Sermon: Mirepoix (Take Two)

Lectionary: Trinity Sunday (B)
Text: Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

Introduction

The sermon on bread pudding I gave here about seven years ago has clearly left an impression. Even if you don’t recall anything about the content of the sermon, most of you appreciate the bread pudding.

Eight years ago, Elise and I spent a week or so in New Orleans. About a month later, I preached a sermon at the Lutheran Church which prominently featured the topic of mirepoix.

Some of you may have heard the term before and might know what it means. The rest of you are going, “Now what is that?”

During our week in NOLA, we spent half of one of the days at the New Orleans School of Cooking, where Chef Kevin Belton demonstrated several recipes, including the bread pudding that many of you have enjoyed quite regularly over the past several years. Going over to the side of main dishes, he explained that the flavoring for Creole dishes comes from a combination of three key ingredients: two parts onion, one part green bell peppers, and one part celery.

At the end of the cooking demonstration, we were all given a lunch based on what he had cooked up. We were also given copies of all the recipes. In addition, at the market adjoining, there was a cookbook which he had recently authored and I purchased a copy which I had signed.

The “Holy Trinity”

During the class Kevin explained the history and significance of the three ingredients. The front part of his cookbook also dedicates a number of paragraphs to the topic. (You didn’t realize when you came to church this morning that you would be listening to an extended talk on Creole cuisine this morning, did you!? If I could deliver this sermon in any way I wanted, I would have chosen a demonstration kitchen so someone could cook while you listen so you could get all the sensory stimulations.)

Here I quote some relevant portions from that section:

When you are looking for the main flavor in New Orleans cooking, you won’t find it in a shaker, a container, a bottle or a box. The flavor is actually from the moisture that comes from cooking with onions, celery, and green bell pepper.

Classical French cooking relies on the use of a mire poix which is two parts onion, one part celery, and one part carrot. The problem was there were no carrots in south Louisiana 300 years ago. What we had here in New Orleans were plenty of bell peppers.

So the onions, celery, and bell peppers became the New World mire poix ingredient combination that is the foundation of most of New Orleans signature dishes… The industrious settlers and cooks in Louisiana incorporated the bell pepper out of necessity and created a unique flavor profile that is recognized as the only non-native American indigenous cuisine in the United States—Creole cooking…

Being a predominantly Catholic settlement, whether under French rule or Spanish, it is interesting to note that the same religion, Catholicism, guided the city for so many years under the concept of the Holy Trinity, the big three of the Catholics. The name stuck for the big three of New Orleans cuisine. It would be sacrilege to not cook with the traditional three: onions, celery, and bell pepper…

When you are going for true Creole flavor, be sure to invite the trinity into the pot. Onions, celery, and bell pepper, because you can’t cook New Orleans food without them.[1]

And there you now have the connection with Creole cuisine to Trinity Sunday. (And if you’re looking for a great New Orleans cookbook, I highly recommend Kevin Belton’s Big Flavors of New Orleans. The cooking school is also a great experience.)

Metaphors and Limitations

But back to the topic of the Trinity. If you search the web for “bad analogies for the Trinity”, you will find many examples, including probably the most common ones you’ve heard, including water, an egg, the sun, and more. And if I went ahead and used the onion, celery, and bell pepper as analogies for God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, this analogy would also quickly end up in that bucket of bad analogies. The reason for is that they all fall into some kind of theological heresy that was condemned during the early centuries of Christianity.

With the caveat that all metaphors and analogies have limitations and shouldn’t be stretched too far, I offer the following.

God might be compared to mirepoix of Creole cooking. Mirepoix is the crucial combination of ingredients that define Creole cuisine. In a similar manner, there are crucial characteristics of God, that when any are missing, God ceases to be God. In the gospel account of John, some of these properties include life, light, and love. God is life; God is light; God is love. But life is not God; light is not God; and love is not God. Nor can we say that God the Father is Light, Jesus is Love, and the Holy Spirit is Life. Each one is all of the properties.

Returning to cooking, we observe that onions alone do not make Creole cuisine; nor does celery alone; and nor does bell pepper alone. All three must exist simultaneously for Creole cuisine to be Creole cuisine. There is a certain substance that defines Creole cuisine.

