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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From August 6, 2006 We missed the miracle, you and I. Last week in John's gospel Jesus took a young boy's loaves and two dried fish, held them up to God in thanks, and then moved slowly across a mountainside full of people sharing what had just been shared with him. You know what happened. By the time Jesus finished, not only was every belly in the crowd full but there was even food left over. Today we stand with Jesus on the other side of this sizeable miracle. But we're not alone. In Capernaum now, Jesus has been followed by the crowd he so ably fed yesterday. Their bellies are growling again, which is why they are here; they know a meal ticket when they find one. Now, you would think that people who fed on a miracle only yesterday might be hungry for more than a meal today. You would think their miracle meal would fuel an appetite for Jesus himself. Nope. What people want is an other free lunch. "Do not work for the food that perishes," Jesus tells the crowd when their shallow pursuit becomes obvious, "but [seek after] the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." When the crowd quizzes Jesus about what this means exactly--this working for eternal food--he tells them itís not about breaking a sweat but rather itís about believing. That's the work Jesus talking about--taking the time, making the time to feast on the truth that he is the one who has come down like manna from heaven. He's the one who has come to feed them what the world cannot provide. Seek after that, Jesus says, seek after the things he's been teaching. Seek after the priorities he's been modeling. If you do, when you do, you'll never again consider yourself hungry. Not like before. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * What am I hungry for? What am I thirsty for? Really. Deep down what am I needing? Is my need right now a physical need? Or is it a spiritual one? How do I even tell the two apart? So many in this well-fed nation of ours don't know the difference between bodily hunger and spiritual stomach-growling. On the Today Show not long ago was a segment highlighting the growing market for faith-based dieting. Instead of simply educating people about proper nutrition and the need for exercise, those at the forefront of this weight loss movement are challenging believers to connect their tendency to overeat with their unmet need for God. The cynic among us might say that this is just one more way to exploit a super-sized and desperate market. "Yeah just go ahead and pray," I hear someone snicker. "And when you say, 'Lead us not into temptation' think about God in heaven delivering you from the evil of biscuits and gravy or that bottomless bowl of buttered popcorn!" But the cynic misunderstands. What these Christian diet advocates are saying is that for too long we have tried to satisfy our spiritual needs by way of our taste buds. Before you take a bite, check your gut, they say. Maybe it isn't a double cheese burger and an order of fries that you want; maybe what you're really hungering for is a healthy, nourishing relationship with God. Maybe beyond the call of the calorie is a call to connect deeply with the One whose love is more constant and enduring than the next handful of Oreos. Of course it's not just food that masks desire for God. Just about anything can. Across the Ohio this morning are folks who will carry home from the gambling boat that same gnawing feeling of emptiness that they brought with them. Even if pockets wind up full of jackpot jingle, something can still feel missing. Psychologist Gerald May wrote a book entitled Addiction and Grace in which he maintained that whether it's work or exercise, whether it's drugs or shopping, any behavior that rules or traps us, any habit that takes away our freedom reveals an unmet need for the Holy One. Created with a hunger for God, when our spiritual bellies are empty, we are apt to look for something to fill the void. And that something else can easily become our master, our god, even when that wasn't our intent. There is a restlessness in our souls. A hunger for the bread of heaven. When we don't have that bread, when we don't know where or how to find it, we'll settle for just about anything. This became clearer than clear to me one day when I took communion to a parishioner I'll call Mrs. Martin. As Mrs. Martin settled into her recliner, I pulled up a chair and carefully set out the elements - a Kaiser roll, a little cup of concord grape juice. That way, when the time came for the Lord's Supper we would be ready. So we began to talk. Or rather, I began to listen. Mrs. Martin talked and she talked and she talked. Over the course of an hour, Mrs. Martin did what she did whenever we were alone. She gave a thorough inventory of the things she was unhappy with. First it was this. And then this reminded her of that. And that reminded her of how upset she was with a family member. And then that led on to