An EasyBake Ovenless Life

You know you’ve had a privileged childhood when you’re biggest beef with your parents is that you never

got that EasyBake Oven you drooled over as a girl.

That’s right – an EasyBake Oven.

Even now when I see the modern equivalent, I find I am jealous, feeling somehow bereft, that I never had the chance as a girl child to cook real, albeit tiny, cakes to the heat of a light bulb.

How does that work, anyway?

And the really silly thing about this (well, several silly things, actually)?

1. I learned to cook from the women of my family on real stoves – way better any day than EasyBake.

2. If I really, really, really want an EasyBake Oven, I could certainly get one for myself now (of course, that wouldn’t be the same, but still).

3. The cakes were crap.  We all know it.  No matter how cool the pictures were on television, when all was said and done, what you were left with was really not much.

4. None of my friends (that I can remember) ever had an EasyBake Oven.  So wherever the source of my childhood obsession resides, it isn’t in jealousy.  What is it?  I truly don’t know.  The fact is, I just hate to admit that 50+ years later, I can still be swayed into a morass of emotions just by seeing a picture of, of all things, an EasyBake Oven (sigh).  And I hate even more the very real possibility that it’s as simple as the power of advertising having planted this ridiculous desire in my heart.

What is an EasyBake Ovenless girl to do?

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NOTE:  After another post on our church's FB page about our upcoming Sunday's Chocolate Communion service, I went to the FB page of Baraka Presbyterian Church (in Bethlehem) because they had 'liked' the Chocolate Communion post.  And what did I see?  In far away Bethlehem, where there is so much suffering, violence and trauma, the children in the nursery at the church there enjoy -- yes -- their very own EasyBake (well, maybe not the same brand) Oven.  What a blessing!  Thank you, Lord, that these children have space in which to laugh and play, live and love, worship and praise.  Amen.

The Envy of the Dead

When I was fifteen, my Grandmother on my mother’s side died.  Grandmother and I were separated by great distance most of the time, so I did not know her as well as my other grandmother.  But I can remember being outraged on her behalf with the sense of propriety that only an adolescent can muster against the lesser-ness of her elders, in the face of the laughter and loud and even boisterous chatter of those visiting the family at the funeral home.  There was even cigar smoke, for God’s sake.  Who were these people and how dare they ignore the reality of my grandmother’s body lying right in front of them?  It was an insufferable affront.

My memories of that time remind me of Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in which, as I recall it, Ivan Ilyich grows increasingly resentful over the seeming lack of care from his family about the very clear reality that he is dying.

I wonder, though, were they truly uncaring or were they simply doing what the living do: living?

As I sit with others in caring for my dear and dying friend Stu, it is clear that Stu does not resent that our lives continue without him.  He regrets it; he is sad for what he will miss.  But he does not begrudge the living their lives, their continuity.

Should I suffer like Stu and Ivan Ilyich, should I have the slow rather than quick kind of meeting with death and dying, will I begrudge the living?  Or will I rejoice in their largess even as I regret its loss in my own journey?

Will I hate the laughter surrounding my body as the living discuss the cares of the living; will I resent it even then?

I hope that my corpse will be filled with grace rather than resentment, acceptance and love rather than envy.

That would be a good death, I think.

So Much Better than Fair

[Sermon excerpt on Matthew 20.1-16, the parable of the day laborers all paid the same no matter how long they worked]

A day laborer is someone who works one day at a time, with no guarantee of a job or work from day-to-day.

When the trucks come, I imagine it’s a very desperate kind of beauty-pageant atmosphere . . . Standing straight and tall, trying to look bigger, stronger, tougher, more able, than you really are, hoping and praying . . . pick me, pick me, please, oh please, oh please, pick me!

Real people . . . tens of thousands, if not millions, live this life every day. It’s hard. It’s desperate. It’s ugly. And it’s very competitive. . . literally, if you are picked it means that I am not. If your family eats tonight, mine will not.

How very sad Jesus must have been when he saw that his own followers, after all they had seen, after all they had been through together, still imagined the Kingdom of Heaven as an agribusiness and still saw themselves as competing against others to get in.

But . . . Jesus is not chastising the disciples for being jealous . . . he is pleading with them to understand. . . the Kingdom of Heaven . . . God . . . is the landowner who pays more not less . . . the landowner who seeks more workers, not less . . . who ‘upsizes’ rather than downsizes . . . who fills rather than empties . . . who brings all to the table . . .

We are all but day laborers in the Kingdom of God. . . but we are day laborers invited to a party . . .

When it’s a party, we aren’t sorry that some come late . . . we’re just glad they could make it . . . glad to see them . . . enjoying the good fun with everyone else . . .

But when it’s ‘work’, suddenly we’re all certified accountants, counting, measuring, making sure it’s all ‘fair’ . . . to us . . .

How could the first workers have missed that the last workers were the ones no one wanted? That they were not ‘hired’ because they were deemed somehow ‘not good enough’? That unless the owner of the fields went and found them, they would have had no work at all?

Expectations are the problem - they know what they’re getting, but suddenly, it isn’t ‘enough’. Is it that they want themselves to get more or their compatriots to get less? Either, I suspect, would do, so long as it was ‘fair’.

But would they, would we, really argue to take money away from the poor day laborers at the end? Would we really urge the landowner to give them so little that they couldn’t feed themselves, let alone their families, just so it would be fair?

What do you suppose the landowner God in Jesus’ parable would have to say about that? I’m guessing that God would say “come on in” to everyone, no matter how late they got to the party.

But, but, but, we sputter . . .it wouldn’t be fair for me to devote my life to Christ and have someone who never even gave Christ a thought to inhabit the same cloud as me, now would it?

How can that be?

Where is my better cloud?

Fair requires hell. . . on earth as in heaven . . .

Fair requires hell.

But the question is, does God?

Here’s the thing . . . what God offers . . . what God provides . . . is so much better than fair . . . for you . . . for me . . . for us all . . .