Hunger

~Matthew 25.37-40 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? . . . .’
“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’"

If we see hunger, the Lord expects us to share.

The problem is that most hunger is hidden from Americans. And when we do see it in the news, it's so far away and outside our experience as to seem unreal. We cannot give from our abundance directly into those reaching hands on the screen. We must give through others, aid agencies with generously paid administrators and overhead costs.

And there are other problems as well. A book called The Crisis Caravan (Linda Polan) documents some of these. In Three Famines: Starvation and Politics Thomas Keneally asserts that it's not lack of food production or availability as much as political instability and logistics which keep food from hungry people. Local armed militia can confiscate the food aid or for a number of complex reasons it may rot in storage, etc.

What does this mean for us?

Drunkenness

~Matthew 24.48-50 But what if the servant is evil and thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk? The master will return unannounced and unexpected, and he will cut the servant to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites.

While the Bible sees wine as a good thing, drunkenness certainly is not.

People enjoy food.

~Matthew 24.37-42 “When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes.
“Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.
“So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming.

People enjoy food--even when judgement is at the door.

The second thing that stands out to me here is how much preparing for food was part of daily life, far much more than today. Today we may spend all day at an office or factory or shop or school then pick up something out of a package for dinner. In those days, the average person spent much more time growing and preparing food. Working in the fields, grinding grain--common scenes. I bet that fresh bread from the newly ground grain was delicious.

Fried chicken?

~Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

When I was a child fried chicken was the classic after-church Sunday dinner. Did Jesus ever sit down to a meal of fried chicken? Who knows? It seems the verses here are the only referrals to chicken/hens in the Bible (more on fowl later). Apparently they were around, so I'm guessing they were eaten.

Mint, Dill, Cumin, and Rue

~Matthew 23.23 "How terrible for you, teachers of the law and Pharisees! You pretenders! You give God a tenth of your spices, like mint, dill and cumin. But you have not practiced the more important things of the law, like fairness, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the last things without failing to do the first.

I wrote about the Luke 11 version of this saying on July 6, but here it is again in Matthew. (Looks like the chronological Bible has chosen the bigger setting for placing this passage.) The point is the same; the herbs are different. For my purpose, that's great. We broaden the picture of what was used during the first century. So add dill and cumin to the list of mint and rue. I love dill and have grown it successfully except that it goes to seed rather quickly. Wikipedia says cumin is "the second most popular spice in the world," behind black pepper. It's the seasoning commonly used in chili powder and its smell makes me think tacos.

PS Generally, I like the New Living Translation, but here I'm disappointed. It just says "herb gardens" in this verse. Give me the details!

The Kingdom of God is a feast!

~Matthew 22.1-14 The Story of the Wedding Dinner

I'm not going to print the parable here, but just note that once again, Jesus is comparing the Kingdom of God to a feast, a banquet, a wedding dinner. Yea!

Tea

Now that cooler weather is here, I enjoy putting a pot of water on the stove for tea. This past weekend Steve and I had a fun group of Chinese grad students over and the subject of tea came up. Did Jesus and the disciples ever share a pot of tea? It would seem not. Neither the New International nor King James concordances have a reference for it and a quick online check confirms no record of tea's appearance in the Middle East until long after the time of Christ.