red cabbage

Can you ever make soup using red cabbage?

Well, at one level, of course you can! I just did. Today (and not for the first time either!)

I called it 'Tartan Tommies' and combined the red cabbage with red plum tomatoes and red tomatoes roasted in the oven. The problem, I've come to see, is that 'red' cabbage is not actually red. It's purple.

More red than the green cabbage, certainly. And (at a stretch, and even then only maybe) 'red' at least in the sense of being a deep, deep red. But not literally 'red'.

And it doesn't matter how many red plum tomatoes or red roasted tomatoes or red anything else you add, the 'red' cabbage (which is actually purple) seems to win the colour stakes!

And though folk seemed to like the description of the soup and the smell of the soup (and if they'd got that far) even the taste of the soup, show them the colour and ... well, a polite no thanks!

Now you can see that I'm getting a thing about this whole business of purple soup!

But you can surely see as well that it is in fact a kind of culinary and unfair discrimination against this brand of cabbage: a sort of gastronomic racism, if you like. A colour prejudice.

Which effectively means that although you actually can make soup using red cabbage - in practice you can't! At least, if you do, no one's prepared to eat it (so what's the point of making it?)!

We were talking about this sort of thing over lunch today. Not the red cabbage as such, nor soup for that matter. But the way our ingrained ways of thinking prevent us even countenancing anything else.

It was the monthly 'fraternal' today. A meeting of fellow pastors from around the locality. These times are usually warm and good. But recently they've become more and more lively and stimulating.

Amazing what sitting round a table eating food can do to folk! They're all so relaxed, it's great. So the chat is good as well. And we ended up addressing once again some fairly major themes.

Why it is God's people don't seem able to communicate their faith. How former ways of 'doing church' just will not work today. And how those ingrained ways of thinking can present just such a barrier to the progress of God's work.

It's the 'red cabbage' problem all over again! If 'church' is not a 'colour' that I'm happy with - well, it's just not church! And I won't touch it!

The folk today were happy enough with the carrot soup. Orange for soup is OK, it would seem (the future is orange, of course!).

But then carrots themselves, when you stop and think about it - carrots themselves aren't orange at all: they're actually purple!

They're only orange because they've been dyed. That's not the way they were made to be.

And I think that's true of the church today: the colour of our life today is not the way it's meant to be - and not the way it was.

I'm trying to get back to the way it's meant to be. What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ? What does it mean to be his church?

The only dying that counts is the death that Jesus died. That death is coloured purple: it was the king who died. And purple's the colour of royalty.

Red cabbage stuff again. For the 'colour' of his death is meant to stain our lives and leave our living always 'purple' too. We've a lot to learn about getting right back to how it's meant to be.

It was, therefore, good to be seeing this afternoon a couple about their marriage. The girl grew up in the church and the man seemed a lovely guy.

And a privilege always for me to be asked to take them on from where they're presently at. That's what Jesus did. Finding out where people were at and taking them on from there.

That's really all I'm called to do. To open up the future for these folk (and yes, I know the future's orange!) and give them something way beyond thheir wildest dreams!