John 17, 7-9; Acts 1: 15-18

Let it sink in

Last week I quoted to you from the writer Arundhati Roy where she in her novel the “God of Small Things”(p. 33) writes…Christianity seeped into (note: her home region in India) Kerala like tea from a tea bag. “  Although last week’s topic was totally different, I wanted to pick up that thought that was really a small footnote last week and turn it into a main theme.  That main theme is “sinking in” or fermentation.   In today’s text in John, Jesus prays and communicates to God that His followers have been true, that they get what Jesus is about, that they understand the word which has been given to them.  In Acts 17 Peter talks to the disciples about Judas, the disciple who has betrayed Jesus and they come to a kind of understanding about Judas.  Judas had been the unfinished business, the sore spot, the wound of their community.  His act had traumatized them psychologically as of course it had traumatized Jesus in a physical way.  But it as if Peter wants to lay the issue to rest and move on to the “acts” of the apostles, begin a new.  They have had time to reflect and think, to let it sink and soak in.  In both these texts we see a kind of spiritual fermentation, a slow coming to terms with a spiritual concept and as its truth becomes revealed to them over time, they see something new.

Theresa Cho, a Presbyterian pastor in San Francisco writes about Kimchi in a Bible study: “In the fermentation process, it takes up to three days to notice any change. In the Korean church where I grew up, my mom and the other church ladies would make kimchi, gathering around huge bins of napa cabbage and salting each leaf to jumpstart the process. This was also a time for them to share news, stories and prayers. Often you would find them either laughing so hard or weeping so deeply that I’m convinced some of their salty tears made it into the kimchi. …Kimchi in the early stages of fermentation resembles a crunchy, refreshing, spicy salad.  As it continues to ferment the smell becomes more pungent, the taste more sour, and the ingredients more amalgamated. At a certain point the kimchi becomes so sour or old that it even has been described as smelling like death.”(Christian Century, p. 20, May 13, 2015) But, as Theresa Cho says, this is when kimchi is at its best.

Friends, when it comes to life of faith and its meaning, we deal with ingredients that are often not attractive or strange or useless to us, so no wonder that people reject it.  It is not easy to go from hamburger to kimchi and it is just as hard to go from what we talk about on the internet to the Bible.  To us the Bible is just raw napa cabbage.   People rather get French fries.   The issue is do we take the time to let it ferment, to let it sink into our being, to let in drip into our bone marrow, so that we get the rich taste and meaning.   We toss it out right away as alien and strange and perplexing, then it’s like letting the cabbage rot and throwing it out until it becomes the kimchi  that will give taste and meaning to the meal?

Brian Doyle, a Roman Catholic thinker, writes about his two quiet uncles, the ones he took for granted, who would sit on chairs in the living room at family get-togethers and just listen. They would never talk about themselves.  It wasn’t until they were gone that Doyle realizes how lucky he has been to know them.  One of them had been a good student and saved his boyhood money for college and lost it all in one day in a market crash. The other had been in the army. One was a telephone lineman and the other in the insurance trade.  They were amusing and pleasant people. They didn’t need to be the center of attention or be in control of the situation, they were always “of the main stage.”  Doyle regrets asking them what they thought, …”deep in their soul; what they wished to be, and never became; the shape and yearning of their love, the seasons they loved best, the music they hummed when they were alone…which small habit of their wives drove them mad; which household tasks they hated most, which books they loves best; which gods they imagined when they prayed, what fates they hoped for….-and things I will never know, unless….(Christian Century, may 13, 2015, p. 13). Doyle reminds us there is so much to learn from the people around us, so many simple and not-so-simple spiritual lessons they can teach us.

Dear friends, we are creatures who are set in our ways.  We don’t change easily.  How often will be fail to learn the lessons of life and give in to our muscle memory, fall back into our old habits? How often will we make the same mistakes over and over again?   In our internet culture nothing seems to sink in anymore. How often will be fail to listen and rush by without letting the lessons God is teaching us sink in and ferment?   May we pay attention.  May we allow the words and the Holy Spirit to work as we prepare for Pentecost.   May God give us wisdom.