Monday, April 25, 2011

Mini Homily #2: Confession

It may be new for us to think about how our eating implicates us in patterns of injustice. We must eat to live—how can it be wrong?

Eating is never wrong. Food is a grand, delicious gift to be celebrated. The trouble is, we fail to celebrate it. We have forgotten where our food comes from. We have abstracted our bacon from pigs. We have abstracted our corn from fields. We have abstracted our strawberries from the Chilean workers who picked the plump, red fruit with their fingers. We care not about the Chilean worker or his fingers but rather we care about whether or not we’ll have strawberries all year long.

When we become disconnected from our food, we become disconnected from the lives that make our eating possible. We want cheap chicken. We want cheap tomatoes. We get upset when tasting is costly. We come to confess today because tasting is costly, and we have squandered the earth’s resources with our reckless tasting.

In our tasting, we must learn to ask: “whose blood is in this food?” How were the animals treated? How were the workers treated? What is the yearly income of the lady who raises chickens? How is the land being treated? Are we leaving gashes in the earth? Can they be sewn together or are we sowing permanent destruction?

Our insatiable desire for food that is cheap and convenient is tearing holes in God’s Creation. English poet, John Drinkwater, wrote that “when you defile the pleasant streams and the wild bird’s abiding place, you massacre a million dreams and cast your spittle in God’s face.”

Do we stand before God and spit in his face?

We do. For this reason, we must confess.

2 comments:

  1. Dude. I love this. It encapsulates (is that a word?) so many of my own thoughts...

    ReplyDelete