individual’s problem, but it’s not just that: defiled persons defile the community, and if an entire community is defiled, then the entire community is separated from God.

Jesus says that a person is not defiled by what they eat. Instead, a person is defiled by the bad intentions that come from within their own heart. I don’t think that Jesus is eliminating the concept of defilement. Rather, I think he’s eliminating the notion that any ritual rulebook can protect us from it. We can learn something from the list he offers up of things that do cause defilement: they are all individual acts that involve other people; they are harmful actions in community. Jesus seems to be saying that we can avoid separation from God by avoiding fractured relationships with our neighbors.

But I think there’s more. God not only calls us to avoid separation from God; God also calls us to seek intimacy with God. We might call intimacy with God, sanctification. God desires for us to avoid defilement and to seek sanctification. If no ritual rulebook can protect us from defilement, then no set of rote actions will lead us to sanctification. Jesus teaches us that we move from separation from God to intimacy with God by acting with thoughtful love in all our relationships in community. Sanctified persons sanctify the community. You might say that nourishing relationships bring us to holy communion with God and all creation. To put it another way, as we love God, our neighbors, and ourselves, we help realize the continuing unfolding of the Kingdom of God.

I still want to bring this back to food. In today’s reading, I don’t think that Jesus is necessarily saying that food doesn’t matter. It matters because my ethic around eating has the ability to affect me and you and all God’s creation—and it has the ability to affect things either negatively or positively. Our bodies and our environment are becoming literally contaminated by the results of our eating habits. I suspect that this is not the kind of holy communion that God desires for us. It’s a problem not because of some outdated rulebook, but because of the lived, real experience of our brothers and sisters here and in the layers of community that surround us.

Fortunately, we have the ability to do something about it, and fortunately, some people already are doing something about it. The Time article I mentioned earlier profiles a sustainable rancher in Bolinas who is said to grow some of the best-tasting beef in the Bay Area.[vii] Here among the agricultural bounty that surrounds Brentwood, you’re probably already buying lots of locally grown food. In my own community in Vermont, an effort is underway to raise the money necessary to purchase a working farm that will grow food for public schools and provide hands-on farm and food education.

As we consider our own consumption patterns, we might even remember our Islamic brothers and sisters on this, the tenth day of Ramadan, the month of fasting. I don’t mean to suggest that fasting is the solution to the challenge set before us. But whatever we do, we must connect our eating habits with other questions about how we can ethically exist in relationship with God, with other people, and with all God’s creation. Our response must include not only eating well, but also getting good food to those who can least afford it.

Because most of us are busy and few of us are wealthy, this won’t be easy. But then again, maybe it could actually be fun. One sometimes hears it said that we as a culture are addicted to fossil fuels. I suspect that one might similarly say that we as a culture are addicted to poor eating habits. If so, then part of the solution may be to replace old addiction with new passion. This might be where Julia Child fits in. She was truly passionate about food. God calls us to passion in everything we do. You might say that anything worth doing is worth doing passionately. With God’s grace, perhaps we can cultivate or re-cultivate our passion for food—passion for food that’s healthy, food that really tastes great, food that comes from ethical sources, food that is plentiful for all. With God’s grace, these things are not mutually exclusive. In the Song of Songs we hear the expression of human passion—human passion toward another, but also human passion for the abundantly bearing fruit of all creation. As we passionately join in creation’s embrace, we journey together as sanctified people of God.