Cabbage Rolls and the Church

Karla made my favorite dinner last night: Stuffed cabbage rolls. Yummy! The girl can cook a mean cabbage roll! I invited my neighbor to dinner, but when he learned what was on the menu, he responded as I suspect most people would and politely declined. Admittedly, it’s weird that stuffed cabbage rolls would be at the top of my pallet’s desire, but they are. Here’s what’s really weird, individually, I don’t like any of the ingredients in those tasty cabbage-leafed wrapped morsels. Here’s why:

· I do not like cooked cabbage. Cooking cabbage stinks up the house. It smells like what I imagine the post wrestling match locker room would smell like following an epic battle between Andre the Giant and the wrestling phenomenon of yesteryear, Bobo Brazil. In other words, it turns the house into a nasal nightmare. Besides the olfactory system induced nausea, cooked cabbage is slimy. I have lived most of my life on this principle: if it’s slimy and stinky, don’t eat it.
· I do not like sour kraut. Who came up with that name “sour kraut” anyway? (I heard that during World War II, sour kraut was called “Freedom Cabbage.” I guess the powers that be wanted something sounding more patriotic and less German.) Truth be told, the “kraut” is not really sour, it’s spoiled or fermented or in some way old and rotten. Rob’s Food and Life Principle #2: if something is rotten, don’t eat it!
· I don’t particularly care for smoked sausage. Have you ever seen how they make smoked sausage? Let’s just say, it’s not the most appetizing process. Food and Life Principle #3: if they take all the pig parts that no one in their right mind would ever eat unless they are starving to death or on the television show, Fear Factor, grind up those piggy parts, and put them in an edible tube, don’t eat it!
· I’m not a big fan of rice and onion and other “mystery items” in my hamburger. If rice and onion were that good in hamburgers, don’t you think McDonalds would be selling it that way by now?
· And the last and maybe least liked ingredient is Campbell’s tomato soup. I don’t eat Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Ever. “Mmm, Mmm Good,” it’s not, as far as I am concerned.
So there you have it, the ingredients of stuffed cabbage rolls on their own are sufficiently awful that even those gluttonous, hot dog eating champion guys would probably turn up their noses and say, “Thanks but no thanks.”

To further add to the oddity of stuffed cabbage rolls, I’m generally not a fan of mixing different foods together into one pot, thereby creating a casserole-like main dish. Did you know that the word “casserole” in Arabic means: “killing of the infidels by mixing nasty foods together into one entree”? (OK maybe that’s not an exact translation, but don’t be surprised if the next terrorist plot takes the form of some “mystery” meat in a covered dish at a church pot-luck.) I have long been of the opinion that hidden in the Book of Leviticus is an ancient injunction about combining food items into a casserole. But cabbage rolls are different. Cabbage rolls are tasty. When Karla mixes all of those ingredients together, a miracle of miracles occurs and the result is my favorite mouth-watering dinner.

Here’s why I tell you all of this-- I think the church (when it’s at its absolute best) is like stuffed cabbage rolls. Oh I’m not accusing anyone of being slimy and stinky like cooked cabbage. And I would never refer to anyone as a sour kraut or a smoked sausage. But like cabbage rolls, together we are better than we ever could be individually. To quote the title of a Rueben Welch book from a long time ago: “We really do need each other.” It’s true. We need each other to become the people, the community that God calls us to be. If we are going to “make more and better disciples,” then we need everybody, bringing their unique gifts and talents to the collective table in order to reach our world.

On our own, we couldn’t be the church that God calls us to be. We need pastors. But we also need laypeople. We need Sunday School teachers and nursery workers and youth sponsors and children’s workers and musicians and singers and greeters and old people and young people and teenagers and children, and well, you get the idea. We need everybody with their unique talents, gifts and abilities, using them for God’s glory—to reach our world.

And as we come together to form this even better than cabbage rolls combo, known as the church of Jesus Christ, the world will be blessed and forever changed! And that is what we are after—a place that flavors our world in a powerful, positive lovely way! Our world is hungry for an authentic community that truly lives by the words of Jesus—a place that loves God and loves each other. Let’s be like cabbage rolls, individuals who have come together to become that delectable place!

Wow, all this talk about cabbage rolls has made me hungry.