What are you
hungry for?
What is it
that you truly hunger for, what you are looking for to feel fulfilled in life?
I spent some time this week listening to people’s hungers; they would go on
about their latest triathlon results or the shopping trips and the atrocious
prices of back to school supplies. There
were people wondering how safe their neighborhood was and wanted more than
anything to know what was going on. I
wish they would tell me, one lady said, that there was a meth lab shut down in
the house down the street.
I heard kids not being allowed to say what
they hungered for; they were bombarded with all kinds of ideas for what they
wanted painted on their cheeks. Some
would accept the suggestions, others would have their own ideas that they would
finally mention in a whisper. Some knew
what they wanted as soon as they sat down, others took a long time to even get
up the courage to come sit near the goofy looking clown with the silly
outfit. Then there were the unspoken
wishes that I could only guess at. Who
knows out of the number of kids I met which ones were living in abusive houses
where addiction or violence is a regular part of life, as normal as the
wallpaper in the living room. Who knows
how many are not getting enough food to eat, or enough love to grow healthy
hearts, minds and souls. The reality is
that I met and chatted with at least one child who has lived with so much
trauma that he or she is already suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress
disorder.
Then there
are my friends and family and connections.
I asked one young adult, and she said, “I am hungry for restored faith
in the base goodness of people.” Wow.
One fellow
said that there are five major issues that people are hungry for, and most
people hunger for one or two of the following:
They feel
abandoned and hunger for home
They feel
betrayed and are fighting for justice
They feel
helpless, like an outcast and crave belonging
They feel
guilty or ashamed and wish for forgiveness
They feel
controlled by a cruel world and long for connection.
What do you
feel when you think about your place in the world? Do you feel abandoned?
Betrayed? Helpless? Guilty? Controlled?
Do you feel some combination of those?
Do you long for home, or justice, or belonging, or forgiveness, or
connection?
Jesus says,
regardless of what you hunger for, I am the answer. I have come so that you might have a
fulfilled and rich life. I have come
that no matter what unfairness you have struggled with, what terrible deeds you
have committed, or how the world has treated you, you will be fed.
What a bold
statement! So bold that his followers
find it too weird to accept. How can
this Jesus say such crazy things? Many
leave, rather than accept his invitation.
They might
be leaving because they think he’s preaching cannibalism, or because he’s
insulting the Law that says to not eat meat with blood in it. They might be leaving because they don’t
understand that he is being metaphorical and poetic in this teaching.
Or maybe
they can’t handle the basic idea at the root of the scandal of Jesus’
teaching. God has come down into the
world with its nitty gritty, painful dirty life. God is living through Jesus, the word made
flesh, which means that God can interact with us in the daily tasks and
challenges. For those who are used to
God as a great ‘theoretical concept’, this is a terribly upsetting idea.
The
followers that leave can’t stomach the scandal of such a repulsive idea, and when
we take the bread and dip it in the cup, we shouldn’t take this for
granted. It was weird back when John
wrote about it, and it is weird now.
Jesus says, “Does this difficult teaching offend you?" A better
translation might be, “does this offensive teaching scandalize you?”
It still
does. We look around at the world and
wonder why on earth God would want to have anything to do with such a pack of
lying, betraying, broken, lonely and helpless bunch of creatures. But the story of God we have received down
the years points to exactly that. God
provides a covenant of hope with the people, God provides mana in the
wilderness, God accompanies them into exile when they thought God was all about
place.
God pushes
the idea of community when they feel most impotent under the rule of the
Romans. Does this scandalize you? Does it scare you that God may still be here?
Jesus calls
us to believe just that, and I find it comforting to know that his word for
believe means to have confidence in, or to trust in. Trust in, dare to trust that in the simple
act of eating bread, God is in your life in the midst of the chaos and the
fear. Practise trust, pretend you trust,
experiment trusting in that crazy idea.
Put on your
safety gear of truth, integrity, courageous peace, faith, and the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray constantly for yourself, your friends
and neighbors, and everyone here who gathers together. Pray also for me, so
that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the
mystery of the gospel, and that I may declare it boldly. Pray that we, as a community continue to look
for the hidden promise that we can all, regardless of what we hunger for, find
the hope and the healing that comes in God’s time to every one of us. Thanks be to God for the mystery of the
gospel message of Jesus, the word made flesh.
Amen!