Roast Chicken and Rose Tinted Spectacles, What Is Our Future? (Exodus 16.1-5, 9-15 Matthew 13.1-9)

 

I love food, don’t you? I love flavour and texture and colour. I love the things I know, the old comforts. I like to try new things sometimes. But I do have a confession to make.

I am addicted to Roast Chicken. There’s just something about it, hot roast chicken, straight from the oven. Roasted with garlic and rosemary, salted and crispy, it’s finger lickin’ good. I can’t put it down! An almost animalistic hunger comes over me as I tare through it. If it weren’t so socially unacceptable I’d probably jump up onto the table, in a cat like pounce and rip through it with my bare hands.

I’d love to be a vegetarian, I don’t like eating animals, and I realise it’s entirely down to my own weakness, and cravings and fragility that I’m not. I’ve eaten some fantastic vegan and vegetarian food, I’m trying to cut back on the amount of meat I eat, but the chicken, like a drug addict it gets round to Sunday lunchtime and I need my fix.

So I relate to the Israelites in our reading today. They’re sick of bread, they want meat to eat.

It’s another one of those moany passages from Exodus. Even though God has saved them from slavery, makes bread rain from heaven, has a plan for them, has a covenant with them, and promises that they will inherit a land, it ain’t good enough for them.

Let’s talk a bit about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 

It’s a theory in psychology about what motivates us. Imagine in your head a triangle, and that triangle is split into five different sections horizontally. At the top of the pyramid is ‘Self actualisation.’ That’s achieving your full potential. Below that is ‘Esteem Needs’, prestige feeling accomplished and satisfied. Below Esteem Needs is ‘Belongingness and love needs.’ This covers intimate relationships and friendships.

We’re nearly done…

Then below that ‘Safety Needs’, security and safety. Then finally at the bottom of the pyramid ‘Physiological Needs’ food, warmth, water, rest.

To progress up the pyramid to being fulfilled and self-actualised, a person’s needs need to be met. For example, you can’t live feeling safe and secure without having enough food to eat. Right? I bet those who use foodbanks don’t feel safe.

When our personal needs aren’t being met, we complain or if our basic needs aren’t being met, that’s the bottom two, safety and physiological, then that causes us to be frightened, defensive and sometimes can bring about mental health problems.

God wants the best for them, God wants the best for all of us, God gives them the bread of heaven, and gives it to us too.

 

I love this story because it’s a real allegory about human nature. We find it hard to see the bigger picture when our needs aren’t being met. When we’re sad, lonely and depressed. When we feel isolated, shut out or shunned.

These feelings within us can often make us retreat. Do irrational things, think irrationally and selfishly.

Our basic needs, food, warmth are powerful draws. When I eat roast chicken, it takes me back to my childhood. It’s amazing how food, or a piece of music can do that. It reminds me of sun tinted Sunday afternoons when I felt safe, the world was smaller, and everything seemed alright.

The Israelites do the same. Ooh remember the good old days, they say, back in Egypt, remember the cucumbers! Remember how we used to eat our fill.

But… But you were slaves, remember? They beat you, and made you make bricks, remember?

Oh yes, but the scran!

It seems almost as if they are looking back with rose tinted spectacles. Especially in the midst of all the travelling they were doing, and the lack of security they felt.

I wonder how many of us feel insecure right now? With the utter raging dumpster fire of the year we’ve just had, and the sense it ain’t over yet, urgh, it’s overwhelming.

It’s easy for us to look back on the past decade and say, the 2010’s were great in comparison to now.

But that wouldn’t be true would it? Foodbanks came into existence, the gap between rich and poor widened, and there were still just as many injustices then as there are now.

The Israelites pressed forward because they had hope for the future. It was that hope that kept them going.

As Christians we can’t just rely on roast chicken and rose tinted spectacles because the kingdom requires us to look forward, to sow the seeds well.

For us to be self-actualised as a Christian community, we need to look forward not backwards.

The parable of the Sower is an interesting one. As usual Jesus is using a story about something his audience would’ve known about. Seed was a precious commodity, you didn’t go about wasting it. Everyone knew that you planted it carefully and in the right place, not just strew it anywhere.

The seed never grows if its needs aren’t met, and it’s the same with people.

As we go forward we need to think about what the good soil is, both in ourselves and in the community around us. What will grow, and be grown?

We stand on the verge of great change. Instead of filling our boots with roasted chicken, and focussing on the past with a rose tinted view, we must turn our eyes to the horizon.

Where we see need, meet it. Where we want change, hope for it. Where we feel God, trust in it.

Amen.

Preached at 9:30am St Cuthbert's Sprowston 21/07/21