While I was in residence at Futuna, a retreat centre in the hilly suburb of Karori, we had for a time a Dutchman, Barry Bruns, as the centre’s chef.
I once asked him, “Is there a golden rule to cooking?”
He looked up from the pot he was stirring and said, quite deliberately, “You can always add, but never subtract.”
Too much salt or sugar or baking powder at the beginning means too much salt or sugar or baking powder.
In this Sunday’s Gospel from St Matthew (22:34–40), a lawyer approaches Jesus with a question like my cooking question. He asks, “Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”
By rabbinical count, the Law contained some 613 commandments. Which was the greatest was a question much discussed, debated and argued over.
Barry added a further comment: “A very good chef can adapt the recipe to obscure the mistake. Equally, a connoisseur of fine food can recognise the obscuration!”
Jesus replied to the lawyer: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.”
There is a temptation to obscure the first commandment, “Love your God”, with the second: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
A note of caution: a connoisseur of fine loving will recognise the obscuration!30
This past Tuesday, over morning tea, the conversation turned to what our Church calls evangelisation: the proclamation of the Gospel.
The word comes from the Greek euangelion, which translates literally as “glad tidings” or “good news”.
That good news is the Good News of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ – with the goal of inviting others to personal faith and discipleship.
The religious congregation these women belong to, the Josephite Sisters, has its origins in Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lived in Australia for at least 50,000 to 65,000 years before Europeans arrived. For those tens of thousands of years, they flourished without knowing the person of Jesus.
Similarly, the earliest human migrations from Southeast Asia reached parts of Oceania, including New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago.
Again, these peoples lived full lives without any knowledge of Jesus.
Indigenous peoples had lived in the Americas for at least 23,000 to 25,000 years before major European contact began. They too lived credible and fruitful lives without knowing the person of Jesus.
And so I ask: do you have to know “about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ”?
From where most of us stand, I hear a resounding “yes”.
I need to come clean and state my point of view: I am not so sure.
I find myself asking whether the energy we call “evangelisation” is for the sake of others, or whether it is in fact for ourselves.
I also struggle with a historical truth. To “seed” the Christian faith in lands beyond Europe, those we called missionaries destroyed vibrant Indigenous faith practices.
In the Christian Church, we have just completed the Season of Creation. For years, Christians on six continents have kept it as an annual celebration of prayer and action for creation.
It is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and with all creation through celebration, conversion and commitment together.
From the little I know of the Indigenous peoples of Australia, the Americas, the Pacific, Africa and indeed early Europe, they did not have to “organise” a season to celebrate creation.
Their rituals celebrated water, trees and other natural elements, giving praise to the Originator of them all!
Perhaps for Mission Sunday we could consider a different Greek word: ἀκούω (akouō), the ancient Greek for “listen” or “hear”.
The illustration I have chosen is Earth’s Creation, an artwork by the late Indigenous artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
Kngwarreye (c. 1910–1996) was a senior Anmatyerre woman from the Utopia region of Central Australia. She is now recognised as one of Australia’s most celebrated Aboriginal artists.
Nasruddin (also known as Nasreddin Hodja or Mullah Nasruddin) was a legendary 13th-century Sufi philosopher, satirist and wise-fool character found in folklore across the Middle East, Central Asia and along the Silk Road.
Nasruddin had been working in the fields all day.
He was tired and sweaty, and his clothes and boots were caked in mud.
That evening, the wealthiest man in town was holding a huge feast, and everyone in the village was invited.
Nasruddin knew he would be late if he went home to change first. He decided that arriving in dirty clothes was better than arriving late.
As he walked to the rich man’s house, he imagined the delicious food he would soon be eating. His stomach began to rumble.
When Nasruddin arrived, the host opened the door and looked him up and down with scorn, from his worn, ragged clothes to his muddy boots.
“You can’t come in dressed like that,” the man said, and shut the door.
Nasruddin hurried home and changed into his finest clothing, including a beautiful coat.
When he returned to the feast, the host welcomed him with a huge smile.
“Come in, come in!”
As Nasruddin entered, guests waved and called to him from every corner of the room. They invited him to sit with them and offered him food.
Nasruddin sat down quietly.
He picked up a plump fig and carefully placed it in his coat pocket. Next, he took a handful of nuts and put them in the pocket too.
He kept going until his pockets were full. Then he began stuffing food into his sleeves.
Soon the whole room was staring at him, wondering what he was doing.
The host hurried over. “Nasruddin, whatever are you doing? Why are you stuffing food into your coat?”
“Well,” replied Nasruddin, “when I first came to this feast in my old farming clothes, I was not welcome. You shut the door in my face.
“But when I changed into this coat, suddenly I was greeted warmly.
“So I realised it was not me who was welcome at this party, but my clothes. And so I am feeding my coat.”
The vineyard was a pre-eminent metaphor for the people of Israel.
“My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside,” we read in today’s First Reading (Is 5:1).
Again, in today’s Responsorial Psalm, we sing: “You brought a vine out of Egypt. It stretched out its branches to the sea.” (Ps 79)
And our Gospel begins: “Listen, there was a landowner who planted a vineyard.” (Mt 21:33–43)
I had to catch myself when singing the Psalm. I almost sang, “You brought a vine out of Le Havre.”
Le Havre is a port city on the north-west coast of France. From this port, the French Marists set sail for the Pacific, including Aotearoa New Zealand.
These French missionaries brought with them generations of winemaking knowledge and a few treasured vines to Hawke’s Bay.
Mission Wines was born.
The Marist Fathers’ seminary is set among these vines.
Living amid the remains of these vines, and others that were meticulously researched and planted, is it any wonder I have learned a good deal about myself (and others!) from the vineyard, as the Israelites did of old?
The vine is a vigorous plant and needs severe pruning. It produces an abundance of leaves, but only some of its branches bear fruit.
The branches that produce only leaves must be cut back. Otherwise, they rob the others of their life-giving sap.
Leaves are the plant thinking of itself. Fruit is the plant thinking beyond itself, to the next generation.
The most vigorous, luxuriant part of myself may well be the part most in need of pruning.
