Sauerkraut Spirituality

What do you do with a giant head of cabbage that may be past its rolling days?

Make sauerkraut of course!  Sure, if you’re super cool and have a pantry that includes gochugaru, dashima and myulchiaekjeot, you’d make kimchi.

My pantry is too full of chips to accommodate this.

Cabbage and salt it is.

Alan Kreider studied the growth of the early church in the Roman Empire. He noticed what may seem counter-intuitive to us in our mega-church culture today:

1. The growth of the church was organic not organized
2. They never wrote about evangelism - but what many did write about was patience
3. They worshipped in private worship services not meant to attract outsiders, yet their numbers grew exponentially in the hostile environment

I massage cabbage leaves with salt, stuff it into a jar, and over time end up with something transformed.  It feels like magic.

But the operative phrase is - “over time”.  PSA: don’t eat from the jar right away unless instant hypertension and gut pain sounds like fun to you.

There is something about having cabbage sit patiently with salt in a dedicated way, that allows that salt to penetrate deep, make new.  What was once hard, inedible, and left alone - prone to rot, becomes tender yet firm, delectable, nourishing for the gut.

We’re in a strange time - hermetically sealed, not able to gather en masse.  But what if God means this time to be - what Kneider calls the way of the early church - the “patient ferment”?  A time to sit with him, allow him to penetrate deep, make us new?

The early church, as they sat with God, worshiped in private, learned patience, began to have Christ deep in their very being.  They went out into the Roman world no longer raw, rotting cabbage, but delightful sauerkraut, firm in their counter-cultural beliefs yet with compassion - even for their enemies.  Through them, Christ entered their neighbours, their co-workers, their communities…God’s Kingdom flourishing in the gut of the empire.

Practice: Lectio Divina

Meditate on Romans 12.  It’s a message Paul wrote to the very church mentioned above.

Memorize Romans 12:12 -

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

Karen Schaffer is the Pastor of Spiritual Formation at The Tapestry Richmond
Photo by ELEVATE