August 15, 2021
Well, when we meet Mary, she is a simple Jewish girl.
Well, when we meet Mary, she is a simple Jewish girl.
I Kings 19.4-8; Ephesians 4.25-5.2
In
our reading from 1 Kings, we find the prophet Elijah in the wilderness.
In
that wilderness, after traveling a day’s journey, he asks God to let him die.
In
fact, we find him praying a very beautifully profound prayer, despite its dark
tone.
Elijah
prays, “It is enough: now, O Lord, take away my life…”
Actually,
it’s pretty theatrical.
But,
if we’re listening closely, that prayer should actually cause us to pause
uncomfortably for a moment.
It’s
actually quite a shocking prayer.
But
it is brutally honest too.
Anyone
who has been in the depths of depression or despair knows this prayer.
Anyone
who has been touched with the deep, ugly darkness of depression has probably prayed
this prayer.
“It
is enough. Now, O Lord, take away my life.”
Now,
some people would be afraid to pray this prayer.
Why?
Because
they’re afraid God might actually answer their prayer.
Well,
in the case of Elijah, God actually does.
Wait,
you’re probably sayinjg.
No.
God didn’t answer Elijah’s prayer.
Elijah
lived.
Ah,
yes, but actually, God did answer the prayer.
In
the midst of his depression, in the midst of his anguish, in the midst of the
wilderness of not only his surroundings, but his own spirit, God really does answer
the prayer of Elijah.
But…it
is not answered in the way Elijah wants.
The
prayer is answered with a beautiful “no.”
And
we all have to understand and accept that sometimes “no” is the answer to whatever
we might be praying for.
But
before you think this is cruel—before you start saying that God’s “no” is a
cruel no, follow this short, short story of Elijah all the way through.
Yes,
God answers Elijah with a non-verbal no.
But
God still provides even after the no.
For
Elijah, an angel appears and feeds him in his anguish and in that wilderness.
Elijah
is not allowed to die.
But
he is sustained.
He
is refreshed so that he can continue this journey.
This
is a beautiful analogy for us, who are also wandering about in the wilderness.
I
think many of us have probably come to that time in our lives when we have
curled up and prayed for God to take our lives from us, because living
sometimes just hurts too much.
We too, more often than not, in our despair and pain, cry out to God.
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” Paul writes, “and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
Exodus
16.2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78.23-29; John 6.24-35
+ Do you remember those Snickers
commercials from a couple of years ago?
You know the ones.
In it we see Betty White playing
football with a bunch of young guys.
At one point, poor Betty gets
tackled.
One of the guys then comes up to
Betty, and says, “Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out there.”
A young woman—Mike’s girlfriend, we
presume— then comes over to Betty and
gives her a Snickers bar.
She eats it and magically she turns
back into—Mike.
We then see Abe Vigoda gets tackled.
At the end of the commercial we
hear, “You’re not you when you’re
hungry.”
I loved that commercial!
But we all know that feeling.
We are not us when we’re hungry.
We do get grouchy and snippy when
we’re hungry.
We mumble and we complain.
And we’re unpleasant to be around.
We are not “us” when we’re hungry.
Which explains my attitude all the
time.
After all, the jokes goes, all I
live off is grass and twigs—stupid vegans!
Those commercials and that line
could very well have been used on some of the people in our scriptures readings
for today.
Certainly today, we get some
complaining in our scripture readings.
In our reading from the Hebrew
Scriptures—from Exodus—we find the Israelites, in their hunger, complaining and
grumbling.
In some translations, we find the
word “murmuring.”
Over and over again in the Exodus
story they seem to complain and grumble and murmur.
To be fair, complaining and
grumbling would be expected from people who are hungry.
But in their hunger, God provides
for them.
God provides them this mysterious
manna—this strange bread from heaven.
Nobody’s real clear what this
mysterious manna actually was.
It’s often described as flakes, or a
dew-like substance.
But it was miraculous.
Now, in our Gospel, we find the same
story of the Israelites and their hunger, but it has been turned around
entirely.
As our Liturgy of the Word for today
begins with hunger and all the complaining and murmuring and grumbling and
craving that goes along with it, it ends with fulfillment.
We find that the hungers now are the
hungers and the cravings of our souls, of our hearts.
Now, this kind of spiritual hunger
is just as real and just as all-encompassing as physical hunger.
It, like physical hunger, can gnaw
at us.
When we are spiritually hungry we
also are not “us.”
We too crave after spiritual
fulfillment.
We mumble and complain and murmur
when we are spiritually unfulfilled.
