A few years ago, the New York Times ran a piece about a new trend you may not have heard about. ¹

It seems that all across the country, and to some extent, the world, people are choosing to remember their relatives by carving one of their cherished recipes on their gravestone. 

As in: “Mom’s Christmas Cookies: cream one cup sugar, half a cup oleo, add two beaten eggs and one teaspoon vanilla,” …etc. 

It’s not clear that mom’s name or her dates are even on the stone at all – though maybe they’re on the other side?

But according to the Times:

“In cemeteries from Alaska to Israel, families have memorialized their loved ones with the deceased’s most cherished recipes carved in stone. These dishes — mostly desserts — give relatives a way to remember the sweet times and, they hope, bring some joy to visitors who discover them among the more traditional monuments.”

God help us, now we are trying to put our own “spin” on death. 

Of course, there are other issues, too. 

In one case, the gravestone company apparently made an error on a fudge recipe which nobody caught until twenty years later, when the other grandparent died…and so for twenty years, anyone who actually gave the recipe a try had been making runny fudge. 

I don’t know about your grandmother, but mine would have gone bananas about something like that, not that she would have wanted to be remembered in that way.

“Everything I did and said, and you remember me for pumpkin pie? And you don’t even specify that you need to use ‘One Pie Pumpkin’ and only ‘One Pie Pumpkin?!’”

My grandmother was not someone inclined to profanity, but in this case, she might have considered it. 

Still, it is an interesting trend. 

If you were going to be known in perpetuity for just one recipe, what would it be?

Do you know?

And what would keeping it alive mean to you? 

Does it mean the generations will follow it exactly that way forever? 

Or does “keeping it alive” mean that each generation gets to build on it…introduce variations…go with “an experiment” in some years and put that before the family jury?  

The handing down of recipes is a powerful legacy. 

II.

This seems to be especially worth pondering on a holiday weekend – and all the more so on this particular holiday weekend. 

The Fourth of July is the most important of our civic holidays, and replete with tradition. 

More deeply, July 4^th is the day when we remember how the Founders left us a recipe. 

Their own moment was powerfully experimental. 

It had to be.

Their circumstances were chaotic and, at times, terrifying. 

If what they built could not endure, the future would be bleak, indeed. 

So when Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” it is important to remember how little  actually was self-evident. 

Yet he and the Founders believed that to be human itself was to be endowed with certain rights, among them, as Jefferson notes, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

That particular phrase is closely associated with Jefferson but comes from the English philosopher John Locke. 

The Founders agreed that whatever followed needed to start from those principles. 

Any vision of a workable future needed to begin there. 

And throughout our history, when things have become less than self-evident, we have returned to that recipe. 

We have tested our understanding of the way forward by going back to this particular affirmation. 

We argue over its meanings. 

After all, what is it to “pursue happiness”? 

But we come back to the question because it’s always a good question, though rarely an easy one. 

And it is in our capacity to wrestle with it that we are equipped to move forward.

III.

Similarly, in our Gospel this morning, Luke describes a moment when Jesus sends out 70 of his followers to proclaim the Good News throughout the countryside. 

It is another story of equipping. 

And what comes through so powerfully is how carefully Jesus is trying to prepare them.

He knows it won’t be easy. 

He knows that in the days to come, his followers will be rejected by many and scrutinized by everyone. 

He even tells them that he’s sending them out as sheep into the midst of wolves—hard words. 

But he knows that he has to start getting them ready. 

He knows that the transformation of the world depends on him, but he also knows that God does not seek to work unilaterally, imposing anything upon a passive Creation. 

God imagines real partnership. 

This means that happiness, or its deeper cousins, joy and purpose, will have to come more gradually, and not by any grand decree from above. 

The full blessings God intends for His world will only happen as the world finds its own way to find Him.

God knows that this will be the work of many hands.

The Bible makes clear that establishing Israel, God’s covenant people, is an ongoing project. 

As someone in the trenches, Jesus knows there will be failures and false starts alongside of the successes—that’s already happened to him, too. 

And so he gives the disciples this recipe—these steps to follow as they go out on the roads in his name. 

What is that recipe?

He’s not all that specific about that part. 

According to Luke, Jesus just says to tell everyone that “the Kingdom of God has drawn near.” 

Maybe that’s a little bit like the idea of the “pursuit of happiness,” which is to say, maybe it’s a more of a touchstone. 

It gives you a way to name something you see—or feel—not once, but continually. 

Like the question, “What would Jesus do?” it can never be answered once and for all. 

This call to recognize the Kingdom of God as it draws near leaves the people in each town with something to debate and discover together, even find new meaning in, well after the missionaries have moved on.

A bit ominously, Jesus continues:

But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say,

10:11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

That means, offer people these words, knowing that they may not mean much to them now, but in the hope that someday, they will. 

Ultimately, only God can know when a seed will finally ripen and bear fruit.

That will prove true even for the disciples, themselves, who have worked so hard and given up so much to listen.

Jesus knows that God doesn’t just save us once, but constantly, provided that we learn to listen well and keep listening. 

In our own fraught moment, it is imperative that faithful people try, and that we learn to imagine and describe the Kingdom of God in ways that serve to make us not just great, but also good. 

This is the form of happiness it seems to me that Jesus would have us pursue. 

IV.

Recipes have the power to remind us where we’re from, who we are, and the great legacy of all that has been done for us.

They are alive—growing and changing, as we grow and change, but always seeking to call us back should we stray too far. 

They are a central expression of the love and wisdom of families…the love and wisdom of nations. 

But most of all, they are a central expression of the love and wisdom of Jesus.

May we join the work to which they call us.

May those who follow receive it from our hands with gratitude and joy.                                  

Amen. 

1. NB: This sermon is a heavy revision of a sermon from July 3, 2022. Section 3 is very different from that earlier version. ↩︎