Making Stone Soup

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40

1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

Once upon a time, three weary travelers came to the edge of a town. Their feet were blistered. Their mouths were dry and their bellies were aching with hunger. Now the people who lived in this town were by no means rich and what little food they had, they always kept for themselves – hiding it even from their friends and relations. When they saw the travelers, they said to each other, “Look! Hungry strangers! We know what they want! Quick! Let’s hide all the food and pretend we have nothing!” And that’s exactly what they did.

The travelers devised a plan. The first traveller spoke in a big, booming voice so that the nearby townspeople were sure to hear. “How terribly sad that the poor people in this town have no food,” he said. “But never mind. We three shall go to the town-square and there, as night falls, we shall make a pot of our DELICIOUS AND NUTRITIOUS STONE SOUP!” When they heard this, the townspeople were extremely curious. They’d never heard of stone soup and wondered how it was made and what it tasted like. “Follow us,” said the second. “And bring a big empty pot with you and some firewood too,” said the third. So they did.

Arriving in the town-square, one of the travellers made a fire, another filled the empty pot with water and the third placed it over the fire to boil. “And now,” said the first, “for the special ingredients.” With a grand and dramatic flourish so that everyone could see, he reached into a leather satchel, took out three smooth round stones and plopped them into the pot of water. “Soon we shall feast!” he exclaimed, stirring the pot with a big wooden spoon.

After the pot of water had been boiling for some time, the travellers began to sniff the air and lick their lips. “And now,” said the first, “I will taste it!“ As the traveller lifted a spoonful of bubbling water to his mouth, the crowd craned forward to hear his verdict. “It is completely ... delicious!” he announced. “Though some people might say that it needs a little salt and pepper, but apart from that it is practically perfect.”

No sooner had he said this, than the townspeople sent their children hurrying home to fetch salt and pepper, which the clever travellers added to the pot.

After a while, the second traveller tasted the soup. “Mmm!” he said, rubbing his belly and moaning with appreciation. “These extraordinary stones do indeed make an excellent soup! Although ... perhaps just a few carrots would make it even more delicious.”

Just then, an old woman in the crowd called out, “Now that I think of it, I believe I may have a carrot or two in the house!” And straightaway, she scurried home and back she hobbled carrying a whole sack full of sweet crunchy carrots, which the travellers quickly sliced and added to the pot.

“I suppose a perfect stone soup should also have some onions and perhaps even some cabbage too,” said the third traveller. “But what’s the point of dreaming about ingredients that we simply haven’t got?” But as soon as these items were mentioned, the villagers would go home to procure them from their larders. And so it went until there was a wonderful, nourishing soup to be enjoyed by all.

For a full version of the story, please see Stone Soup, A Story for World Food Day.

This folk tale illustrates what gleaning can look like. By each contributing some, there is enough for all. Granted, the travelers did trick the villagers but the villagers contributed of their own accord because they believed that the end result would be something great. But it would not have been if they had not gone out to speak further with the strangers in their midst.

The stones in the story were the base for the soup, the villagers building upon that base. Likewise, our foundation is Jesus Christ, which Paul reminds us in today’s reading from Corinthians. Now, we must carefully build upon it – as disciples and as church. For we are the Body of Christ – many parts but one body and God’s temple. And, as Paul also reminds us today, “God’s Spirit dwells in us.”

This should matter to us. This should change us and transform us into being perfect as our “heavenly Father is perfect.” The perfection of which Paul speaks here is not an ethical or moral perfection; but, rather, it is a perfection in the Hebrew sense of “wholeness.” That’s what we are striving for in this journey with Jesus.

And since we are striving for wholeness in God, our lives as disciples will show it. Our love will not be vengeful retaliation or hurtful rhetoric or me-first, self-seeking, and self-serving legalism. Instead, God invites us to a love that extends even to our enemies, even to the stranger, the refugee, and the migrant whose long sojourns might end in our midst.

So the question for us today is: Do we bear the imprint of the Spirit of God? Ae we God’s temple – God’s dwelling place? How are we building on the sure foundation of Jesus Christ our Lord?

