On Sunday morning, two pots will be on the fire before the first hymn. By the time we reach the sermon, the sanctuary will smell like onions and garlic and whatever you carried in from your kitchen, and I cannot think of a better way to end the month we have walked through together.
We planted this series with human hands. On Labor Day weekend, Derrick and Wendell Berry taught us that work and rest are both holy, and that what we need is here. Then we walked into the ghosts of September 11th, twenty-five years on, and said the hardest true thing out loud: nobody is coming to save us. We are the ones who came. And last Sunday, at the equinox, Christine led us through the honest harvest: what have you planted this year, and what have others planted in your life? It is all connected when it comes to community. All of it belongs. This Sunday, all of it goes into the pot.
You know the old story. A hungry village, every door shut, until a stranger sets a pot on the fire and drops in a single stone. One neighbor spares a carrot. Another finds an onion. Somebody has a little salt. Soup happens. The stone did nothing. The stone was an invitation, and an invitation is only a stone until somebody answers it with a carrot.
That is what hope is. Hope is a willingness to stay open to what is still forming, and it needs your one ingredient to form at all. It is not a feeling that arrives from somewhere else. It is what a room full of people makes when each of them brings what they have, and nobody checks it at the door.
Here is what I have learned about harvests, and about hope. A harvest is never only the good part. It is the tomatoes that ripened and the row the iguanas ate. It is the friendship that surprised you and the plan that fell apart. It is the good, the bad, and everything in between, and the honest gardener counts it all. Hope is what gathers that whole harvest up without shame and without expectations and asks one question: what in here can feed somebody?
The answer is almost always something humble. A carrot. A can of beans. A handful of herbs from the pot on your windowsill. Nobody brings a feast to stone soup. Everybody brings what they can spare, and the feast is what happens when the humble things meet in one pot. The best of what we harvested this year was never the biggest thing. It is the thing we are willing to share.
So bring one ingredient that belongs in a pot. Vegetables, chopped small at home so they cook quickly during the service. Beans or lentils. Garlic, herbs, spices. Precooked rice or pasta. Bread or crackers for the table. There will be two pots on the fire, one vegan with vegetable stock and one with chicken stock, so when you drop off your ingredient, tell us if it contains meat or animal products, and we will put it where it belongs. Everyone eats.
And if your kitchen is empty this week, come anyway. The stone was nothing, and the stone started everything. Your presence is your ingredient. Nobody at that table will ask what you brought.
We will cook the soup together while we worship, and when the service ends, we will gather at the table and eat what we made. Bring an ingredient. Bring your appetite. Bring your hope, and be ready to share it.
I will see you Sunday, with my own ingredients to the whole.
Peace,
Rev. Dr. Harold Marrero