The traditional wording of the Nicene Creed includes the following:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten not made, being of one substance [italics mine] with the Father…[2]

From this we can interpolate that in orthodox Christian theology, God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are of one substance. However, each Being of this singular substance we call God, has chosen to manifest to humanity in different ways.

A single Creole mirepoix is the foundation for jambalaya, gumbo, etouffee, bisque, and more. The mirepoix is incorporated into various dishes to satisfy various needs. And perhaps we might see how God’s characteristics manifest through God’s three different Beings in a somewhat analogous manner to cooking to fulfill God’s needs and desires in God’s relationship with humanity and with all of creation.

At this point some might object that my analogy and illustration has reduced God to mere material substance. To that I might say that I could have just started and ended with, “The Trinity is an incomprehensible mystery. Three Beings. One God. The End.” But that would not have been very helpful. I would also observe that the Bible itself is God limiting God’s self and revelation to the limits of human language and cultures. And finally, I would add that Jesus himself is God limiting God’s self to the confines of human experience at a particular point in time and space.

Lest someone find my use of food and cooking analogy of God sacrilegious, I might point out that throughout the Bible, God uses imagery of food to portray the sacred. Among them, Communion or the Eucharist should be foremost in our Christian experience. We might not typically associate the adjective delicious with God, but should Jesus’ description of himself as the Bread of Life, or the communion bread as “this is my body” to remain purely utilitarian? Could we associate delicious with these metaphors? Sure, we eat to gain nutrients to allow us to survive, but wouldn’t we rather enjoy the food? Psalm 34:8 includes a phrase, “Taste and see how good the LORD is!” (CEB)

Conclusion

When we imagine what the Holy Spirit is about, I think that in many cases the Holy Spirit is reduced to quiet whispers that prod our conscience. We often think of the Holy Spirit as a still, small voice that offers us wisdom and points us in a direction.

But the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the entire substance of God is within us. All of God’s creative power, all of God’s redemptive power, all of God’s care and concern for creation, all of God’s love for all of God’s children.

The God of storms that we heard from Psalm 29 – that God is within us through the Holy Spirit.

The God who sacrificed himself in the being of Jesus Christ – that God is within us to enable us to follow Christ’s example.

The passage from Romans chapter 8 continues and includes the following well-known texts:

³¹ If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He didn’t spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. Won’t he also freely give us all things with him? ³³ Who will bring a charge against God’s elect people? It is God who acquits them. ³⁴ Who is going to convict them? It is Christ Jesus who died, even more, who was raised, and who also is at God’s right side. It is Christ Jesus who also pleads our case for us… ³⁸ I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers ³⁹ or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.[3]

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the entirety of God is not only for us, but within us, empowering us to be God’s hands, feet, and voice in the world around us.

In the name of God who Creates,

In the name of God who Redeems,

And in the name of God who Empowers, Amen.

References

Belton, K. (2016). Kevin Belton's Big Flavors of New Orleans. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith.

---

[1] (Belton, 2016, pp. 16-17)

[2] That the traditional wording of the Nicene Creeds might offer a historical theology of early Christianity that is at odds with modern Christian theology should be recognized.

[3] Romans 8:31b-34, 38-39 (CEB)

Sermon: Wonder, Mystery, Love

By EHT Collaboration& - Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy (Image link), CC BY 4.0, Link

Lectionary: Trinity Sunday, Year C
Text: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; John 16:12-15

God of Wonders

A month ago, the first-ever image was assembled of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy so that we could see Sagittarius A*, as the black hole is called.

An article about this in The Atlantic starts out,

We live in the inner rim of one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, a shimmery curve against inky darkness. Travel for thousands of light-years in one direction, past countless stars, countless planets, and countless moons, and you’d reach the outer edge of the Milky Way, where the last bits of our galaxy give way to the sprawling stillness of the intergalactic medium. Travel about the same distance in the other direction, past still more stars and planets and moons, through glittering clouds of dust, and you’ll end up in the heart of the galaxy, at one of the most mysterious landmarks in the universe…

Behold Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”), a celestial object that has the mass of 4 million suns but could fit comfortably within the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun…

And still, we are not truly seeing Sagittarius A*, not really. Astronomers can’t take a real picture—in the way us non-astronomers would consider it—because black holes are, by definition, invisible. So the photo released today doesn’t show the black hole itself. Astronomers have captured Sagittarius A* in silhouette. The image reveals the shadow that the immensely dense black hole casts against the glowing, super-hot gas swirling around it.[1]

Black holes are so massive, their gravitational forces so strong, that it collapses space and time and not even light can escape from it. We can peer right to its edge, the event horizon, but cannot see into it. What actually happens inside a black hole is theorized, but we cannot see it.

