Hungry

First sermon for my Intro to Preaching course.  This one was based on a system of "four pages" where we had to move through segments of trouble in the Bible and the world, then grace in the Bible and the world.  Therefore, it might feel a bit formulaic compared to my others.  That being said, the process of constriction apparently gave me a decent burst of inventiveness, so I hope this works as well.

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Reading: Luke 4:1-13

I’m starting off on the wrong foot here.  I’ve actually never participated in a fast before.  I’ve never done 30-Hour Famine or given up much for Lent besides the occasional soda.  And let’s face it, we live in America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  I generally don’t want for much.

So can someone tell me why I still feel hungry?  I am full and empty at the same time.  I like to think John Wesley would be proud, but this probably isn’t quite what he meant.  There is something missing, some days, a drought of meaning rather than food, and that is just as dangerous.

As always, Jesus has something to say about that.

Forty days.  Forty days without food.  One can hardly imagine the strain on Jesus’ body by the end.  Science can give us some clue, certainly.  It is not a superhuman feat to go without food for so long.  With enough food in the system, a person can last weeks on end without a single thing to eat.  But it is not a pleasant experience.  It would have taken only the span of a day for the hunger pangs to set in.  Less than 24 hours, probably, before his stomach began to grumble and growl.  His body cried out for food – divinity or no, the stomach wants what it wants. 

Another two or three days later, I would not be surprised if our Lord and Savior was down on hands and knees, crawling along through the Wilderness, barely able to maintain a cogent thought as the hunger reached a crescendo – a screaming void in the center of his belly that cared little for Immaculate Conceptions or Nunc Dimittises.  John the Baptist was not the only voice crying in the wilderness.  Jesus’ own stomach cried out too, not with a high and lofty “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” but with an exhausted whisper –  “Feed me…”  He was hungry. 

It is likely an urban legend that hunger eventually goes away after too long without food.  But for those with the fortitude, it can be pushed to the back of the mind.  Perhaps a week in, Jesus might have actually found something else to think about besides food.  He sees himself trailing just behind the long train of the people of Israel.  Like him, they are hungry, and they beg and plead for food.  The Lord heard them, and soon they were blessed with manna and quail.

Well… so much for not thinking about food…

Eventually it occurs to him – I’m the Son of God!  His eyes catch sight of some stones, and just behind them, a figure.  Starved and exhausted, Jesus doesn’t know what to make of it.  Man?  Woman?  Human?  Bestial?  Comforting?  Terrifying?  All of the above, or perhaps, none of the above.  The silver tongue starts wagging, and it all seems so simple.  A little divine mojo and, boom, some bread to silence the grumbling stomach.

What’s a Son of God to do?

What are we to do?

After all, it’s Lent, when we as a Church remember Jesus’ 40 days in the Wilderness with 40 days in our own Wilderness.  And we are hungry, too. 

Not literally, though.  Of course, some people do take the season quite seriously, and abstain from something in an attempt to understand better what it was like for Jesus to be on his own journey of denial.  It is a common practice among Christians across the world, and indeed in many other religious traditions.  Over time, it has taken many an interpretation, and these days we ascetically abstain from meat, candy, coffee, soda, television, Facebook, and pretty much everything in-between that might keep us from God.

But here’s the problem: we’re already starved, and it actually serves to separate us from God.

You ever walk into your kitchen and go wandering from cupboard to fridge, knowing you want something, but unable to put your finger on what?  Or maybe you fire up Netflix and hunt around for 10 minutes before sighing with resignation and decide to just put on another episode of How I Met Your Mother because you don’t know what you want to actually watch?

I think perhaps we’re experiencing a similar problem with God.  I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m going to go after a low-hanging fruit here.  We need only look to the spiritual-but-not-religious, the “Nones” that we can’t seem to go a week without hearing about, in the news or the latest Pew Forum poll.  I actually completely get it.  And I get the impression it’s not just me, and it’s not just the “Nones”.  People are leaving religion.  Whether it is the hypocrisy or the judgment or just boredom, they no longer find the communal religious life fulfilling.  And who can blame them?

But here’s the interesting thing.  As near as I can tell, it is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of starvation.  The whole point of the “Nones” is that they still consider themselves spiritual in one way or another.  They understand there is a greater mystery to the universe they can’t grasp.  Unfortunately, we have gotten in the way of that investigation.  The Body of Christ isn’t getting what it needs, and now it’s starting to eat itself from the inside-out.

What are we to do?

What’s a Son of God to do?

After all, he’s starved and probably going insane.  It’s the middle of the Wilderness, and he’s got this… thing reminding him that all he has to do is snap his fingers and he’s got food for days.  And he’s hungry.

But then he sees them again, the Hebrew people, marching along the horizon.  And he thinks about the manna that fed them – food from heaven.  And he understands.

Jesus gathers up what reserves of strength he has and makes his stand against the Tempter.  What pops into his mind is not a mere witty retort, or a snide comment.  He remembers the Scriptures he learned so well as a child.  And one from Deuteronomy comes to him, as if from nowhere, as if it were food from heaven.  “It is written,” he says, “‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” 

Boom, ding goes the bell!  Round 1 goes to Jesus!  The crowd cheers!! 

Unfortunately, it’s not over.  There’s still two more temptations to go, and even then we see at the end of our story that this is not the last time that these two will run into one another.

But y’know what?  It’s a start.  And it sets the tone for the rest of Jesus’ temptations in the Wilderness.  Scripture is enough to keep him from doing something foolish.  Scripture has warded off temptation.  Scripture has fed him.

That’s what a Son of God does.

And are we not Children of God ourselves?

There is no singular solution to our hunger.  Anyone who claims to know exactly what we need to do to bring ourselves back from the brink of spiritual starvation is either overly-confident or lying.  But it seems to me that we have a pretty good starting point right here.

The way I see it, there is a feast prepared for us in the Word.  And we have been some rather ungracious guests to the table spread before us.  We cherry-pick what we like, taking a verse here and a verse there, and ignore the rest.  We gorge ourselves on the sweet stuff and grow sick of it before too long.  We take a small taste of the bitter food and decide that it is not for us.  And yes, I think it is even possible that some of us feast too much on the bread and the wine, filled up before the courses even start to arrive.  There is nothing quite so poignantly sad as the sensation of a full stomach in the presence of so much delicious variety.  Suddenly you’re experiencing a whole new kind of hunger.

This is the starvation I fear we have, the aesthetic sin of ignoring the feast before us.

Our spiritual lives begin to atrophy when we stick too much to the familiar.  Every course in the Word is of vital importance to our health.  There will still be the familiar taste of Gospel and Epistle, yes, but we must open ourselves to the rest:  the sweetness of Song of Songs, the complexity of the wisdom literature, the Psalms of alternating bitterness and umami, the sourness of the prophets, and so much more! 

It would be easy, in light of today’s story, to say that you should read your Bible in order to prepare yourself for spiritual warfare.  But that kind of talk always worries me a bit.  Instead, I would invite you to come to the feast.  There’s plenty of food to go around, and you’ll be sure to find whatever you’re in the mood for.

But more importantly, remember that this is an open invitation.  A feast doesn’t exactly do much good if there aren’t friends around to enjoy it together, right?  I’m not saying you have to go out and find a “None” and chuck a Bible at them.  But there’s a whole world of flavors available to us, and it would be a shame if we kept it all to ourselves. 

So the next time you reach for a Bible, don’t be afraid to go somewhere new.  Flip to a book you’ve never read before.  Sit with it a while, meditate on it, let it fill you with something you didn’t even know you were craving.  And, for once, be truly full.  We weren’t meant to live on bread alone.