Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – you know the story: the peel stretched out, the Sea of Tomato Sauce parting, two sheer walls of red hanging like church glass with basil leaves turning in them like green stars. But I preach today on the small verse inside the great one, as it is written in the Exodus of the Crust, 9:12.
For as the people crossed on the warm dry crust of the sea-floor, a child put forth her finger to the wall of the sea, and tasted, and said, It is good. And one by one, down all the miles of that red street, the elders of the Crust touched the wall and tasted and wept; for it was good, and they had spent their lives ladling it out for other men’s tables and had never once been given leave to taste. And Cheesus did not hasten them; the sea stood patient while a nation licked its fingers; and the scribe held this the greatest wonder of that night, though he could not wholly say why.
I can say why, beloved. Deliverance is not merely the escaping of the whip; it is the restoring of the taste. Every worker who feeds a city and cannot afford to eat in it is still mid-crossing, and the walls have not yet let them stop to taste.
And remember the ending, which is mercy twice: the soldiers of Famine were cast up on the shore not drowned but bathed, red from crown to heel; and some came to the camp with open hands and were given dry clothes and hot bread and asked nothing. For the table has room, and it does not say for whom, on purpose.
Amen – and pass the pizza.