I had the opportunity over the weekend to make a batch of genuine Alaska
sourdough bread. I took the sourdough starter out of the refrigerator Friday
afternoon and by late Sunday afternoon I had four little loaves and two normal
sized loaves of this delicacy. True Alaskan sourdough bread has about as much
in common with the sourdough you buy in the store as "Wonder Bread,"
that great American tradition, has with a fine French croissant. True Alaska
sourdough is made without the addition of yeast, except for the natural culture
present in the sourdough starter. This yeast in an acidic microbial culture
over time gives the bread a deep richness of flavors and texture that allows
for pure enjoyment of flour, water, oil, a little sugar and time. At least two
full days of time. I have tried to make this type of bread many times before,
but being of this now generation, I have always believed that it should be able
to be done in a maximum of 12 hours.
What really gave me the opportunity to wait this out, is that a few months
ago I was given a large bread bowl. Made in England, this heavy ceramic bowl
probably holds close to two gallons. Before obtaining this bowl, the only thing
of that size I had was something in plastic, which just doesn't have the
thermal mass to maintain a steady temperature required for this long rising
bread to fully develop. While the flavor of my twelve hour bread was similar to
this batch, that quick batch bread was close to the weight and consistency of a
brick. I still need to learn how to form the loaves of this long rising bread.
While still being quite hardy, these loaves are much lighter and airy. What
better way to enjoy its stick to your ribs character, than as cinnamon toast
for breakfast this week.
Cinnamon is a distinctly fragrant spice, made from the ground up bark of a
Laurel tree of the genus Cinnamomum, which is native to Sri Lanka, the country
from which the finest cinnamon still comes. Now I don't know where the cinnamon
that you buy in Costco comes from, but you can buy 16 oz. (454 gm.) of this
wonderful spice for about $3. It comes in one of those plastic PETE containers
in which most of our soda pop now comes in. The container itself holds about a
quart perhaps a liter, clear to the top. Therefore the density of this spice in
the jar is about half that of water, which would weight 2 to 2.2 lbs. if it was
filled with a good soda. The neat thing about PETE containers is that they are
transparent as glass but unlike glass, they are almost indestructible, unless
you burn or melt them. What a better way to store stuff like spices, pop and a
whole host of other consumables in our modern society. Not only can you see
what is inside, but the container itself doesn't weight very much so you can
ship more spice for less money. Perhaps after you use up all the cinnamon
making cinnamon toast, you could put some of your valuables inside. But what
valuable would you want to put inside, where all the world could see it. A
robber could come in, and if he was smart enough to look through your spice
cabinet, he would find your diamonds right there between the Basil and the
Oregano.
"Boy how stupid could you be to put your diamonds in amongst the spices
instead of in the safe" Chances are however, the first place a thief would
look if he came to rob your house would be in the safe. "Thank God, you
have insurance!" But if by chance, you would fill that old cinnamon
container with the finest cut gems, leaving a little of that cinnamon in the
container to cut down the luster, no robber would ever believe that you would
leave your things of real value out were every one could see. "I want all
your valuables or I will take your life!," says the robber. "Your
welcome to take all I have," you reply "They're out in the kitchen in
the spice cabinet, in a plastic jar with a cinnamon label on it. They may look
like rhinestones but they are really the finest quality gems." What robber
in his right mind would believe your story. Or better yet put them in with your
sewing buttons. Gems and buttons mixed together, or a couple of jars of buttons
and a jar of diamonds, emerald and rubies. Right there in plain view next to
the sewing machine.
Some years ago I had the opportunity to develop a chemical gold refining
process. It was based on some South African literature, that had been done
prior to World War II but had been subsequently abandoned, because of economies
of scale. This process is really quite environmentally friendly, so just about
anyone with a little training could do it in their kitchen if they wanted to.
Best of all it really wasn't much more hazardous than making sourdough bread.
The interesting thing however, was that the end product of the process itself
was powdered gold. If you wanted real gold that everyone could see, you would
just take a torch to it and presto, real triple nine gold (99.9%) pure. Do you
know what that powdered gold looked like? Well, what I had, I could not tell by
looking at it from, you guessed it, powdered cinnamon. It looked exactly the
same. Sure it weighed more, but lets say you put powdered gold in an old
cinnamon PETE container in the spice cabinet, no one would ever know that you
had just replaced $3 worth of cinnamon with somewhere between $ 75,000 and $
100,000 worth of gold. I never had enough to fill a cinnamon container, just a
little over half an ounce, so I really could not get a volume/density
measurement. Pure gold has a density of 12 (twelve times heavier than water) So
that liter/quart would weigh 20-22 pounds, 9 or 10 kilos as solid gold. If it
had the same particle size and characteristics of the cinnamon it might weigh
15 pounds or so.
