Where Have You Gone Twinkies?

"The future of the Twinkie remains uncertain..." so says a newspaper article today.  A couple days ago the bakery that makes the world famous Twinkie shut down in the midst of a labor dispute.  Since that announcement the nation has had to come to grips with the very real possibility that there will be no more Twinkies. 

I have not been surprised by the national response.  People everywhere are talking about it.  The Twinkie represents America in many ways and on many levels and the idea that these soft, spongy twin yellow cakes filled with delicious cream filling might be gone forever has struck a pretty strong cord.  The Twinkie that we have taken for granted might be no more. 

Is there any snack cake quite like the Twinkie?  It can withstand a nuclear blast.  Its convenient and cheap.  Its has a unique taste that we loved as kids but grew to think otherwise as adults.  The Twinkie represents our society's unhealthy eating habits and yet is ingenious: an easy snack for any time and place.  It represents American ingenuity and a simpler time when we didn't care about what we fed our kids.  It was the first purchase many kids made as young consumers.  Where have you gone Twinkies?

As much as anything the Twinkie touches our very sensitive nostalgia button: A button that is lit bright red (and green) this time of year.  "O the way things used to be."  We mourn our childhood and lost loved ones.  We miss at least the ideas of what life used be like and those Twinkies, just like Christmas, play an important role in those memories of the mind.

No spot is so dear to my childhood...

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?  Where have you gone Twinkies?  Where have you gone the happy Christmases of the past?  Where have you gone O church in the wildwood?

Nostalgia is to faith as Twinkies are to Holy Communion.  It is a phony, sugary substitute that is bad for our health physically and spiritually.  Jesus is Lord today and calls you to follow today.  When we do consider the past, we do it through the eyes of faith... thanking God for the great cloud of witnesses that sowed the seeds of faith in us and our community.

We will begin our Jubilee Year, Fiftieth Anniversary celebration this month at Resurrection with our Christmas Tapestry concert on Sunday, December 16.  We thank God for the many ways we have been Making Christ Known to All through the years and we will look back, not through the cloudy sticky nostalgic lens we use when we look at the Twinkie, but through the lens of truth based on faith in Christ.  God is on the loose right now and will be doing great things through all of you today and tomorrow because of the Spirit's unending power.

Personally, I think we're going to have Twinkies for a long time to come.  But if we don't I suppose we can hold on the memories of those delicious cakes and that cream filling unlike any other...  We will be fine.  We will also have Christ from now till everlasting.  Christ is King and his Kingdom will stand forever.  Having been bathed in the waters of baptism this future is assured.