February 2012

I like to collect cookbooks because I like to cook, and a number of years ago I got one called The Daily Soup Cookbook.  Daily Soup was a group of hole-in-the wall places inNew York City that served an amazing array of different soups every day of the week.  There was no place to sit in these establishments.  They only did takeout.  I ordered the book, partly because I love soup and partly because this soup chain is reported to be the impetus for the famous Seinfeld episode about the soup Nazi.  I’ve used the book a lot, but never so much as since the Episcopal Church Women began to sponsor a yearly soup sale at the end of January a few years ago.  That’s on Sunday, January 29 this year, in case you’re wondering.

I do love soup.  I love the way the simplest ingredients combined and simmered together create something much more wonderful and different than any of the ingredients by itself.  Soup is the perfume of winter, slowly filling the house with aromas that both comfort and entice.  I love the way something as simple as tablespoon of vermouth or brandy or lemon juice or the addition of some counterintuitive spice or herb can spark the taste buds and make us wonder, what am I tasting that I can almost identify…but not quite.  Fennel is one of those kinds of ingredients, in case you’re wondering.

I love soup for much the same reasons I love congregational life, specifically the life in this particular community of faith.  I love the way we come together week after week.  I love it that we are young and old and everywhere in between, male and female, shy and gregarious.  At this time of year I especially love the way we come in out of the cold and warm ourselves, our collected bodies literally boosting the warmth of the gas-guzzling furnace down in the basement.  I love the way our individual quirks and foibles simmer around us as we agree or disagree, comfort or confront, bore or amaze each other in whatever configuration we find ourselves on a given Sunday.  I love how the laughter and pathos, hurts and hopes, victories and defeats of our lives gradually meld into the savory taste of celebration and healing because we’re safe here and free to talk openly about what matters most with those around us.  I love most of all that we can, on occasion, be as imperious and unrelenting as the soup Nazi on the old Seinfeld episode and be forgiven because in this soup we’ve learned there’s always more to the ingredients than meets the eye or assaults the ear at any given moment.

This Advent soup is a rich and nutritious broth filled with delightfully different tastes of you and me.  This Advent soup is spiced by a not so secret but essential ingredient, the love and forgiveness and humor of God who’s always stirring the pot to see what he can cook up next.  This Advent soup is never quite finished; it’s always a little bland, the aroma not as tangy when you are not in the mix.

RPM