Hot Tamales!
The scripture readings from
Habakkuk and Luke are piping hot. What a way to start Spirit-spiced month!
Habakkuk is fuming! Habakkuk
lives in the unsettled time experienced between the death of King Josiah and
exile to Babylon around 600BCE. Today’s reading is a snippet of the dialogue
between the prophet and God. Habakkuk is exasperated by the injustice affecting
everyday life. Can God not do something, now, to relieve the troubles of the
world? As Habakkuk tells God, the answer is simple, execute judgement on the wicked.
The disciples are hot-under-the-collar!
The snippet of Gospel heard this morning comes after Jesus says to them, “If
another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is
repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven
times a day, and turns back to you seven time and says, “I repent,’ you must
forgive.”
You must forgive,
abundantly. It is this statement that causes the disciples to ask, as we read
earlier, “Increase our faith!”
Every Oct. in Greenville,
Mississippi, the city hosts a hot tamales festival. A hot tamale is seasoned ground
meat, beef, pork or other, wrapped in a corn-based dough and steamed. It is
traditionally served in a cornhusk sleeve. A hot tamale is not always spicy
hot, the heat comes from the spices put into the meat, the brine they are
steamed in, or the chilli sauces drizzled over top.
The hot tamale has its origins
in the Mississippi Delata. All the creation stories for the tamale note that the
food was created by cross-cultural relationships: citing Native Americans, Mexicans,
African Americans, Italians; relations that were forged by historical events
like war, slavery, migrant workers, and settler immigration.
Well over a hundred years
later, hot tamales are as much apart of the deep South, as the Blues. In
diversity and in communion with others a culturally identifiable staple was
born. The tamale spread from one city to another and another creating what is
today a world renown Hot Tamale Trail throughout the Mississippi Delta.
God where, when, is your justice?
Increase our faith!
Introductory notes in the
Oxford Annotated Bible say that:
Habakkuk articulates on
behalf of his community their searching questions: Is this fair? To this
perennial question the prophet receives an answer that is eternally valid: God
is still sovereign, and in God’s own way and at the proper time will deal with
the wicked. In the meantime---- in fact, at all times-----the righteous shall
live by their faith, a persistent, patient, and tenacious adherence to the
instructions and promises of God. (Pg. 1341 Hebrew Bible:
The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV)
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus
continues with the saying, “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you
could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it
would obey you. This is followed by a specific example directed to first
century Roman society and their cultural practice of slavery and indebtedness.
Jesus speaks with revolutionary words that would draw ire from those listening.
If by faith one were to apply Jesus’ words, have the will do put the words into
action, an entire cultural system would be uprooted and dismantled.
So, what does this have to
do with hot tamales?
The people of the Mississippi
Delta lived in times not that different from those expressed in Habakkuk and
Luke. Habakkuk fumed about injustice and
Jesus talks of uprooting slavery.
The injustices, the cultural
systems to be uprooted…..
The Native Americans were given
blankets ridden with disease, a systematic genocide.
The African Americans working
in the cotton fields, slavery.
Migrant Mexican crop workers,
an underpaid labour force.
Italian immigrants surviving
as they experienced racism.
Despite suffering in the unjust
cultural systems, despite “the wicked,” using Habakkuk’s descriptor,
those experiencing oppression
formed community. Hot tamales and the Blues are two examples of cultural
identifiers of the uniquely formed community. Surviving, waiting, with patience,
remaining faithful, the community was resilient in hope in the face of adversity.
This closer-to-us-story of
injustice illustrates that unjust cultural systems continue to exist, and we
live in them; we have a part in them.
Jesus’ question has a bite
to it, What are our mulberry trees? What cultural systems of today, would
Jesus use as examples of what needs to be uprooted? Do we have the faith – the will-
to remedy climate change, to resolve wars, to eradicate hunger?
Perhaps we, like the
disciples beg Jesus, increase our faith.
Did you notice the disciples
ask together and say ‘our’ faith? Not ‘my’ faith, ‘your’ faith, but ‘our’
faith. It has been suggested that the disciples ask for an increase in faith
because they are thinking individually rather than a faith that is shared
across a community of faithful. Shared faith and shared work, accomplishes change.
From the tamale creators, we witness a life-affirming community in a life-destroying
time. What sits with me about the Mississippi Delta’s people is that the diversity
of communities making one community didn’t likely see their actions of the time
as creating cultural identifiers. They may not even have seen themselves as one
community. Yet, they were surviving, living, and sharing. They were in
relationship with each other.
The Berkana Institute, an organization
that works in global grassroots leadership, has the motto:
“Whatever the problem,
community is the answer.” The organization believes that relationship is
all that there is, and community is the most effective locus of change.
God made a covenant with a
people. Jesus had disciples and a group of followers.
God urges the prophet
Habakkuk to wait, be patient, remain faithful…and in
time… justice will flow like streams of living waters.
…until
that time, the community – a covenant people who are to live the ordinances and
statues of the Law which is loving God and loving neighbour – are called to be
resilient in hope in the face of catastrophe.
Scripture
reminds us, this morning, that this is not an individual task; it is a community
task.
Jane Goodall, primatologist and
anthropologist, who passed away this week once said,
“What you do makes a
difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
By gathering with and in
this community, you have already made a decision of what kind of difference you
want to make – stepping outside of the prevailing culture – you gather in faith,
to remember the call to love God and love neighbour; and risk a belief, a hope
that humanity can heal that which is broken.
The instability in world
systems and the injustice in cultural systems are overwhelming and daunting. As
a community with a shared heart and call, we go into the world to apply the
Word; in faith that each and every one of us will. Together we prepare a whole
feast, one tamale at a time. Forgiving one person. Sharing one thing. Fostering
one relationship. Faithfully acting as one among many. Our shared acts of
generosity, creativity, and kindness – in a troubled world – are extreme and risky,
with an outcome of abundance in relationship and community wellness. Together,
waiting patiently for that time, let cultural identifiers of covenant living
spread from one city to the next, birthing a trail of uprooted and dismantled
injustice.
… and in time… justice will
flow like streams of living water. Thanks be to God.
