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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