The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
June 10, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 23

Everything But...
           In these days of “Super Sizing” at McDonald’s and other culinary establishments, a morsel is rather, well, inadequate. Morsel is an Old English/Old French word that means, well, a very little bit of food. The New English Bible suggests that Elijah asked the widow of Zarephath for “a piece of bread”; and Eugene Peterson’s whack at it is: “While you’re at it, would you bring me something to eat?” Boo, I prefer a morsel.
           Perhaps I would not be so happy with just a morsel if I were as hungry as Elijah. The more significant aspect of the story is that a morsel was too much for the destitute widow and her son. Hospitality might kill them. The story, however, resembles Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand: an amount grossly too small is transformed into a surplus beyond imagination. Making a morsel into a meal, then a banquet.
           Our spirituality tends to think either in terms too small or too big. By spirituality I mean the ways and ideas that connect the diverse parts of one’s life together into one thread. In this world obsessed by bigness, you and I are inclined to dismiss at first glance anything that does not garner lots of attention and plenty of followers. That means God cannot be seen in something too small, too inadequate. God, after all, is bigger than the world, so Godly things, Godly people are required by definition to be bigger than life. I doubt many here would admit that they believe such a big definition of God; nevertheless, that is how we usually behave.
           The Biblical answer is to remember the incarnation and the nativity and the Word squeezing itself into the insignificant flesh of a human being, which for us Christians is the defining moment of our faith. Our God is beyond infinity, yet so small we frequently miss seeing God in our midst.