Mutiny in the Pantry

July 20, 2010

Dear St. Paul’s Family,

As many of you know, my brother Mykel and his family have been visiting with us from Florida for the past several days. On Friday night, I put on my chef’s hat and prepared dinner for the whole gang: fresh Iowa pork tenderloin, grilled with an apricot citrus and rosemary glaze. I was basically making up the recipe as I went along. As I went out to our garden and clipped out a few sprigs of rosemary, I thought about an excerpt from a sermon I preached a few years ago. It made me chuckle enough to dig it out and re-read later, and I decided to offer it as part of today’s mid-week message.
In case you missed it before, here it is again. It comes with due acknowledgment (and, if need be, apology) to noted author Max Lucado, whose chapter “Light….in the Storage Closet?” from the bestselling book No Wonder They Called Him Savior was the inspiration behind this little fictitious vignette.
Then again, maybe it’s not so fictitious after all….



One evening I was preparing an elaborate dinner for a gathering of significant people, and I was feeling the pressure. This needed to be more than a good meal. I wanted it to leave an impression, and it needed to be magnificent. After hours of work, sounds of culinary progress filled the kitchen. Pots bubbled with boiling broth, pans sizzled with searing juices, and the faucet gurgled over choicely picked vegetables. For a moment, I turned my attention to the star of the show: the sauce. It needed to tie together the whole meal, synchronizing an entire ensemble of flavors. It would be the very mortar of this masterpiece meal.
Nervously, I took a taste. Hmm…needs some work. Not bad, but not perfect, either. I pondered some additional spices.
“Hmm,” I thought to myself. “Let’s try a little nutmeg.”
I reached into the cabinet and pulled a jar marked “Nutmeg” from the spice rack. I unscrewed the lid, and brought it over to the stove.
“Hey, put me down!”
I thought I heard a voice.
“Put me down, I said!”
Was I going crazy? I looked behind me. Nobody. I looked through the kitchen door in the dining room. Nobody there either. I rubbed my ears, shook my head, and went back to the stove.
“Don’t do it, please!”
I looked in my hand at the nutmeg. And there, in the jar, was a face looking back at me. Not just a picture of a face. But an actual moving, living, organic set of eyes, ears and lips. This jar was alive!
I had clearly been cooking too long. “Excuse me?” I said to the nutmeg. Are you talking to me?
“Who else would I be talking to? Emeril Lagasse?” Oh, great, I thought. Not just talking nutmeg. But nutmeg with an attitude.
“Look,” I said finally. “I’ve got some important work to do here. There are these people coming, and they are hungry and want a satisfying meal, and if I could just use some nutmeg, everything will be fine.”
“I don’t think so,” said the nutmeg. “You see, I’m getting out of the spice business.”
“What?”
“Not worth the sacrifice. All day long people like you are unscrewing my lid, pouring out my contents. Meal after meal. You know, this whole spice thing is just costing me too much. All I wanted when I became a spice was to have a nice spice rack to raise my children. Maybe be part of a nice Christmas dinner or an Easter brunch. You know. The big meals. But I never expected to be asked to give up so much. And for what? What kind of difference is this making?”
“I see your point, I guess. But isn’t spreading good flavor the very reason you exist?”
“Maybe to you. But the recipes lately have just gotten to be too intrusive.”
I determined that this conversation was going nowhere. Clearly this nutmeg was a little short on the meg and heavy on the nuts. So, I put it down.
Next, I tried the rosemary. I unscrewed the lid and began to sprinkle some into the pot, when I heard another voice.
“No, please, no!”
It was a female voice. I looked at the jar. Again, another face. This time, it looked scared.
“Let me guess, “ I said. You don’t want to be used either?
“Please don’t be too hard on me. I just don’t think I’m ready yet.”
“Not ready yet?”
“No, you see, I’ve only been a spice for a very short amount of time. I only became a spice last year, while attending a cooking service. Very touching. I can still remember the chef’s recipe title: “Jesus is Cumen Soon, So You Don’t Have Much Thyme”.
“That’s very nice,” I offered drolly.
“Anyway, I’ve only been a spice for a few months. You might call me just a Spice, uh, Girl.”
“I’d prefer not, Rosemary.”
“So, I just want a little more time to grow in my flavor. I’m just not ready to be spread out for other people’s meals just yet. Check back with me after I’ve cured long enough.”