something else. And something else. And something else. All things I had heard before. Emotionally and spiritually speaking, Mrs. Martin was living in a prison of her own making. Every time we had spoken, every time I had listened as I imagined Jesus would, I had wanted the same thing for Mrs. Martin: for her to discover that she held the key to the life she so desperately wanted! Early on in our visits, I had gently tried to steer Mrs. Martin away from her complaints to memories of her satisfying career or toward stories from her pioneer heritage. But those efforts had never amounted to much and so I quit trying. This time as I sat listening with love to Mrs. Martinís predictable inventory of irritations, I became keenly aware of the communion elements I had so carefully set out at the beginning of our time together. It was as if they were shouting at me, demanding that I notice them. If we had wanted, either one of us could have reached over and lifted the bread or the cup from the table. They were that close. As I listened to Mrs. Martin's litany of complaint, the irony hit me. Here was the holiest of food right next to us. The bread of life and the cup of hope sitting just this close, just waiting to be taken in, ready to become true spiritual nourishment, a meal just for the two of us with Christ ready to be present in the most intimate of ways. And yet even with the elements standing right next to us like a sacred sentinel, a holy reminder of all that Christ seeks to give, what had we done but fill ourselves with the bitter juice of dissatisfaction and the stale bread of resentment? What had we done but gorge ourselves on a meal that fed nothing but the hard heart and the closed mind? With as much caring as I could put in my voice, I began to speak. "If the saying is true, 'you are what you eat', what are you and I eating this afternoon, Mrs. Martin? Who are we and who do we become, what are we and what do we become when we eat like this?" And then I reminded her of the habit we had whenever we were together. "What are we eating, you and I, when here sits the table Christ sets for us? When this bread and this cup are his flesh, his blood, his sacrifice of love for us? This is what he would have us eat," I said as I turned my open palm toward bread and cup, "food that endures, food that nourishes, food that gives life and hope and meaning. And yet here we are eating something altogether different." It was one of the riskiest moves I've ever made as a pastor. It was my best attempt to do what the writer of Ephesians asserts is an essential part of our faith journey (Eph 4: 15a)--which is to strive to speak the truth in love. You have to understand this: my heart held great affection and respect for Mrs. Martin. In me was no desire to hurt or judge, no need to instill guilt. It was my love for her, my sense of her as God's beloved child that had inspired me to speak as I did. The food she was choosing for herself, the bread she kept insisting on eating would never satisfy her soul, quiet her mind, or feed her hungering heart. In no way was I meaning for Mrs. Martin to make nice by denying her feelings. I wasn't asking that she put on a happy face because Jesus loved her. Powerless to change so many things around her, the most powerful resource she had Mrs. Martin was not using. The power of her faith which teaches that Christ is the king of compassion, the seeker of the lost, the restorer of the home of the heart, the friend to the friendless, the one who knows from experience how excruciating it is have no good options left. This is some of the substantial food Christ feeds us--his profound understand of the lives we have and a way to inhabit those lives in ways that lead onto hope, connection, and meaning. Christ holds himself out to us, day in and day out, hour by hour, moment by moment. And he gives us his complete attention. He gives us his wisdom. He gives us his hope, his peace, his very life. He says "Come to me, gobble me up, take all that I have and all that I am. Take me into the body of your life and let me become part of you, just as what you eat at the dinner table becomes a part of you." When we get this--and Mrs. Martin did to some extent that day and she's still chewing on it--when we get that Christ is more plentiful, reliable, and nourishing than anything we'll ever cook up, that's when we've found our daily bread. Our manna in the wilderness. That's when we discover the truth in what Jesus was saying to the empty-bellied in Capernaum. "The bread of God," Jesus said that day, "the bread of God," says Christ even now, "the bread of God comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Gives life! Gives life! "Sir," said the hungering crowd, "give us this bread always." And he did, and he does, and he always will. Always when we ask. And most certainly when we don't. Why? Because he loves us, and he loves putting an end to our hunger. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
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