Besides chopping and hacking in the kitchen, I really do love old movies and classic British mysteries, particularly if the plots, locations, and characters have to do with the landed gentry. The Upstairs / Downstairs life of such places was a rarefied world unique to the exceedingly wealthy [or sometimes landed but impoverished because of it]. Although we’ve all had a peek behind the scenes at Downton Abbey, its reality is Highclere Castle owned by the Eighth Earl of Carnarvon, George Reginald Oliver Molyneux Herbert and his Lady Wife Fiona, Countess of Carnarvon. The house retains some 70 folks on staff including the chef, although Lady Carnarvon is herself an accomplished cook. Lord Carnarvon’s great-grandfather, the fifth earl, was financial backer of the expedition in Egypt which discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Pharaohs, succumbing to the aftereffects of a mosquito bite for his troubles.
Cozy mysteries and movies sometimes include scenes showing a few of the gentry sneaking into the kitchen in the dead of night after the cook has gone to bed. Hungry and thirsty, they dared to trespass into the otherwise sacrosanct domain of the cook, whipping up an omelet or shaving off a bit from the cold joint of mutton in the larder. They likely exhausted their culinary abilities with that, most of them apparently nonplussed regarding even the cracking of an egg. Folks on this side of the Atlantic might also be challenged by the absence of a capable cook in the kitchen when stomachs begin to rumble, whether professionally competent or part of the family.
Hallie Ephron, part of a North American family of novelists, journalists, and screen writers, contributes to a blog by very successful women crime writers addressing the craft of writing and what they can contribute to a richer life for people. In one essay she remembers her “…Mother,” never “Mom” or “Mommy.” She of the designer suits and Cherries in the Snow lipstick. I can’t remember her ever dusting a table, making a bed, or washing a dish. She was a Hollywood screenwriter who’d grown up poor in the Bronx and prided herself on being able to buy her own mink coat. We had a live-in cook and a nanny and, as she once told a New York Times reporter on the eve of the Broadway opening of a play she’d written, she only set foot in the kitchen ‘“to get ice cubes”’ [https:// www.jungleredwriters.com/2022/01/hallie-mines-pathway-from-kitchen-to.html].
It’s one thing to assume that there’s always someone ready at our beck and call to provide whatever we need, whether food or some type of service. However, most of us soon realize that we must be contributing members in our lives, even able to do much more in the kitchen than just fetch ice cubes! The great English poet, Lord Byron, once observed: “All human history attests That happiness for man, – the hungry sinner! – Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.” [Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99]. Food IS important, daily, and those charged or gifted with the ability to prepare our necessary victuals are to be honored. Very likely it was mom or dad wielding the paring knife when we were growing up. Once we matured, we discovered that family dynamics often are manifested by the domestic roles we inherit, aspire to, or forced upon us of necessity. There usually is a family point-person in charge of dinner, laundry, and all other necessities. As I was growing up, my parents happily shared domestic and parental responsibilities across the board which included us when at long last we could see over the top of the counter. If mom worked late [she was a bank clerk], dad started the laundry or got dinner going. He also could steer a vacuum cleaner. My siblings and I soon learned how to assemble a passable sandwich and pour a glass of milk when necessary, make our beds, clean up the table. I learned to feed the dog. We all variously washed and dried the dishes. To be fair, mother also could wield a mean hammer [actually, and at times figuratively], doing her share of nailing when dad was building the garage. I did look forward to the evenings she was away at choir practice because dad was more daring in the kitchen than she. The two of us shared a love of spicy foods more than mother or my sisters, so those culinary experiments were memorable if not always entirely satisfactory. We all were happy when she was cook du jour again even when tongues did not tingle from dad’s generous dollop of hot sauce.
St. Paul has been trying to explain to the Corinthians (a troubling community, as churches go) and to us for the last several weeks what we are to do when the cook is absent from the premises. The blessed apostle does, in fact, provide a menu in chapter eleven for the meal which will feed us amply for eternity, but these past few weeks he has not been talking about cooking nor chefs any more than the adage, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” refers to the culinarily impaired. St. Paul has finally gotten around to discussing the Church’s reality which has plagued all of Jesus’ disciples and faith communities since the moment he ascended to the right hand of the Father. Jesus himself was even vexed by the issue as we heard in the concluding gospels during Easter. What are we who were left behind after Jesus’ Ascension [Acts 1:6-11] to do until he returns in glory at the end of the ages?
Certainly, given the sense of some New Testament letters, the disciples and other followers at first expected a fairly quick return. After all, Jesus obviously had ascended just to get things ready for us, hadn’t he? However, a few days, a few weeks, eventually months and even years pass, and he still had not returned. St. Paul’s earliest letter we have, the first he sent to the Thessalonians, is punctuated by the urgent request that the faithful remain “blameless” until Jesus returns. He even encourages them in the midst of their anguish over faithful disciples who already have died:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words [I Thess 4:13-18].
This Sunday we will hear this theme continued in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church. It is a later letter, time has continued to pass and the faithful have realized that they really must be about the work of the Lord on their own but still with the Spirit’s continuing presence and guidance. They have been prepared, just like we, by the myriad gifts bestowed on us in the waters of baptism, emboldened and energized by the Spirit to undertake Christ’s holy mission wherever we find ourselves. This is most certainly true whether WE think we’re ready or not. Indeed, Paul assures all of his wide-flung missions that they are gifted, prepared, have endured bootcamp for a good reason, and will be provided by God with everything they [and we] need to remain faithful unto the day of Christ’s return. This is the gist of the passage written by St. Paul we hear this Sunday: So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him [II Corinthians 5:6-9].
Walking by faith and not by sight is Paul’s way of assuring us that we can do quite well in the kitchen of God [a.k.a. all of creation] even with the executive chef ascended to the right hand of the Father. We don’t have to look for someone else to “do it,” to cook an elegant omelet of mercy and grace, or even to pour a generous glass of the water of life for those who hunger and are thirsty. Our baptismal gifting and bootcamp training have made us Jesus’ sous chefs [a.k.a. assistants, disciples, ambassadors, witnesses, and whatever other terms Paul and others have found fit to describe Jesus’ followers] for challenging yet rewarding lives of service until the Good Lord himself finely calls us to the banquet of the blessed. He will be there, too, really and truly, and we shall once again see him face to face. Bon appetit!