I put down the rosemary. This was getting to be outrageous. Two spices, two rejections. I looked at my watch. Thirty minutes before the guests arrived. I was running out of time. They were going to be hungry, and some of them were going to be tired. I thought fast.
No nutmeg. No rosemary. Let’s try the paprika.
I knew better this time. Before unscrewing the lid, I looked at the jar first. Again, there was a face looking back at me.
“Don’t even think about it,” the jar said.
At this point I couldn’t stand it. Here I was, in a veritable pressure cooker, having a conversation with a jar of paprika. This one had a nice bushy beard and a set of bifocal glasses. He even had a cute little bowtie and spoke with a heavy Austrian accent.
“And why, pray tell, Mr. Paprika, do you not wish to be sprinkled?”
“I am still in training. I am just a weak flabby spice right now, and I am trying to pump up my intellectual muscles.”
“Of course you are.”
“Right now I am reading everything I can about being a spice. I have read Chef Osteen’s Your Best Lunch Now, Chef Warren’s The Pompous-Driven Spice, and I am currently working through DBS.
“DBS?”
“Yes. Dinner By Seven.”
“Hmm. Sounds like you’re plenty ready to be used in the dish. C’mon, I’m getting desperate here. Put the book down and let’s go.”
“No. I don’t think so. There’s much more for me to read. Many questions I’ve got to figure out first. Too many doubts. Once I figure it all out, you can use me then.”
This was getting to be unbelievable. I put the paprika down and looked at all the jars in my spice rack. In unison, they all looked at me and said,
“WE’RE NOT GOING EITHER!!!”
This was Mutiny in the Pantry. A whole rack of perfectly usable, flavorful spices, none of which were willing to be used to spread good flavor for my guests. What was I going to do?
Then I remembered. The salt! I kept that in a separate container from the other spices. If there was anything that could help me out in a pinch, it was a pinch of salt. The world’s most essential flavor enhancer. The stuff of earth. A material of timeless value, used across the cultures as currency, preservative, and seasoning. Oh, salt! Glorious salt! Please don't fail me now!
I reached across the counter and picked up the saltshaker and looked at it.
“Hello,” the salt said to me, with a friendly voice.
“Hello, there. Do you mind if I use you for my guests?”
“No, not at all. But I’m not sure you’d want to.”
Well, I thought, at least this one was willing to be used. I could get past whatever its excuse was. “Why? What’s wrong with you?”
“Well, as it turns out, I’m not really salty anymore.”
“Let me get this straight. You are a saltshaker, full of salt, yet your salt doesn’t taste very salty?”
“That about sums it up, yeah!”
“WELL THEN WHAT GOOD ARE YOU?!?!”
“Oh, lots of uses. During the winter you could sprinkle me on the sidewalks and melt the ice. You could walk on me to keep your feet from slipping.”
“DO YOU REALIZE IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER?!?!”
“Oh, right. Well then, I guess I don’t have much use to you. Have you tried the spices in the spice rack?”
That was it. I was out of my mind. I put down the saltshaker, having wasted these last precious moments trying to convince a whole shelf of spices that they were valuable, useful, and vital. But they each turned me down.
Just then, the doorbell rang. It was the first of my guests.
I slunked my shoulders. I looked down on the counter. It was the recipe book I had been using to cook all the meals. As I read through the recipes, I noticed something I had never seen before. For each recipe, on the list of ingredients, all of the spices were crossed out. A black line through the black pepper. An “X” through the basil. A line through the lemongrass. Each spice marked out on every recipe.
I closed the book. I looked at the cover. It was a church cookbook.
“Jessica?” I called out to my wife. “Where did we get this recipe book?”
“Same place we got all the spices in the kitchen,” she said. “Remember the old dying church across the street that closed down last week?” One of their members gave them to us.
Hmm. What a shame. So much potential. So much need.


Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”


Stay Salty,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA 51012
Ph: 712-225-3955
http://www.cherokeespumc.org



WORSHIP THIS SUNDAY
We continue our sermon series “God’s Double Agents” with a powerful story of Naaman, a general who needed to be cured of leprosy by Elisha. It’s a sermon titled “The Case of the Incurable Commander” and has a lot to teach us about healing and humility.