I think that the Sermon on the Mount, the section we read today and the rest that came before its, demonstrates well how we might build on the foundation. I would mention three today.

RADICAL HOSPITALITY

First, Jesus invites us to radical hospitality.

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you … For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:44, 46-47)

Tax collectors were despised in first century Palestine for being unpatriotic and for collaborating with the despised Rome. Gentiles were unbelievers, foreigners who were unclean. To be compared to either was an insult.

Jesus is here inviting the disciples to go high, to form a higher standard of love. Jesus invites us to a discipleship that embraces the other. When you go home today, think of the “Otheryou’re your life – the one you hold with contempt or fear or disgrace. How do you see them? Can you see them as God sees them: as a child of God, precious and holy.

In his book, “Whistling in the Dark,” Frederick Buechner offers an insight in how we do this:

“Jesus says we are to love our enemies and pray for them, meaning love not in an emotional sense but in the sense of willing their good, which is the sense in which we love ourselves. It is a tall order even so. African Americans love white supremacists? The longtime employee who is laid off just before he qualifies for retirement with a pension love the people who call him in to break the news? The mother of the molested child love the molester? But when you see as clearly as that who your enemies are, at least you see your enemies clearly too."

You see the lines in their faces and the way they walk when they're tired. You see who their husbands and wives are, maybe. You see where they're vulnerable. You see where they're scared. Seeing what is hateful about them, you may catch a glimpse also of where the hatefulness comes from. Seeing the hurt they cause you, you may see also the hurt they cause themselves. You're still light-years away from loving them, to be sure, but at least you see how they are human even as you are human, and that is at least a step in the right direction. It's possible that you may even get to where you can pray for them a little, if only that God forgive them because you yourself can't, but any prayer for them at all is a major breakthrough.

In the long run, it may be easier to love the ones we look in the eye and hate, the enemies, than the ones whom — because we're as afraid of ourselves as we are of them — we choose not to look at, at all.”

RADICAL RECONCILIATION

Immaculée Ilibagiza is a living example of faith put into action. Immaculée's life was transformed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide where she and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local parsonage. Immaculée entered the bathroom a vibrant, 115-pound university student with a loving family. She emerged weighing 65 pounds to find her most of her family had been brutally murdered.

Immaculée credits her salvage mostly to prayer and to a set of rosary beads given to her by her devout Catholic father prior to going into hiding. Anger and resentment about her situation were literally eating her alive and destroying her faith, but rather than succumbing to the rage that she felt, Immaculée instead turned to prayer. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the negativity that was building up inside her. Immaculée found solace and peace in prayer and began to pray from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to the time she closed her eyes at night. Through prayer, she eventually found it possible, and in fact imperative, to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers.

Immaculée's strength in her faith empowered her to stare down a man armed with a machete threatening to kill her during her escape. She also later came face to face with the killer of her mother and her brother and said the unthinkable, "I forgive you."

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

RADICAL SOLIDARITY

As Jesus toured around from town to town, he embodied God’s call to come together. He reminded the people that holiness is not about achieving a standard of perfection but about all kinds of people embracing a perfect, unified love.

The meek, the hungry, the poor and oppressed—Jesus calls them “blessed.” H e even calls on them to love their enemies. He practices what he preaches.

Dorothy Day lived the same way. Abused and beaten herself, she walked with women whom were themselves abused and beaten. She walked with soldiers, protesting against war. She lived with the poor and the huddled masses in Brooklyn. She was a paragon Christian activity in the world.

Dorothy Day once wrote,

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” (“Love is the Measure,” The Catholic Worker, June 1946, 2, http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/articles/425.html)

We speak the truth that God loves all people, that God makes the sun rise and the rain fall on the evil and the good, on the righteous and the unrighteous. We are Christ’s followers invited to create systems and communities where all are treated even as God treats all.

What is it like to know that you are loved by God with such utter completeness?

Is it life changing? Hopefully, at least, it reminds us that we are all part of something greater. Maybe it will show us what it means to be God’s dwelling place in the world, with hearts changed and actions of love flowing for one another that will make the soup what it is: a delicious dish that all people will want to gather around and be a part of.