The Best Kind of Chicken Sandwich

My birthday was last week, the last birthday I will celebrate as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru by the way. My friends came to my house in Peru, and Dr. Sara made this chicken sandwich that she promised me last year as my birthday gift that she would make for me again. It's this incredible sandwich she created with a salsa from passion-fruit (maracuya), cucumbers, sauteed onions and her handmade flat bread! Yum! I absolutely love this sandwich! After we ate the sandwiches, we had this amazing beetcake (you just have to try it) and brownies and Tina's fancy mac-n-cheese with a layer of crunched bacon. I looked around at all my friends sitting near the fire telling funny stories. A few of my primary students showed up and we taught them how to make smores. We sang the U.S. and Peruvian National Anthems and danced around the fire. One of my sitemates, Annie, made a touching speech about why she loved and appreciated me. I carried my sweet 7 year-old host brother to his mom after he fell asleep around the campfire, too excited to go to bed. I went to sleep on the hard ground in our tent feeling so very loved.

I think about the ways in which Jesus used food, and who he invited to dine with him. There is this one story (parable) that Jesus tells where a man invites honored guests to a dinner, but they all one-by-one find different reasons to not attend. And so the guy decides to invite random people from the streets and the alleyways to his dinner instead (Luke 14). When I think about what it will be like to sit down and eat a chicken sandwich with Jesus (and we will eat chicken sandwiches!), I imagine many different things. I can imagine my great appreciation of just having that moment. I can imagine myself moments before crying at his feet, cleaning his feet with my tears like that woman in the Bible. I imagine feeling loved and accepted, with one of his arms around me. But I will never for even a moment imagine a Jesus that would greet me with anything other than a with a great celebration that we're finally together. And he knows my voice all too well. He hears me when I beat my chest in my room and cry out for the ways that I am selfish, and the ways that I hurt others or don't do what I should. Jesus hears me when I pray for new ways to feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned and clothe the naked (see Matt. 25).

And one day, I hope we can eat a chicken sandwich together and he can teach me more about how to bring this Kingdom of God in my every move...or maybe just enjoy laughing together. For those of you who are from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered community who have associated chicken sandwiches differently with Jesus this week, I hope this gives you a different image. You are loved. You are not sick. And one day, the chicken sandwich will reign supreme again.

And if you are reading this right now and ate a chicken sandwich this week to make a point about free speech. Here's to freedom of speech. And here's to finding ways to encourage free speech that don't make others hate Christianity and the Church even more. Here's to breaking bread with all of our brothers and sisters, and not alienating people. I got online and felt so hurt, and sick to my stomach. And none of those photos of people with chicken sandwiches made me want to pray with those people or go to their churches - the opposite in fact. And then I thought about my friends making me that chicken sandwich, and what it would be like to share some "sandwich time" with the Creator of the Universe. And I think I might want to go pick one up at the Peruvian chicken stand tonight for dinner after all.