Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Café
Diner, late night, 7th Avenue and West 11th Street. Think of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” a quiet rainy evening on gradually abandoned moonless streets, endless wide window looking into what counts as home for some of the folks who spend their evenings in there, a well-tended bar with a bartender who loves his work, loves his place, loves the people who don’t want to go home. And after the wine comes the coffee.
The Chef, a great creator, cooks up your life,
a whole gorgeous person,
with all your gifts and faults,
your wounds and beauty,
skills and resources,
with the Chef’s distinct taste
in every savory bite,
and the Chef puts the steaming plate of your life
on the counter and says, “Order up!”
Now, do you take it off into the corner
and eat it all yourself,
or do you serve it, all of your life,
to the hungry world that awaits? – Steve Garnaas-Holmes
The metaphor doesn’t whet my appetite, although I am munching on Cheetos and a couple salted caramels and looking forward to dinner. It doesn’t remind me of the magical imagination feast Tinker Bell set before Peter Pan in the presence of his enemies. But even so, it sings inside my soul: God’s “distinctive taste in every savory bite.”
Every bite of me.
The chef’s kitchen is full of sweet scents and smells. Surrounded by the sounds of a master chef at work, this invitation into heaven’s harmony is easy to accept on this twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Let this meal of me be for gladness, and be given away.
The Lord was pleased to crush him in his infirmity. Because of his affliction he shall see the light; through his suffering he shall justify many and bear their guilt.
For his famous painting, the original “nighthawk” himself posed for both men with faces while looking into a mirror. His wife Jo posed as the girl. Painter Edward Hopper worked on the painting for six weeks, then a month later sold his painting “Nighthawks” for $3000 to the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s been there ever since, and we have taken our turn sitting in front of it countless times. Such a bargain, such a joy.
Lord, grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left …
Ah, boys. Can you drink the cup that I will drink?
Hopper’s moody paintings set the stage for film noir, black and white movies made in the 1940’s and 1950’s with low-key lighting and dark plots that supplanted hope with cynicism or despair. But Hopper himself, emphasizing solitude, light and shadow in his work, was simply interested in the quiet, introspective moments of everyday life. He drank the humble cup he was given as a New England Baptist boy, and it served him well as time went by.
Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
(Isaiah 53, Psalm 33, Hebrews 4, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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