August 12, 2018

John 6:35, 41-51       

1 Kings 19:4-8                   

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

     When were you the hungriest you’ve ever been?  Some of you shared last week about working on a farm and how hungry that hard work made you.  I remember after delivering Sterling, I was ready to order everything on the menu at the hospital and the food tasted so good.  And as I produced milk, that took so many calories, the food you all brought by tasted so good.  I know you’re good cooks, but food never tasted so good as it did those early weeks when I was nursing.  Hard work makes us hungry.  Other times we’re hungry because we’ve been walking a long way.  Sterling can get pretty picky about what he eats, but when we were hiking at Yellowstone, he ate pretty much everything we put in front of him.  He was working his body hard, and any and all food was devoured.

      We are so used to having so much food and so many choices, we hardly have a chance to get hungry before we eat again.  Maybe we don’t realize what the manna meant to the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, and expending all that energy walking.  Maybe because we have so much, we miss part of the meaning of Jesus telling us over and over again, “I am the bread of life.”

      The Israelites had left their usual food behind, their whole way of life behind, which was kind of the point.  They left their homes, their garlic and fleshpots as we heard last week, their soup and bone broth.  They left their work.  They left their slavery.  They had a routine they followed for hundreds of years.  They had an identity as an oppressed people.  In the desert, they didn’t have any way of supporting themselves.  They were scared.  They were hungry.  They were tired.  They were whiney. 

     So God gives them food.  God gives them quail.  God gives them manna.  God gives them instructions to build community and ensure safety and good order.  God gives them a guiding pillar.  God gives them marching orders.  God gives them opportunities to learn and trust and work together and build confidence.  God gives them responsibility.  God gives them food for their bellies, but also food for their minds, their spirits.  God is giving them food and God is giving them life—life beyond food, life beyond slavery to their bellies or Egyptian masters, life beyond power-grabbing.  This is the kind of life that spreads life to others and ensures lasting, abundant life for all.

     The people long for the life they knew.  They want the same, same, same that they always knew.  They want what they are used to—the food they are used to, the treatment they are used to, the work, they are used to, the slavery they are used to.  Learning and moving into freedom is going to be harder than they thought, plus it wasn’t even their idea. God thought it up and shared it with Moses.  Nobody asked these poor Israelites.  But God knew that slavery was not really living, and God keeps handing over this new life to people whether we want it or not.  So God led the people out of Egypt.

     Now God is hearing them complain and being very patient.  But if they want the same, same, same, God is going to give it to them.  They will eat the same food day in and day out.  Manna for breakfast, Manna for lunch, manna and quail for dinner.  Manna pudding, Manna cakes, fried manna, manna sandwiches, manna crutons, manna soup, crunchy manna in milk.  The good part is, they are pretty hungry, because they are on the move, they are active, they are going somewhere.  So they are bound to devour whatever is put in front of them.

      God doesn’t feed the people to stay still and stay slaves to their old life.  God feeds people on the move.  Each week we come to eat at this table and the idea is that even though we keep coming back to this place, we are on the move.  We are on the move as individuals, learning how to live abundantly in our everyday lives, learning to look to our pillar to lead us, learning to be free of all that we are enslaved to, learning to respond to other wanderers in need.  So we come not with bibs on, but with our hiking boots.  We are going someplace, and we are taking this food we have eaten to strengthen us for the journey.  We’ve got a 40 mile trek ahead of us, 7 day one, or a 40 year one that we’re on to discover how to be God’s people of blessing and trust and abundant life.  We come to this table, not with our bib on, but our apron, because we’re not just consumers of food, we are using this energy not just for ourselves, but to go out and serve the poor, free the prisoner, visit the sick, comfort the bereaved, and live in a new way, live abundantly in relationship with all God’s Creation.

