Casserole Kitchen receives GIVE Award
BY SARAH RAINES life@starkvilledailynews.com
Casserole Kitchen was given the 2017 Governor's Initiative for Volunteer Excellence Award on Thursday as Mississippi's Most Outstanding Faith-Based Collaboration Initiative, and a ceremony was held before Thursday's weekly dinner to acknowledge each church that has a role.
Casserole Kitchen began in 2009 and serves freshly prepared, warm meals to families in need three times a week. There are 15 churches involved in the collaboration. Around 170 volunteers who work together to put a meal on the table every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church and every Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection.
Around 40 people were in attendance as co-chairs of Casserole Kitchen Loren Zimmerman and Rex Buffington presented the certificates to representatives from different churches. After the ceremony, they served catfish to attendees.
"The first time we served a meal, nobody came," Zimmerman said. "Then it began to grow and now, we never know how many we're going to have. We may have 10 one night, 40 the other. We average about 25 to 30."
Nominations are accepted for the GIVE Awards each year for volunteer groups that make an impact on communities they serve. The previous director of Volunteer Starkville Jamey Bachman nominated the Casserole Kitchen for the award earlier this year.
"It's great to get that award, and to know people are recognizing that it is pretty amazing when you get 15 churches to come together and work on a project like this," Buffington said.
Buffington said there are both familiar and new faces at every Casserole Kitchen meeting, and that the ministry serves to help people in times of need. The ministry serves hot meals to as many as 120 people a week.
Zimmerman said they are looking to add two or three churches to the Casserole Kitchen's meal preparation rotation, and that if anyone is interested, they may contact him or Buffington.
"I think the collaboration between the churches is such a blessing," Buffington said. "Even with as big and strong as so many of our churches are, I don't think anybody could do this ministry alone, but when we come together, we're able to do it really well."
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is one of the best-selling albums of all time, though it's a wonder it ever got recorded at all. The inner turmoil of the band at the time is now legendary – breakups and divorce, the excesses of the midseventies hedonism and drug use, etc.
The first single from Rumours was
“Go Your Own Way,” written by guitarist Lindsay Buckingham after his breakup with vocalist Stevie Nicks.
The lyrics capture a recurring biblical image – a person spurned by an uncommitted lover.
Buckingham sings: “If I could, Baby, I'd give you my world. How can I, when you won't take it from me? Tell me why everything turned around? Packing up, shacking up's all you wanna do. You can go your own way. Go your own way.”
The prophet Jeremiah uses the lovers analogy to describe the relationship between God and humanity. God is the spurned lover watching, heartbroken, as we continuously sneak out at night chasing after other little-g gods under every rock and in every nook and cranny: the gods of money, power, fame, security, dominance, winning.
The lyrics reflect the story of God and humanity from the very beginning. God wants to give us God's Kingdom, but we won't take it – we stay closed to it, we run from it, and, yes, we go our own way.
And yet, God still waits and watches and searches …
The Apostle Paul is convinced that there is nothing – nothing! – that can separate us from God's love for us in Christ. We can all name things that others have done to us or that we've done ourselves that – in our eyes – goes beyond the line which God's love cannot and will not cross. We can all name others, and sometimes even ourselves, as being far, far beyond the love of God.
And yet, Paul is convinced …
Remember Psalm 139? Where can we go that is too far? Where can we go that God is not? Even if we jump headfirst into all the darkest darkness of the world seeking to escape from God, so dark there is no light … even when we go our own way, and close ourselves off to the world God wants to give us … even then, we cannot separate ourselves from God's love for us.
Preachers preach and people hear the Christian message as one of sin and separation from God, which to a certain degree is true. The overarching biblical message, though, from the beginning to the end, and especially in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, is that even with all of our sins and all of our running away we can never cross a line beyond which God will not go … for God is already there waiting to embrace us again.
Yes, our human patterns and our personal behaviors reflect that although God offers us the Kingdom, “packing up, shacking up” is all we want to do.
But, if we “open our eyes and look at the day,” we “may see things in a different way” …
One of the most enduring hits from Rumours is the hopeful “Don't Stop”:
When you look at the world around you, are you filled with despair? Do you see a God-forsaken world? Or, can you see past the worst of the worst, through the darkness, and see the love of God at work in spite of it all? Can you look into the dark void of humanity and see the love of God in Christ moving and reconciling and redeeming? Can you see glimpses of God's Kingdom breaking through?
In so many Fleetwood Mac songs, we hear our human stories with all their betrayal and pain, and love and heartbreak. But, if we listen closely, we may also hear the Gospel and the promise of the God's will being done on earth as it is in Heaven: Don't stop thinking about tomorrow, it'll soon be here. Yesterday's gone! Yesterday's gone!
Yes, I hear a lot of biblical stories in Fleetwood Mac's catalog, but I'll leave it to your own imagination to make the connection between the Song of Solomon and “You Make Loving Fun.”
Rev. Bert Montgomery pastors University Baptist Church in Starkville, teaches sociology and religion courses at Mississippi State University, and thinks angels probably sound a lot like Christine McVie. Contact him at bert@bertmontgomery.com.