Pot Roast

I love pot roast. A good pot roast begins to build anticipation in your nose. The aroma fills the house and teases you with the beauty that you are about to experience. That succulent tender meat is swimming in a gravy made from its own rich drippings. The carrots and potatoes have drunk in all the flavors swimming in that pot. Somehow this simple medley creates something beautiful. It is a work of art as far as I am concerned. Momma would typically start this work of art and love early on Sunday mornings. She would break out the Crock Pot in the morning hours, chop potatoes and carrots to place around the meat. Then the magic, she mixes the seasoning in some sort of mysterious way that creates both a hearty and tender meat that perfectly accents the vegetables around it and a gravy that ties the whole thing together.
Sunday after church was when the magic was finished. We would come into a house full of the aroma of home. Pop, Momma, Matt, Daniel, and I would gather around the table and dig into this masterpiece of meat. I would always be the one to kick off the serving line, no need to be shy we are all family, right!?!? Daniel consistently got the best cut, not sure how that happened. The speculation is that he was/is the favorite son. As we gathered around the family table the aroma would transform that ordinary moment into something magical. We would sit and talk for hours. This Sunday afternoon ritual anchored our family and our lives.
I went to Africa for three months on a mission trip my sophomore year in college. At the end, a gracious missionary family invited us into their home to discuss our experience, and they made pot roast! I was excited. We had been eating the local food for three months and it was delicious! But my tastebuds were craving home and pot roast is one of my favorites. We sat down and it looked different… Momma’s pot roast is shredded, this was sliced. That is alright though, I am sure that it will be good. Wait, where is the gravy??? I sat down wholly disappointed as one of my favorite meals had been executed in such a different way that it was almost unrecognizable. I ate it begrudgingly to be polite, but I missed home.
To be more specific, I guess I should say, I love my Momma’s pot roast. I loved getting to sit down with my family around that pot and share our lives. I loved those Sundays catching up with each other and discussing our future. We had that anchor that brought us together almost every single week and it centered our family, and it was around this work of art made of salt, meat, fat, and vegetables. 
Katie, my wife, makes a delicious pot roast too! Her pot roast begins in a cast iron Dutch oven and the potatoes are usually mashed in another pot. It looks different than Momma’s, but it is delicious. Over the years we tried to recreate my Mom’s roast and her Mom’s too, but it just did not work. Those roasts were not necessarily bad, they just did not work for us. I think the magic is in the pot. Katie’s roast does a lot of the same stuff. The aroma fills our house and creates anticipation in your nose just the same. The meat becomes tender and shreds with a fork. It swims in succulent gravy. Katie, Nora, Amelia, and I sit around the table and dig into this piece of art that creates a sacred feeling of awe and home.
Our family has changed over the years. Matt and Daniel have wives and kids, and their own houses too. There are times that I wish we could have one of Momma’s pot roasts and some time to just be anchored again. But that moment is past. I do not say that in a begrudging or angry way. As a matter of fact, I love all my nieces and nephews and sisters-in-law and the new place that we are. Our Sunday gathering went from five to seventeen. I love when we get together, and the house is loud and we share a table together. I love to see the cousins conspiring and creating games together. This new place we are in is a result of those Sunday lunches. Without that table and meat anchoring our small family together we would not have the ability to create new families that show that same love and care to each other.
Churches are like that pot roast on Sunday afternoons. It brings people in from all over and anchors their lives to the Lord and to each other. A church creates other churches (just like a family creates other families). As our families grow and change the church must grow and change with them. There are times when the church seems unrecognizable to the people within it. Not because of some terrible thing but because the family dynamic changes. Katie makes pot roast very different than Momma, but the goal is still the same. We are trying to create an anchor point for our kids around the table to talk and share. My parents do not get to come to this table in the same way that they did before, but they do not complain about the roast we make. They are just glad to be a part of the table. I hope they feel some pride and love as they see our family (and Matt and Daniel’s) carrying on this same anchoring tradition. 
As Church style changes I hope the previous generation will not grow bitter and angry about the change but be excited that because of all the work and love that they had we are carrying on the tradition.