Soup. Soup’s on. Dinner’s ready. Words we’ve all heard before. But are we ready? And what does soup have to do with the Bible?
It’s definitely there in the Old Testament, in the story Bill just read about Jacob and Esau. Esau was the older brother, but only by a few minutes. Esau was a hunter; Jacob a shepherd. When Esau came home hungry, Jacob gave him pottage—lentil stew, probably not as good as the soup I bought here last week- in exchange for his birthright. And later, when his father Isaac was on his deathbed, Jacob conspired with his mother, Rebekah, to secure his father’s blessing.
“The birthright secured to him who possessed it
- superior rank in his family (Genesis 49:3);
- a double portion of the paternal inheritance (Deuteronomy 21:17);
- the priestly office in the family (Numbers 8:17-19); and
- the promise of the Seed in which all nations of the earth were to be blessed (Genesis 22:18).”
according to Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary.
That’s a lot for a cup of soup, although Jacob is the Father of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
When you think of soup, what do you think of? I think grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup on a snowy day, tuna sandwiches with New England clam chowder on a Friday night, chicken noodle (or chicken and stars) with a big box of tissues staying home sick...comfort food. Love. Nourishment.
Last Sunday, I bought soup. Eight containers. I didn’t get any of Kevin’s chowder or Bob’s chili: they were both sold out early. I know, because I snuck out during collection to buy mine. Someone asked me why I didn’t make soup. I do make soup. There are four kinds of soup that I make well. Each has a family story and a lesson.
I got a cookbook as a shower gift, “Bride’s First Recipes.” It has a really great recipe for onion soup...toasted French bread in the bowl, broiled cheese across the top...But onions don’t love me anymore as much as I love them, so I don’t make it these days. And you have to pay attention or the cheese goes up in flames, and it sets off the smoke detector, and it upsets your landlord downstairs...PAY ATTENTION. That’s my first soup lesson. We start service with a Call to Worship, to help us focus. You probably wake up to an alarm clock, answer the phone when it rings, call your children’s names when you want them to do something. All are ways to get our attention, to focus on what’s going on. If you don’t already start your day with prayer, you might consider it. That way you’re starting off focused on what’s important. With me, it’s hit the snooze alarm. Then I have seven minutes where I can set my mind to God. (Or fall back to sleep...)
The second soup that I make is carrot soup. It’s creamy and smooth and does not taste at all like baby food as my son insists. Many years ago, BC-before children- I made carrot soup for my best friends. I was paying attention. I was focused. But somehow, when I put the soup back into the blender one last time, I pureed the o-ring. And I poured the soup back into the pot without realizing. And I served it. Bill commented on how delicious the soup was, and Polly asked what the chewy bits were. Bacon? she thought. No, rubber gasket. And yet they’re still our friends. We laughed about it and went on to the next course. That’s the second lesson: ASK FOR FORGIVENESS. Jacob spent a night wrestling with angels and asked for his brother Esau’s forgiveness, forty years after the death of their father. Forty years in which Jacob had married Leah and her sister Rachel, fathered a dozen boys, and never went back home. And after asking Esau’s forgiveness, Jacob and Esau became friends again. Confess the error of your ways, ask for forgiveness, and God will always grant it. And He probably won’t bring up your transgressions in front of your children.
The third soup I make is gazpacho. I love gazpacho, although no one else at my house will eat it. It’s a Spanish vegetable soup, and I had it for the first time in Sevilla, when I did a semester abroad back in college. It’s a summer soup, because you need fresh vegetables at the peak of ripeness. It’s vegetarian and tomato-based. When your tomato plants just won’t quit producing, it’s time to make gazpacho. So is my third lesson “to everything there is a season?” It could be, and that is why I didn’t make gazpacho for the soup sale. But here’s the thing about gazpacho: it’s a cold soup. When you’re done making it, you put it into the refrigerator so the flavors can meld. So my third lesson is TRUST. Really, cold soup is good. Really, God’s plan for you is good, even if you don’t understand it. You don’t know what God has in store for you. Your plans are not necessarily His plans. You prepare yourself the best you can, do what you think He wants you to do, but accept that His will will be done. When Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly, he knew what was come. When he sat with his friends at the Last Supper, he knew it was the Last Supper. When he prayed at the Mount of Olives,“Not my will, but thy will be done” he was accepting God’s plan. We must strive to do the same.
My last soup, the one I make every Spring, is matzoh ball soup. My dad’s side of the family is Jewish. I used to be Rebecca Gold of Merrick, and my Grandma Hannah, may she rest in peace, taught me how to make the soup for the Passover Seder. Fourth soup lesson: LEARN FROM YOUR ELDERS. Don’t assume you know everything, because you don’t. Only God does. When Grandma Hannah had to make her first Seder, she, of course, made matzoh ball soup. I don’t know if you’ve ever had good matzoh ball soup. The Rocky Point Diner does it up nicely, although my husband says mine is better. It’s a chicken soup with chunks of carrots and celery and matzoh balls about this big, about the size of a golf ball. You make them with matzoh meal, water, egg, and a little fat. You let it rest. Then you roll the balls in your hands and drop them in the soup to cook. As I said, they’re about this big. And that’s how big my grandma made them. Why she didn’t learn about matzoh balls from her mother Rachel or her mother-in-law Rebekah I don’t know. What she didn’t know is that they expand. You’re supposed to make them this big, like little marbles. As they cook, they get bigger. Grandma’s matzoh balls pushed the lid off the pot and ended up like tough tennis balls littering the floor. We tell this story every year at Passover. It is part of our family tradition.
MIPC has traditions, too. Some are particular to our church, like Blunt Scissor Sunday, but some are part of the Christian tradition. The Bible verses I read before are part of our Communion service. In the next few verses, Jesus acknowledges that one among them will betray him, and he identifies him as “someone who has dipped his bread with us tonight” This is soup in the New Testament. The Last Supper was a Passover Seder. That bread was undoubtedly unleavened, and it was being dipped into matzoh ball soup.
We share Communion every month, and we are collecting cans of soup not just to outdo the other churches in a challenge, but to share with those less fortunate. We need to be on the lookout for ways to share what we have with others, whether it be something tangible, like a can of soup, or something intangible, like a word of comfort or a prayer. And we need to listen for God’s voice, calling us to His service, not just in church, but in our everyday lives.