Still staying within cosmology, but traversing the timeline, the Big Bang is the most widely accepted theory to explain the beginning of our universe. At the beginning of this physical universe, all space, time, energy, and matter was a single point which rapidly expanded and formed what we can observe and experience today. Yet science can only observe and explain moments after the big bang. Before that, we don’t know exactly how things were.

Our reading from Proverbs 8 tells us that God and Wisdom, frequently associated with and sometimes equated with the Holy Spirit, were present before any of what we can observe and explain existed. The immense power that formed the material universe, the immense power at the center of our galaxy – they are just a fraction of the power that is in God’s hands. These are huge mysteries to us in the fields of cosmology and astrophysics, but God knows what came before the big bang and what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole.

There was yet another article in The Atlantic a week ago about what oceanographers and marine biologists are learning about deep-diving ocean predators. These marine mammals and fish, which we often see at and near the ocean surface, dive to 1000, 2000, and even 3000 meters deep. Science and technology are now allowing us to discover these fascinating facts and slowly reveal the mysteries of the deep. Some of these mysteries that have been revealed is the richness of nutrients that are available in very deep layers of the ocean; how many preyed-upon creatures use swift, deep dives to escape predators; and how certain deep-ocean biological structures that are found in these species that confounded scientists in the past are now revealed to be used for deep-diving.[2]

God and the Holy Spirit works through the discipline of the sciences to allow humankind to discover new truths about the physical world we inhabit. Yet some things may forever remain mysteries.

God of Mystery

When we think about God and the Trinity, it is God’s power, majesty, and mystery that are often what comes to mind first. We think about hymns like Come, Thou Almighty King and Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. And clearly, God’s power and majesty are demonstrated in the vast expanse and mysteries of Creation in the past, but also ongoing in the present time.

This is mostly how ancient peoples thought about deities – powerful, yet distant. Even for the Israelites, with God among them in the wilderness sanctuary, and later the Temple, God was not a being that just anyone could approach and have a relationship. There were priests and Levites, and sometimes prophets, who mediated encounters between the people and God.

But with the arrival of Jesus into humanity, as a human being, the entire conception of God was turned on its head. No longer was God simply “out there” or contained through mediating layers. No, God became Immanuel: God with us. God literally walked among humanity in Jesus. But after his physical departure, Jesus promised that the Spirit would be with us. The very same Spirit that was present at the beginning, sharing God’s essence, glory, and power; the Spirit that helped form all of Creation.

Today’s gospel text reads that the Spirit “will guide [us] into all truth.” When we hear “truth” we often equate it with “facts.” But we must be careful to determine what Jesus meant by “truth” here. We know very well that facts can be manipulated to communicate something that is the very opposite of what is true. And we also know that what is not factual, often found as fictional stories, can communicate truth more effectively than listing dry facts.

Earlier in the farewell discourse, from which today’s reading is taken, Jesus declared that he is the truth. In the context of this discourse then, what Jesus states to his disciples is that the Spirit will guide them into all that Jesus was and is and will be. Here is the text once more:

¹² “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:12-15 NRSV)

God of Love

In this text there are some things that Jesus couldn’t directly communicate to his disciples. At some point in the future, additional truths were to be communicated through the Spirit to them. What the Spirit communicates is the truth of Jesus. And the truth of Jesus comes from the Father. One of the primary truths about the Trinity is found here: God’s truth is found primarily in relationships. Jared Byas, a theology faculty member at Eastern University, says,

“If we look at all of the instances of truth in the Bible, we will come away realizing that it’s a relational term, it’s about being honest, it’s about having integrity.”[3]

There are several examples in the apostolic church of the Spirit revealing new relational truths to the church. The first might be the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.[4] Here the Spirit instructs Philip to go and explain the gospel of Jesus to an Ethiopian and a eunuch, both categories which likely would have been thought of as not fully acceptable God. But the Spirit broadens who can enter God’s family. The eunuch believes, or perhaps more accurately stated, the eunuch decides that God is trustworthy and is baptized into a relationship with God and the community of fellow people that have also come to trust in God’s trustworthiness.

