Pastor Steve Hammer
This week the satirical website “The Onion” posted a photo of Pope Francis holding a package of Oreos in each hand with the headline, “Pope Francis Reverses Position on Capitalism After Seeing Wide Variety of American Oreos.” It caused me to remember complaining to my mother about the home made cookies in my lunch and wondering why I couldn’t have store bought like the other kids.
In our culture, the word “blessing” almost always means something good, and usually in abundance. That may not be the biblical meaning of the word. The Israelites seemed to have quickly forgotten about slave labor and captivity because it didn’t take long for them to start complaining about the lack of food during the Exodus. Even when they got all the manna they could eat, the complaining went on: fond remembrances of fish and cucumbers and leeks and garlic.
The people complained about their abundance to Moses and Moses passed it on to God. “Why have you treated your servant so badly?” he moaned. “Let me die.” Moses had been reluctant to be in charge in the first place. Perhaps he knew just how whiney people get, even when they are being led to freedom. God responded with sarcasm. They want meat they will get meat, “until it comes out your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you.”
Touring Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood as a first year seminarian in the late 1970’s, I was shocked at the shabby conditions and the widespread poverty. My teacher, Rev. Roberto Navarro told me that God does not always judge with scarcity, sometimes God judges with abundance.
One does wonder sometimes if our abundance is a blessing or a curse or if it has the potential to be both. For his part, the Pope decided not to have lunch with leaders on Capital Hill. Instead he blessed a meal for needy and homeless people at Washington’s Saint Maria Meals. They had brownies for desert, but he was too busy talking with the people to sit down to lunch.
Martin Luther said, “The fewer the words, the better the prayer.” Pope Francis blessed the meal in Washington with only two: “Buon appetito.”