Now this really relates to empowerment of the individual personality in a
modern laisse-faire capitalist system and we will have more to say about that
next week. But the cool thing is not to cash in your Amazon.com stock to by
gold and then turn it into powder. There is no reason to have powdered gold
other than to use it in some sophisticated high tech processing. You can take
the coins or bullion to the bank or bury it in the back yard. It is not going
to go anywhere unless someone moves it. The cool thing is if you take it our of
the ground yourself or interrupt that process done by others somewhere along
the line, powdered gold is really not by legal definition, gold at all, but
work in progress. This gold is not legally gold until you melt it into the
metallic form. Having done that, you are then required to pay Uncle Sugar, his
taxable portion and to do that you have to sell some to convert it to dollars
and then the record trail begins. Now this is fine if you need money to live
on, you should pay taxes on that, but without flaunting it you can store your
wealth as cinnamon until you need it. As I said earlier more of this will be
coming next week when we look at Imperialism.
Can you imagine what would happen if you had a guest visiting who loved
cinnamon toast on fresh Alaska sourdough bread and they. . . All this leads us
to a discussion of personal holiness. As I have been doing the first two of
these messages this year, I have felt that I should say something about this
process, but I really couldn't think of anything to introduce the topic without
being labeled as one of "them." Whoever "them am," I must
be one, because, well just because. The whole point however, is to try and
change the focus from you and me to Jesus Christ and his work through his
chosen people.
Our resurrected Saviour is that PETE container filled with pure, the purest
gold. But His jar of humanity is heavy, and since it is always full of perfect
holiness it is too heavy for sinful man to pick up. He is fully man, and yet
fully God. That is what our confessions and creeds tell us. If we put his pure
gold on our toast, even with a lot of sugar, it is something we sinners just
can't handle. But if we were to mix a little bit of that pure gold with a whole
lot of cinnamon and the right amount of sugar, well we could have a gospel
presentation that could make sense to a lost and dying world. But before we go
there let us look again at the elements of this little story.
Our PETE jar is made up of petroleum based plastic. The Bible says in many
places that mankind and all life was formed from the dust of the ground, of
clay, and that God breathed life into that dust, man becoming a living soul.
Because of sin, all that lives dies. And for sake of discussion, because of the
Genesis flood, that dead matter is converted into petroleum and that oil by the
marvels of modern technology is converted into a cheap plastic jar. That jar is
transparent, as should be our lives, it is somewhat rigid, but in some
miraculous way it is able to take a good blow and not break. This containers
contents are safe from virtually everything except heat. Normally, if we would
heat this container to higher and higher temperatures, eventually it would
burn. But under just the right conditions of temperature, pressure and in the
right atmosphere, this jar can be converted into a diamond, which we could then
put back in another jar. But with way too much heat in an oxygen atmosphere,
even the diamond is converted into carbon dioxide and water vapor.
Jesus Christ is the bread of life. Most people, any of us come in contact
with on a daily basis, have heard about Jesus. Everyone who has any knowledge
of Jesus knows that he is a great moral teacher, most would even believe that
he is a path to God. Where it really gets sticky is when we insist that he is
the only way to God and not only that, he has redeemed sinful man by his death
on the cross. "Well you are one of 'them' Christians (self righteous
hypocrites), who are trying to change me!" Amen! Guilty as charged! But it
is amazing that even though they do not like what we say, they watch us and
when they see the heat coming into our lives, they see that we don't melt away
into a glob and burn up. Instead through the furnace, we are not consumed or
used up, but in a way are slowly being changed into a flexible diamond-like
container. Clearer and more precious than just a cheap plastic jar. Us, to
them, are for some reason different. Not bad for just eating a mixture of some
flour, yeast, oil, salt, and sugar. This brings us to the sugar we put on our
cinnamon toast.
