Went to church yesterday, and it wasn’t bad.  The preacher sort of went on and on, but by now we ought to expect that.  And I suppose that since he’s only got us an hour or so a week, he’s feels like he’s got to fire both barrels in hopes that something will hit someone.  But we got three for the price of one this week.   I wonder if maybe he gets his sermons from one of those online discount sermon warehouses that offers specials on multiple sermons for the same text; and since it’d be a shame to waste the extras, he combines them into one.  Do preacher’s computers not have a delete key?   While at my daughter’s college graduation weekend a few years ago,  I asked my mother what she’d thought of the Baccalaureate address which had been given by a highly educated, well respected, first woman president of a prestigious seminary.   Mom’s one sentence review: “She missed three perfectly good stopping places.”  There are certain things which defy the “more is better” principal.   
     Like hot peppers.  Grew a bunch of them in the garden this year, and now I’m having to cut them up, dry them, grind them and pack them into shakers for my dad.  He’s got no nerve endings left in his mouth, they all were burned off in the fiery pepper competition of 2006.  The idea was to see who could grow, and of course eat, the hottest peppers.  I was leading big time with some habaneros that would set your hair on fire from ten paces away.  But Dad got hold of some Florida Grove Pepper seeds from a migrant worker.  They only grow these peppers out in the groves, because planted less than 50 feet from your house is considered a fire hazard.    It is a widely held belief that these peppers are genetically related to the burning bush of Moses’ day. 
     Well, we made our salsa, then sweated and cried like babies as we ate it, each trying to keep up with the other and say things like, “Oh this is really good stuff.  It might could use a little more salt, and maybe just a few more peppers....”  Right.  We were dying.  Fortunately, I died first, or rather, I fried first.  After they swept away my ashes, my dad was still slurping salsa and that’s when we realized he must have burned out every sensory cell in his entire upper body.  But he was happy.  His Grove Peppers had done the trick, and he had bragging rights for another year or two, or forever.  I am not doing that again. 
     Nor will I be drying peppers in the house again, ever.   See, I cut up all the peppers, lay them out on a tray which fits into the toaster oven.  I set the oven for about 180 degrees, put the peppers in, and let them cook for several hours, mixing them up every thirty minutes or so.  You’ve got to watch them ‘cause you don’t want them to burn.   After they cool down, I  grind them in a coffee bean grinder and the pack ‘um into shakers. I’ve got a special grinder for this job, something that one of my daughters didn’t know until she took the first sip of coffee she’d made using beans ground in my pepper grinder.   She knew then.            Not long ago, I’d just finished drying a batch of peppers in the toaster oven. While they were cooling down my wife  walked in from work, went into the kitchen in search of potato chips.  I happened to be upstairs at the time, but I could hear the coughing and hacking and wheezing and sneezing and the windows being flung open and the fans being turned on and the not so  rhetorical question being posed, “What is going on in here and why can’t I breathe?”  The door slammed as she walked out, and it occurred to me that upstairs was a good place to be right then.   A couple hours later one of my daughters popped in for a quick visit, which was indeed quick.  Three steps into the kitchen and she was coughing and wheezing, and tearing up, and not from any sadness.   The potent pepper fumes lingered in the kitchen for a couple of days, costing me several dinners out, a new toaster oven, and yet another addendum to the “thou shalt not’s” of our marriage contract.   Not to mention having to endure the chiding about having fourteen shakers of dried, ground hot peppers with only one person in the whole world who can eat them. 
     More is not always merrier.  Sometimes less is more.  Or, as the Brylcream commercial of ages ago stated, “A little dab’ll do ya’.”   Biblical texts are like that.  Most of them don’t need many more words added.  They explode from the pulpit, and anything shot out afterwards, mostly misses the mark.  The shortest verse of all, “Jesus wept,” leaves us gasping at the implications and staggering under the weight of God caring to the point of crying.    And how could, “God is love,”need any more spicing up, really?  Could anything be more potent than, “In the beginning God...” or, “For God so loved the world...”   Their aroma lingers on into the week, a delicious fragrance that won’t cost you another toaster oven.  
     On any given Sunday, there are a lot of double barrel preachers standing in their pulpits, shooting off their mouths at a lot of parishioners who’ve ended up like my dad, desensitized.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” the psalmist invites.  But the weekly force- feedings have left them tasting nothing, and seeing only the hands on the clock as they pass the noon mark.    As potent and powerful, as blistering and fiery, as spicy and lingering as the Scriptures are, maybe a little less, or a little less about them, would help us taste more of their goodness and savor the flavor they bring to life.