And that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Baking is not forgiving when you mess up. Too much butter; the cookie spreads too much. Forget the baking soda; the cookie becomes rock hard. Replace whole wheat flour for all-purpose flour, and the taste will be entirely different. Even if you follow the recipe to a T, the cookie could still turn out differently than you expected. But when the ingredients work, oh man, it’s harmonious. You take a bite, the texture is melt in your mouth perfect, and the taste is balanced and cohesive.
It’s interesting though, the best-selling cookie at a favorite bakery of mine is the compost cookie. It’s not simple, it’s actually rather unusual, and really shouldn’t work. It has chocolate chips, butterscotch pieces, oats, raisins, pretzels, potato chips, and coffee grounds. In theory those ingredients don’t seem like a very good tasting cookie, but once you try it, you’ll understand it. In one bite, it’s clear that these ingredients are doing something different.
Doing something differently . . . we are witness to this in today’s reading from Corinthians. Imagine the city of Corinth. It was a hustling and bustling port city, an epicenter of wealth and materialism, and now home to a new church. Just like any church today, it seems to be in the midst of disagreements and dissention. Particularly amongst its members fighting over the hierarchy of spiritual gifts. At first glance this fight can be mistaken for a petty argument, but there is a deeper misunderstanding here. These individuals were not just fighting over whose spiritual gift was better than the other’s, but claiming that whoever had the greatest spiritual gift was given a place of honor and prestige within the community and later in heaven.
Don’t get me wrong, we need to recognize the differences between our spiritual gifts and live into those gifts. But the deeper misunderstanding is my lack of recognition that I don’t need the rest of the community. When in reality, I am nothing without the community. When we lose sight of this, we begin to build up only ourselves becoming prideful, arrogant, and forgetting to show each other mercy. This is where the cookie crumbles. Walter Brueggemann’s definition of mercy captures how we should be acting differently when he said, “Mercy is the capacity to give one’s self away for the sake of the neighborhood.” “To give one’s self away for the sake for the neighborhood”, what does that truly look like?
Well let’s go back to the compost cookie. It’s not simply the fact that the recipe works, but it’s how the cookie itself is greater than the sum of its parts. Each ingredient is unique, and serves in a particular role to make the cookie come together. The ingredients don’t realize it, but individually they really aren’t all that great alone. Alone, flour tastes disgusting. It needs the sugar and the butter to be worth eating. Alone vanilla extract tastes awful, but when incorporated into the rest of the dough the flavor contributes to the overall sweetness of the cookie. If we surrender the idea that we are only individual ingredients sitting in a bowl, and begin to act differently by sharing in mercy and compassion with one another; this is when we move towards being a cohesive cookie.
This is acting differently. Our American culture encourages individualistic behaviors. Giving honor to whoever is number one. And it’s when we let those feelings of pride or arrogance or narcissism control us, that we stay self-centered. Yes, God created each of us uniquely individual. And we are called to discern and harness those unique spiritual gifts. And live the best we can into who God calls us to be. But all the while, we must recognize how our spiritual gift is a part of, and effects the larger community, and be willing to share it with the rest of the community.
Because to live fully into the life God wants for me, I can’t do it alone.
When we live above our pride, arrogance, and narcissism; we can stop fighting over whose spiritual gift is greater than another’s. Mercy reminds us that the only way to move forward is when we recognize our need for each other, and begin to come together. Yes, God blessed us with uniqueness to differentiate us, and it’s the journey to follow Christ that makes us one cohesive body.
My prayer is for us to live into the way God uniquely made us with love, compassion, and mercy. Whatever part of the body you may be, let’s do our best to live into it, but all the while discerning how my part effects the rest of the body. Otherwise, the cookie crumbles.
When we begin to understand that we are a part of something greater than ourselves, and live into the unity of our holy baker God; then we are truly acting differently as beautiful cohesive cookie.
