6 August 2018

"Are you Hungry?" (sermon)


Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 5, 2018
Scripture Readings:  Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and John 6:24-35


Have you ever been hungry?  I mean really, really hungry?

The time when I think that I was the hungriest was on a canoe trip 6 years ago.  It was day 4 of what would be a 7-day canoe trip.  It was a beautiful sunny day, right about this time of year.  My friend and I got up in the morning and packed up our tent and the rest of our gear and we started paddling.  It was calm in the morning, and even though a bit of a wind picked up in the afternoon it didn’t slow us down by much.  We were paddling the length of a long lake.  At lunchtime we pulled up to a rocky ledge for our lunch and we watched a couple of loons play as we ate.  After that brief pause we hit the water again.  It was such a big lake that it took us the whole day to paddle the length of it.  We don’t wear watches when we’re canoeing so I can’t tell you how many hours we paddled for.

Towards the end of the day, we reached the end of the lake and had a short portage to carry our gear into the next river we would be traveling down, and when we got to the mouth of that river, we found a site where we would camp for the night.

I still remember the feeling that I had when we got to the campsite.  I couldn’t think straight.  I remember that I knew we had three things to do – set up the tent, make supper, and go for a swim; but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to do first or what order to do them in.  I felt myself getting more and more frustrated – not at anything in particular but just at the world.

Eventually everything got done, and I think that the two of us wolfed down our dinner in about 2 minutes flat!  And once we had eaten, everything became easier.  I could think clearly, the frustration was gone, and the world was good again.

Later, once I got home at the end of the trip, I got a string out, and the topographical maps, and used the string to measure just how far we had traveled each day.  It turns out that we had paddled 32 km that one day.  With all of that energy spent, no wonder we were so hungry at the end of the day!

Which brings me to the story from Exodus that we just read.  Like my friend and I on our canoe trip, the Israelite people had been traveling, but instead of day 4, they were now 6 weeks into their journey.  6 weeks of traveling on foot across the desert.  Take that hunger that I just described, and multiply it by 6 weeks –  42 days.

Remember that the Israelite people had been slaves in Egypt.  Remember that God had called to Moses from a burning bush, telling him that he would be the one to set the people free.  Remember that Moses had gone to the Pharaoh and demanded, “Let my people go!”  Remember that God had parted the Red Sea so that the people could cross to safety on the other side.  And then the journey began – the journey that would eventually last 40 years.

So here we are, 6 weeks into a journey that would prove to be so long that most people who left Egypt wouldn’t still be alive when they reached the land that God had promised to them.  But of course the people didn’t know that yet.  All that they knew was that they had been traveling for 6 weeks, on foot, through the desert.  They knew that whatever food supplies they had been able to bring with them were either shrinking fast or they were gone completely.  They were able to remember back to Egypt where, yes they had been slaves, but at least they had had some food to eat.  Like me on my canoe trip, I suspect that they were getting frustrated and angry and unable to think straight.

And they came to Moses with their complaint:  “Why didn’t we stay in Egypt?!  Why have we come out here to the desert to die of starvation?  We’re hungry!  Either feed us, or take us back to slavery where at least there was food!”  We aren’t always at our best when we’re hungry.  We can’t think clearly when we’re hungry.

And the hunger of the Israelite people is echoed in this morning’s reading from John’s gospel.  This reading takes place right after the story that we read last week – the story where Jesus feeds a crowd of 5000 people with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.  Right after that, Jesus and his disciples crossed over the Sea of Galilee, and then at the start of today’s story, the crowd follows them.

And Jesus questions their motives.  Jesus accuses them of following him, not because they wanted to become followers of Jesus but because they wanted more bread.

If we were to take this reading in isolation; if we were to take this accusation of Jesus out of context, we might think that Jesus didn’t care whether the people were hungry or fed.  But if we look at the broader context – if we consider that this teaching happens right after Jesus had fed a crowd of 5000 hungry people – we know that Jesus does care about our physical needs as well as our spiritual needs.

If we look back to the story from Exodus, we see again that God cares for our physical needs.  God didn’t tell the people who were traveling through the desert, “Become desert hermits, and let your physical hunger draw you closer to me.”  No – God tells the people, “I am going to feed you.  In the evenings, flocks of quails will come to where you are camping and you will have meat to eat; and in the morning, manna will fall from the sky, bread from heaven for you to eat.”  God cared that the people were hungry; and God fed them.

So getting back to Jesus, after he accuses the crowd of following him only because of their physical hunger, and not for the message that he is teaching them, the crowd answers back.  They ask Jesus, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”  And Jesus answers with what I see as the key to understanding his message.  Jesus replies, “This is the work of God, that you may believe in the one whom God has sent.”

Now when you get to know me, you will know that I am a bit of a language and grammar geek.  I think that grammar is important, and in this verse we have an example of this.  There is a little two-letter preposition in that statement of Jesus that is so important in shaping the meaning of what he is saying (and I did go back to the original Greek to make sure that it was well-translated).  Jesus doesn’t say that we must believe the one whom God sent; he says that we must believe IN the one whom God sent.

So here’s a question for you to consider.  Who do you believe in?  If your child or grandchild is going off to a sports competition, or if they have a test at school, and you tell them, “You’ve got this.  I believe in you,” what do you mean?  We are usually trying to tell the person, “I’ve got confidence in you,” or “I trust you.”

OK Jesus, I believe in you.  I’ve got confidence in you.  I trust you.  What do I mean when I say this?  What are the implications?  It means that I believe the words that come from him, but I think that it also means that I trust that my needs will be met.  My physical hunger will be fed, as well as my spiritual hunger.  It means that I trust Jesus’ message of God’s abundance more than I trust in the world’s message of fear and scarcity.  It means that I have confidence that God hears us when we pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread.”

So who do you believe in?

OK Jesus, I believe in you.

Let us pray:
God of the loaves and fish,
God who satisfies all of our hungers,
Give us this day, our daily bread.
Feed us –
            feed all of us –
                        in body and in spirit.
Help us to know that
you are the one whom we can trust,
you are the one in whom we can place our confidence,
you are the one whom we can believe in.
We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ,
            the Bread of Life that you send.
Amen.


The campsite where we started the very hungry day -
the north end of Dryberry Lake, somewhere
between Kenora and Sioux Narrows (northwestern Ontario).
(No end of the day pictures, because of hunger!)

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