Food

I love food. Any kind. Any time. When asked what I want to eat for lunch I often reply, "food sounds good." Eating is always preferable to not eating. When offered new foods I rarely turn them down, Seriously, I'm willing to try anything once. About three weeks ago my intestines started acting funny. Food started to sound less good. Lunch started sounding optional. Breakfast just sounded gross. Dinner kept getting pushed back later and later. I keep eating because I know my body needs food. Me without food is a disaster waiting to happen, but right now, eating feels like a chore. Something I have to do, not something I want to do. The uneasiness of my stomach messes with my appetite. Food sounds good, but when I look at my options, the food I see doesn't sound good anymore. It's like having a craving for a specific flavor of ice cream and you can't seem to find it anywhere. Welcome to my discomfort: of needing to eat, but nothing sounds appetizing.

Right now I'm staring at two sandwiches that constitute my usual lunch. I was hungry for them a few minutes ago, but now that they are occupying space on a plate inches from my fingertips, I have no desire to touch them. Disappointing, really, because its not the sandwiches fault. The sandwiches have done nothing to be spurned so. All they are currently doing is existing. My brains applies all the logical reasons behind eating: maintaining weight, growing muscle, improving mood, healing sick parts of the body, but my stomach doesn't care. My stomach lacks the appetite that makes the sandwiches appealing. I'm sure giving it more time will help, as eventually I will be hungry enough to eat, but right now I'm looking at bored sandwiches looking at a bored eater. It's a sad picture of first world problems.

This blog isn't so much about the food I don't want to eat right now as it is about some of the other things going on in my life. According to the doctor I visited yesterday, I simply might have too much stress in my life. Which means a hearty dose of antacids could be just what I need to recover my appetite. Or I could have a bacteria that's been slowly growing over time and now making its effects known. Either way I have a problem, and the only way to find a solution is to be methodical about testing for what's wrong. And waiting. And smearing my feces on a card for lab testing. (Sorry I just had to throw that one in there.) We've established there IS a problem and I need external help to solve it, because what I've tried so far, isn't working. Which means its not a vitamin deficiency, stomach flu, dehydration or something else simple I could fix on my own. I have a problem and I need help.

While this whole process has been frustrating, and I've finally given up on the stiff-upper-lip approach, there's something else going on in my life that's bothering me. I just finished reading the Old Testament Prophets (hosanna!) and have moved on to reading about Jesus in Matthew. I was super-excited about this transition, but as I've made the switch, Jesus has just sounded super boring.

Not what I was anticipating at all.

It's like staring a plate full of food and not being hungry. Even though you like eating.

The transition from Prophets to Gospels is disorienting. They take place several hundred years apart. The writing style is different. The original language is different. LORD goes from all caps to a single capital. Lord is no longer the sacred name of God, its a title. The prophets give long discourses full of history, making poignant statements about the practices happening in their cultures. They break out in poetry and song. They make proclamations about the Messiah. I get caught up in their passion, their ardor, their longing for a righted world and then I started reading about Jesus of Nazareth. My brain did not make the connection. Jesus sounds crazy.

Let me rewind a little bit for some context. Reading the prophets was HARD. It was so hard I had to stop reading and let my mind wrap around what was happening. It was hard because I heard them speaking to a people who weren't willing to listen, who didn't want to change and were destroying their nation. It struck home. It broke my heart.

I expected Jesus, whom we call savior (meaning healer) to help put some of the brokenness back together. I expected passion, strong discourses and a narrative easy to follow. Guess I'm reading the wrong gospel! Honestly, that's possible because Matthew categorically organized Jesus story, and the organization makes my head hurt. We have pronouncements and decision-making about Jesus life, then he preaches, (boy did that sermon cover too much material) and then he heals sick people and casts out demons (not figuratively, the words mean literally) then he prepares his disciples to out into the world to do what he's been doing (but there's zero follow up material to say what happened when they went out). It all happened so fast I'm trying to figure out what happened and what it all means. It's like having a brain freeze from too much ice cream, and my brain-freeze screams Jesus is weird!

This is not a crisis of faith as much as it is a statement of truth. Jesus is weird. He does insane things. He fixes crazy people, when crazy people aren't supposed to be fixed, even when he's supposed to be doing other more important tasks, like saving more important people's lives. Instead he's stopping in the middle of a street to pay attention to a woman in desperate need no one else even sees. Jesus is weird, and not living up to my expectations of the Messiah. Which is exactly what the people around him are thinking. He doesn't measure up, but what he's doing adds up. Jesus sounds cryptic, even though he's speaking plainly. It's just that hard for us to understand the world he' calling us to be a part of. We'd much rather fit him into our world than make the transition to live in his.

Jesus isn't a politician coming to change policies to make the world a better place. He's a man walking into the world and living by a different set of rules, rules so different he's deemed a dangerous revolutionary to public order and summarily executed. That's what's so radical about him. He doesn't wait for the world to change, he doesn't preach long sermon's hoping people will listen, he acts. His actions are so different from what people expected they are thrown into confusion. Is this the Messiah we've been waiting for? Is this the guy who's coming to save us? He doesn't look or act like we think he should, he pays attention to the wrong people and his philosophy is unlivable idealism. So said many then, so say many now.

I'm eating my sandwich (and no, not just for dramatic effect, I'm actually hungry). I'm chewing it slowly. I guess I should use the same approach with Jesus. Chew him slowly (see I'm starting to sound crazy too) Encountering Jesus in the Bible is unlike encountering everyone else. He's different, which is probably why the gospels are written differently. So we'd have to stop and figure out exactly what we are eating.