For the last two thousand years after Jesus ascended into heaven, the church
has been trying to sugar the gospel. To make it easier for people to understand
we have used icons and statues. Great music, stirring of emotions, or good
works have worked. We adopted pagan holy days as our own and we even kicked out
those of the same nation as Jesus. We even form cloisters based on race, creed
or national origins, or just because we don't want to be like "them
______". We have formed a professional clergy and in many times and ways
educated them in the art of making us feel secure in our material opulence, by
providing for theirs, while ignoring surrounding human suffering. As ugly as it
has seemed at times the church has worked remarkably well, if we look at it
from God's perspective. We have selfishly taken the gospel to the far reaches
of the world, with only "them missionaries" carrying the load for us.
But from a chemical point of view sugar is an organic compound also. It too can
be converted into diamonds in the right circumstances, we just have to refine
out the imperfections.
That brings us to the cinnamon. Cinnamon is a yellowish brown spice that has
a distinctive fragrant aroma and a sweetish, pungent taste, that can be
extracted from the cinnamon bark as a fragrant oil. Now if cinnamon tasted like
clay or my ceramic bread bowl, it would not be considered a spice. The spice
trade, an easier means to reach the Far East, drove our expansion into the
western hemisphere. With Columbus went the priests. And as the Dutch and the
British went. So went the missionaries, and so by going and wenting the whole
world was exploited. Bark again is mainly organic in nature and with just a
little more ash. But when the oil is extracted, the essence of cinnamon can be
use to flavor the most mundane of fare.
What makes all this work.? Simply the making of cinnamon toast on a good
piece of bread. Toasted bread changes in texture. Some of the wheat flour is
roasted changing its flavor, adding to the complex flavor of the yeast and
other ingredients. Add a little sugar to sweeten the taste, and of course the
ground up bark of the cinnamon tree. Pure heaven here on earth! But here also
is the essence of holiness. In Christ we have received the whole jar, a pure
piece of bread, and the essential oil. These should work in synergy to
successfully covert us, over this life time, from the ground up bark of a long
dead tree, into pure highly refined gold. But how does God do that, He pops the
top on the PETE jar and sprinkles it on the toast we serve to our friends and
neighbors, and over time as we cooperate with that shaking process, the
cinnamon's the fragment spice of human interaction, is mixed with the pure gold
powder from God. With God the jar is always full, it is just a question of what
we are full of. All those things we do to keep ourselves from being fully
consumed, or emptied, or to slow down that process of shaking out the cinnamon
hinders God's work and this we do mainly through our personal and community
choices. That in the case of many individuals and churches so clogs up the
shaking holes, that God moves on and all that remains is the gospel of self
(individual and community) and the oil of cinnamon is converted into the dead
oil of Ichabod.
The refining is process over time, and at the end of time. We determine just
how much gold God shook out of our own PETE jar. At the final judgement, then
we get to count not only the gold that is in our jar, but more importantly how
much was shaken out to make cinnamon toast. Our jar only holds about a quart at
best, but the amount that God can shake out into other people is determined,
not by our seeking holy perfection, but by seeking Christ himself, as our only
Holy perfection. In doing that He can add more gold to the recipe and less
cinnamon, make our lives more rewarding not only in the here and now, but also
in God's timeless perspective. To the world and to our fellow covenant members
it still looks like cinnamon, but with so much more body, weight and purity, it
could be nothing but pure gold anointed with the oil of cinnamon.
PRAYER PLANTS
Some time in the middle of last week this current situation passed from me,
trying to understand what was going on, into a place that I realized that it
was beyond my ability to analyze and predict. At that point, when I gave up, it
got much easier to believe that God has a plan in all this and I must trust in
Him and not in my own marvelous ability to reason. Are the circumstances any
easier, no, in fact they are worse from my perspective. I have made it by
essentially the same way, sometimes flush, sometimes not so flush, for the last
10 years or so. If it is not working now as it did, then God is making a change
to much for me to understand. I would really feel ripped off, if it took place
and I was able to coast through it, without learning a valuable lesson. So pray
to that end and come quickly papa, 'cause it is getting hot here!
I hear the words of love, I gaze upon the
blood,
I see the mighty sacrifice And I have peace with God.
'Tis everlasting peace! Sure as Jehovah's
Name;
'Tis stable as His steadfast throne, For evermore the same.
The clouds may come and go, And storms may
sweep my sky,
This bloodsealed friendship changes not: The cross is ever nigh.
My love is off-times low, My joy still ebbs
and flow;
But peace with him remains the same No change Jehovah knows.
I change, He changes not, The Christ can
never die;
His love, not mine, the resting place, His truth, not mine, the tie. Amen.
Horatius Bonar, from the Genevan Psalter