[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Soup

I have made hot-and-sour soup. It contains chicken broth, tofu, leeks, 
shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, green onions, cornstarch, much ginger 
and garlic, and assorted seasonings that I'm not getting into because I'm 
not a Chinese cook and I know that my hot-and-sour soup is undoubtedly 
unauthentic. On the other hand, it tastes pretty good. I made it yesterday 
and we had it for supper, with fat Japanese noodles, most satisfying.

The notion of "hot-and-sour soup" is nowhere near as appealing as the 
soup's reality. In fact, the idea of "hot-and-sour" as something you'd like 
to eat is really pretty dimwitted. It's something you'd turn away from 
almost reflexively, unless you're the sort of person who regards hot banana 
peppers as a temptation not to be resisted. There should be a better 
descriptor for this concoction, something that gets across the positive, 
the warmth and liveliness of the soup, instead of accentuating the 
hot-and-sourness.

But in fact hot-and-sour soup is just that -- hot and sour. Appropriately 
soup-warm, of course, but also warmed through with chili's heat and 
spiciness and with the bite of vinegar, all balanced by the richness of soy 
sauce. It delights and challenges the mouth, the broth balancing out the 
blandness of tofu and the meatiness of mushrooms.

We struggle with the message of the New Testament, which is every inch a 
hot-and-sour document, full of chili-heat and vinegar-bite. I've been 
spending a lot of time with the New Testament in the last month or so, and 
I find it a strangely discomfortable text; I'm not happy with all the anger 
and reproach, the shouts of "you hypocrites!" and the predictions of 
conflict and disaster. I cast my mind back to my New Testament course, and 
I can see where all this is coming from -- but I desperately want a 
Jesus-message full of love and reassurance and forgiveness. It's not always 
easy to find.

But do I really want my salvation to be served up in little pots of _creme 
caramel_ or individual rice puddings? Not really. Hot-and-sour has a 
grandeur about it, a satisfactory kicking-the-tires feel. The Gospel 
presents one image of goodness and then its opposite, reminding us that we 
need to stay off-balance.  It's not our job to take a simple-minded 
black-and-white approach to salvation; one size does not fit all.  Instead, 
we're to balance one thing after another. In Matthew's Gospel, in one 
chapter salvation is entirely up to God's whim; in the next chapter, it's 
entirely up to our actions. It's not an either-or, it's a both-and. We're 
called to walk the roof-ridge between competing and apparently opposite 
truths, but that roof-ridge is where the exhiliration is, the fresh breeze, 
the authentic edge.  It's in being off-balance, tasting the hot and sour as 
well as the sweet, that we find ourselves saved.

My inauthentic soup needs, too, to be balanced between spice and sharpness, 
richness and tang. I'll toss some more tofu into the mixture tonight, and 
I'll have it for lunch tomorrow when I get home from church.

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I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.