The next example is Peter and the Roman centurion Cornelius.[5] Here Peter receives a vision about unclean foods and is commanded to eat. He is confused until Cornelius comes knocking on the door, and suddenly Peter understands. He goes to Cornelius’ house, ignores Jewish traditions, and enters into relationship with a gentile in his house, the household believes, and they are all baptized into God’s family.

A third example is found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he writes:

²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷ As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29 NRSV)

The idea that all members of God’s family are on equal ground with one another is a radically different relational model. That everyone has equal access to God is revolutionary. That there are no hierarchies of race, nationality, socioeconomics, or gender was unheard of in ancient Greco-Roman society. And it is still, unfortunately, rare to see this fully practiced.

The truth of God, embodied in Jesus’ life and death, and given to the Spirit to communicate and remind believers across the centuries, is God’s mutual, egalitarian love. Just as God the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit practices it within the Trinity, Jesus demonstrated what it looks like with his disciples and in his interactions with the people he came across daily. The Spirit has been revealing how this kind of love is to be more fully practiced throughout the time following Jesus’ ascension through this present time.

Even though Paul’s declaration to the Galatians was quite egalitarian, in practice slavery, racism, gender inequality, and caste systems continued to keep their hold. Only slowly have their grips loosened on societies, and even today we continue to battle forces that would reverse the progress that love has made.

Experiencing Trinitarian Love

God has made God’s self known in the power, majesty, beauty, wonder, and mysteries of Creation. God’s love extends to all creation, but as far as we know right now, there is only a tiny part of this creation that can respond back to God with love.

In the First Epistle according to John, we read,

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:19-21 NRSV)

Our response to God’s love should be to love one another. To love one another is to love as Jesus loved us. Jesus loved people through words of encouragement, through healing acts, through providing for needs, and sometimes through rebuke. But in every case Jesus did what was most needed to help each person and their communities become the best versions of themselves, to reach the full potentials of humanity and community that God created them to be.

I think that might be a good way of understanding how to love as Jesus loved. Love is not the same as being nice to someone. Love is about building and strengthening individual and societal relationships. Love is sometimes about repairing and restoring damaged and broken relationships. Love may have to say difficult things at times, but it is never harsh. Love might mean we have to engage with people we find difficult or don’t like, but it is always kind and hopes for the best.

The Trinity can’t be explained. But we do have the offer to experience it, if we choose, when we build and sustain a community that loves as God loves.

---

[1] Behold, the Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy - The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/05/sagittarius-a-black-hole-milky-way/629838/)

[2] What Are Ocean Predators Doing So Deep Underwater? - The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/06/ocean-predators-deep-dive/661186/)

[3] Episode 209: Jared Byas - Making of the Modern Mindset, Part 4 - Pete Enns (https://peteenns.com/episode-209-jared-byas-making-of-the-modern-mindset-part-4/)

[4] Acts 8:26-40.

[5] Acts 10.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday: Mirepoix

The following is the sermon I preached at the Petersburg Lutheran Church on Sunday, May 22, 2016. The gospel text is John 16:12-15 and the New Testament text is Romans 5:1-5.

---

Last month, April, Elise and I spent a week in New Orleans, Louisiana. Having been settled by the French in the early 1700’s, then given over to the Spanish, back to the French, and then to America, there is a lot of history. Its culinary heritage also contains the diverse mixture and history of its residents. In fact Creole cuisine is recognized as the only non-Native indigenous cuisine of North America.

In addition to the sight-seeing, one of the highlights we experienced was sitting through a cooking demonstration of Creole and Cajun cuisine at the New Orleans School of Cooking, where the instructor for that lunch period was Chef Kevin Belton. He demonstrated putting together gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding, and pralines while talking about the culinary history of New Orleans and how it permeates his own personal and family history. For New Orleanians, food and cooking is not just something to do to take in nourishment, but it is a family affair. It brings multiple generations together to share community and tradition. It is a glue that holds people together.

