The summer between seventh and eighth grade, I
got my first job. Employed by a well to do couple in north Dallas, I took
care of their dogs, cut the grass and did every manner of odd job
imaginable—painting the picnic table, emptying out the leaves from the
gutters and cleaning the swimming pool. It was hard work. I remember
coming home at the end of the day dog tired and dirty. But I have to say
that in all the time I worked there, never did I go home hungry. See, from
the very beginning, lunch was a part of the deal, a fringe benefit you might
say which meant I always had access to the refrigerator. So, every day I
would feast on leftovers—exquisite pastas, delicious soups, sumptuous breads
and once even a Dixie cup full of Beluga caviar. (Hey, give me a break!
How was I a thirteen year old kid supposed to know how to eat them?) Of
course when lunch was over, with my stomach full of all kinds of delicious
delicacies, going back to work was the last thing in the world that I wanted
to do.
Here in the land of plenty, it’s difficult to
imagine lacking life’s essentials for any extended period of time, to know
what it means to be really hunger and thirst. I mean, when our tanks are
empty, we do exactly what I did at my first job, with nary a second thought
to the refrigerator or the pantry and get something to tide us over. When
we start to get a little cotton mouth, when the sweat starts rolling down
our brow the solution lies no farther away than the kitchen tap or the
bottle of Ozarka in the cooler.
With relief at our fingertips, we have a hard
time fully appreciating what Jesus is talking about. “I am the bread of
life.” He declares. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever
believes in me will never be thirsty…Whoever eats of this bread will live
forever.” In a world of modern conveniences, where hunger and thirst are
more or less minor inconveniences in the living of life, why should we be
concerned? In the eating, in the drinking, what word is there for us, for
you and for me?
That isn’t to say that even well fed, well
hydrated people don’t experience hunger and thirst. In his book, How
Much is Enough Arthur Simon shares the story of former network
television producer Gerard Straub and of why he abandoned his lucrative
career. “The joys I’ve experienced in life have all been lined with
sadness…All around me, I see people fighting to suppress the sadness by
searching for joy in a wide array of ways: sex, power, fame, fortune,
drugs. We crowd into gigantic malls and gobble up all the goodies on
display. We consume more than we need because we think that we need more
than we have…But the sadness remains.” Yes, the God awful truth is that
sometimes only the sadness remains and the only fitting to describe us is
“empty.”
The Secret Life of Bees is the name of
the book our Ascension Book Club is reading. I don’t
want to give everything away, because I hope you’ll read it sometime, but
suffice to say that it’s the story about a girl named Lily who runs away
from her abusive father to try and find out about her mother who died in a
tragic accident when Lily was three. Towards the end of the story in a fit
of rage she ransacks her room, smashing glass and throwing things against
the wall. Finally spent, she lies down on her side and draws her knees
towards her chin. “I lay in the emptiness,” notes, “in the tiredness, with
everything, even the hating drained out.”
At the end of the day, when all is said and
done, none of us is immune to such sadness and emptiness, kind of hunger and
thirst that nothing seems to satisfy. That’s not to say that we don’t try.
Our human inclination is to fill the abyss with anything that promises to
take away the pain or at least numb us to it for a while—food, money,
possessions, alcohol, drugs, more and more work, just about anything I
guess. Trouble is though, while they may give us the quick fix or the quick
high, in the long run they simply don’t do the job and wind up killing us
instead, if not physically, then emotionally or spiritually.
But Jesus comes to give hungry people
something else to eat. “He said to them, ‘I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will
never be thirsty.’” For spiritually starving folks, wandering about in a
wilderness of empty hopes, for those who spend their filling themselves with
empty calories, chasing after empty promises, for folks like you and me,
Jesus comes to give something else to eat, living bread from heaven, “that
one may eat of it and never die.” He is the bread that sinners like us are
invited receive as we gather around the table. Jesus—the Bread of Life, the
only food in this world that won’t get stale and moldy, the only food
without an expiration date, the only food that isn’t going to wind up on the
trash heap, Jesus Christ the food that will not perish.
Of course that isn’t to say that partaking of
such bread is our free pass in life, that there won’t be pain, suffering and
death. None other than St. Paul himself reminds us that that “as often as
you eat of this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death
until he comes again.” Fed with the “one heavenly food” we’re not plucked
out of the world, but sent right out into the thick of it, to proclaim in
word and deed the one who suffered and died for us all. Before he died on
the cross, Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father, “As you have sent me, so
I have sent them into the world.” And we aren’t sent out with empty hands
or empty stomachs. Filled with everything we need, we are sent, sent into a
hungry, hurting world to be God’s bread, to be Christ’s body broken and shed
“for the life of the world.”
Think of it! We as the church serve as
Christ’s bread “for the life of the world.” I think of the many ways in
which together we as a congregation are God’s bread for a hungry world, not
because we’re a particularly appealing and appetizing lot, not because we’re
such great people, but because of God at work in us, period! In our medical
lending program, through the ministry of our day school, as we are sent out
in peace to serve the Lord and our neighbor in simple acts of love each and
every day.
I’m also reminded that when we give our
gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal*,
one of the ministries we support is Bread
for the World* one of our partner organizations. Now some of you may
have heard of Bread, especially through the
One Campaign*
to eliminate world hunger, a movement symbolized in the white rubber
bracelets a lot of people are wearing these days. Bread is a nationwide
Christian movement that seeks justice for the world's hungry people by
lobbying our nation's decision makers. In a politically polarized culture
like ours, it’s one of the few truly bi-partisan organizations left. It’s
an organization that I believe in, so much so that I’ve become a member
myself.
As a congregation we might even consider
becoming a covenant church with Bread for
the World*. What that would mean for us as a congregation is that we
commit in our worship and learning to seek God’s message for us regarding
our brothers and sisters, to learn about the causes of and solutions to
hunger, emphasizing the role of public policy. It would mean that in our
working and giving we help hungry people in our community, support our own
ELCA World Hunger Appeal* and
participate in the work of the Bread for the
World* movement, encouraging individuals to become involved as well,
writing letters to state and national legislators that encourage them to
remember the needs of the hungry. Finally, it would mean that in our living
we give prominence to the needs of hungry people and to reflect in our lives
an awareness of our role as stewards of God’s gifts.
A day when all hunger is banished, where all
thirst is quenched—can you imagine such a world? But with God all things
are possible. Jesus who is Bread for the World comes to fill the world’s
emptiness, to quiet our fear, to banish the shadow of unbelief. Jesus who
is our Bread brings to the world joy that is God’s will today as we wait in
hope and expectation for life in the world to come. Come now, take and eat
for here is the Bread that lasts. Amen.
Pastor Brian Peterson
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