      Elijah was one prophet on the move.  He lay down beneath the broom tree because he thought his life was done.  He had just destroyed the prophets of Baal, the false prophets.  Jezebel was after him for it to murder him.  But God fed him so that his ministry could continue.  The very next part of the story, Elijah experiences a whirlwind, earthquake, and fire, but none were the voice of God.  Instead God could be heard in the still small voice, the sound of sheer silence.  Not only is Elijah not done on this long journey God has fed him for, he has the chance to listen to the voice of God, who then tells him to go anoint a new king of Israel as well as a prophet.  Elijah has every reason to expect that his life is over, just like the Israelites in the wilderness.  They had no way of getting food for that many people.  They expected to die of hunger.  Both they and Elijah were ready to give up, but God fed them and not just with food, but with leadership skills, and challenges, and community, and instructions, and power. 

       We are fed, not so we stay the same, although we may like how we’re doing things.  We may very well be comfortable with the way we do things as individuals or a congregation.  But God is feeding us not for us to stand still, but because there is still work to do, the journey is not over.  We may at times feel like giving up, but somehow God keeps feeding us day in and day out, and we find ourselves still alive, still going places.

    God was taking the Romans from one way of being on a journey to new life, from malice and slander, and bitterness, and anger, and wrath, and wrangling and evil talk, to kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, grace.  God was taking them from the slavery of hatred to the freedom of forgiveness.  It is so easy to let our hurt feelings eat us up inside, or to let our human divisions get all blown out of proportion until we can’t even hear each other anymore or see each other as human.  Paul points out that to be angry is to be human, and is more than ok. But we have a choice about how we respond to our anger.  We can let it destroy us from the inside out, let it fester, express it hurtfully, violently, or we can take note of it, wonder about it, and when we find out what it comes from, or what it is a response to in another person, address that hurt or that need. 

       We are on a journey of self-understanding.  We are on a journey of learning how to live in community, being honest with others about our feelings, even when we aren’t proud of our feelings, asking forgiveness when we express them in hurtful ways.  But often our anger comes from a place of love, and in that way it comes from God.  We might be hurt for another person facing injustice.  We might be disappointed in someone we had hoped for more from.  Another person may not have the information we have.  In any case, anger doesn’t have to become a huge rivalry or build into a wall between us.  When we address it when it is still small, it is easier to manage.  But if we wait, still addressing it is better than stuffing it, which can lead all sorts of bad places like resentment, or drinking, or depression, or high blood pressure. 

     We are starting a journey at King of Kings to decide whether to open our parking lot to people transitioning out of houselessness.  We may even be invited to house people who are coming out of Providence Hospital, who have no other place to go but must have shelter or their wounds will never heal.  We don’t know where this journey will go.  We may decide that we are not equipped, that we don’t have the partners, that the right kind of support won’t be provided.  And still we will not be the same people as when we left on this journey, because we will have talked to each other, we may have talked with our neighbors, we will have worked out some of the kinks of the discernment process, we may inspire someone else or plant a seed that someday may grow into an actual good spot for these little huts to be placed.  We may decide to go forward.  If we do, we will run into difficulties, but that’s what Jesus feeds us for.  As Reverend Nancy from the little Episcopal Church in Eugene says, “People are irritating.”  Every step takes energy and every step changes us.  Everything we learn can be applied to the next try, and those who have gone before have already prepared the way for us.  Small churches like ours, and even smaller, have been doing this for years and have great advice for us.  Either way, we’re not going backward or sitting still.  We’re fed for the journey and God is giving us new life and teaching us how to live in community and how to express our anger and how to be fed as a community of trust and love.

      What’s the hungriest you’ve ever been?  I hope it is today, and I hope it is for justice, peace, and love.  I hope it is for the new life of our Savior Jesus.  I hope it is a hunger for every person to have a chance to heal, for every person to be treated as a person, for everyone to have shelter and food and respect.  Jesus meets our hunger with manna, some “What is it?”  Some trust, a shared table, and a vision of hope for all the earth.  Let’s eat!