The foundation and distinctiveness to much of this cuisine is three vegetables: onions, celery, and green peppers. When the French arrived from Europe, they brought with them their cooking style. In France many dishes are based on mirepoix which is onions, celery, and carrots combined and sautéed, fried, or baked. But these first settlers discovered they could not get carrots in the swamps of Louisiana, and so they substituted it with what they could find plenty of: green peppers. Whereas carrots are fairly mild and sweet, green peppers are bold, assertive, and grassy. And thus Creole cuisine was born. The French settlers, the devout Catholics that they were, termed this mirepoix combination the Trinity, which is still the term cooks use today.

Chef Kevin describes that in his family, his mother would often begin sautéing the Trinity before she knew what she was going to cook for dinner. That’s how integral these vegetables are to Creole cuisine. It is what makes New Orleans food so distinct. When you taste the finished dishes, you can pick out each individual components, but it is the combination that gives them their uniqueness.

I think food is an appropriate metaphor for the Christian Trinity in describing God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have their own unique characteristics, but it is when they come together as one, working in harmony and in combination, that the full and complete nature of the Godhead becomes evident and manifest. The foundational characteristic of God is self-sacrificing love, and that cannot be known by a singular individual. It requires a community. This love is the distinct flavor that is unique to the Christian Godhead, the Trinity, and it is what flavors all God’s interactions with creation and humankind.

In many restaurants, hierarchies exist: from the executive chef, to the sous chefs, to the line cooks, to servers, to the busboy, and to the dishwashers. But often, before the evening begins they come together to share a family meal, in which these distinctions are set aside, at least for a time.

The gospel text for today in John chapter 16 is part of Jesus’ extended discourse following the Last Supper in the Upper Room. We understand this to be Jesus’ inauguration of the Eucharist or Communion. It is where Jesus used food and drink to bring together and establish a community based on self-sacrificing love. It was an event where Jesus broke down hierarchies and human-distinctions and created a family-based faith community.

Anyone who cooks knows that recipes are important. It may be something you follow diligently from a book (or screen), or it may be something that you’ve done so many times that you just know. But there are ingredients and steps. There are amounts to be measured, and although substitutions can happen, they can’t just be random ones. But recipes don’t describe the experience of eating. Even the best food photographs, artfully presented, can only arouse the senses and desire. They cannot satisfy.

Food is an experience that has to be consumed. And while having a great dinner by yourself may be fine from time to time, the best experiences with food and eating usually happen in the setting of community – with family and friends. (As an aside and also an acknowledgement, some bad experiences do also happen around the dinner table with family.) In fact an average meal with good conversation and interactions are often more memorable than technically perfect dishes but with tension among the people around the table. Good food is valuable, but so is good company.

I think the same can be said of what happens in churches, our Christian community. Good theology, good services, good programs – they are valuable. But by themselves they mean very little. Even the Godhead, with its perfect love, mean nothing without a community in which that love can be manifest and through which its power is experienced by all the world.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16) And this Son, Jesus Christ, created a community as part of his glorification of the Father. “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:22-23) “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:12-13) “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35). “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:13-14)

The glory of the Father is his love. This glory was shown to humankind through the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Jesus gave his disciples the Holy Spirit to remind all future generations of this love, and to provide the power to enable us to live the love of Jesus in our daily lives.

The “truth” that Jesus spoke of in John 16:13 is not facts, data, or theological knowledge. It is the power and experience of love that seasons and binds the community of faith and transforms it into a family that genuinely cares and sacrifices for one another.

This is the divine mirepoix. This is the essence and foundation of God that we are acknowledging today on Trinity Sunday. Love – the genuine concern and care for one another – is the flavor that God wants to have permeate through his family: in this congregation, among all the churches in Petersburg, and through the whole world. It is the distinct flavor that anyone tasting it should recognize without question.

But we also much acknowledge that we are often rather imperfect at incorporating this divine mirepoix into our personal and communal lives. I know this for myself, and none of us need to be reminded or harangued about it. So I’m going to leave out any more criticism and ask a few questions for each of us to ponder.

• Who or what in the past week has given you a taste of God’s love?
• How would you most like to experience God’s love now?
• How do you think God inviting you to participate in his love for the world?

In closing here is our reading from Romans:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (5:1-5)