We too feel that gaping emptiness
within us when we hunger from a place that no physical food or drink can
quench.
In a sense, we too are like the
Israelites, wandering about in our own wilderness—our own spiritual wilderness.
Most of us know what is like to be
out there—in that spiritual wasteland—grumbling and complaining, hungry, shaking
our fists at the skies and at God.
We, like them, cry and complain and
lament.
We feel sorry for ourselves and for
the predicaments we’re in.
And we, like them, say to ourselves
and to God, “If only I hadn’t followed God out here—if only I had stayed put or
followed the easier route, I wouldn’t be here.”
We’ve all been in that place.
We’ve all been in that desert, to
that place we thought God had led us.
I’ve certainly had it happen to me
in my own life.
There were times when I went so
self-assuredly.
I went certain that this was what
God wanted for me.
I was sure I had read all the signs.
I had listened to that subtle voice
of the Spirit within me.
I had gauged my calling from God
through the discernment of others.
And then, suddenly, there I was.
What began as a concentrated
stepping forward, had become an aimless wandering.
And, in that moment, I found myself
questioning everything—I questioned myself, I questioned the others who
discerned my journey, I questioned the Spirit who I was so certain spoke within
me.
And, in that emptiness, in that
frustration, I questioned God.
And guess what I did then.
I turned into Betty White.
I complained.
And I lamented.
Lamenting is a word that seems kind
of outdated for most of us.
We think of lamenting being some
overly dramatic complaining.
Which is exactly what it is.
It is what we do when we feel things
like desolation.
Like hunger, few of us, again I
hope, have felt utter desolation.
But when we do, we know, there is no
real reason to despair.
As followers of Jesus, we will find
our strength and consolation in the midst of that spiritual wilderness.
We know that manna will come to us
in that spiritual desert.
And that manna, for us, is the
Eucharist.
The Eucharist sustains us and holds
us up during those desolate times.
All we have to do, when we can’t
seem to do anything else, is partake of the Eucharist.
To come and eat and drink of the
bread and wine of holy Communion.
And when we do, we know that God’s
presence in this “bread of God” will be there for us.
This Bread we share and the wine we
drink is the very “bread of God.”
This is what Eucharist is all about.
This is why the Eucharist is so
important to us.
Several years ago there I was a book
that I read that I recommended to many people.
It was Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell.
Now, I love Rob Bell.
And I love this book, though I don’t
like the title.
But it is a book about the
Eucharist.
And there was a wonderful passage
Bell shares.
He posts several difficult
questions, any one of which we have no doubt asked at some point in our
journey.
“Where was God when I tested positive?
Where was God when I was suffering?
Where was God when I lost my job?
Where was God when I was hungry?
Where was God when I was alone?”
“The Eucharist,” Bell says, “is the
answer to the questions.”
Where was God?
God was right here.
Right here, with us.
And continues to be.
Because we have the Eucharist, no
longer can we accuse God of being distant.
Because, God has come to us.
The God of Jesus has come to us.
And continues to come to us in this
meal.
Again and again.
Here, we truly do eat the Bread of
angels.
Here, we do partake of the grain of
heaven.
This is our manna in our spiritual
wilderness.
In this Eucharist, at this altar, we
find God, present to us in just exactly the way we need God to present to us.
In our hunger, God feeds us.
In our grumbling and complaining, God
quiets us.
After all, when we are eating and
drinking, we can’t complain and grumble.
And unlike the food we eat day by
day, the food we eat at this altar will not perish.
When we are hungry, we not really
“us.”
But in this meal—in this
Eucharist—we truly do become us.
The real us.
The us we are meant to be.
In this Eucharist, in the Presence
of Jesus we find in this bread and this wine, we find that our grumbling and
murmuring and complaining have been silenced with that quiet but sure statement
that comes to us from that Presence we encounter here:
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus
says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me
will never be thirsty.”
In the echo of that statement, we
are silenced.
Our grumbling spiritual stomachs are
silenced.
Our spiritual loneliness is
vanquished.
Our cravings are fulfilled.
In the wake of those powerful words,
we find our emptiness fulfilled.
We find the strength to make our way
out of the wilderness to the promised land Jesus proclaims to us.
“I am the bread of life,” he says to
us.
This is the bread of life, here at
this altar.
And, in turn, we become the bread of
life to others because we embody the God of the one whom we follow.
“Whoever comes to me will never be
hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
So, let us come to the bread of life
Let Jesus whom we encounter
in this Bread and wine take from us our gnawing hunger and our craving thirst.
And when Jesus does, we will be given us what we have been truly craving all along.
Let us pray.
Go of Jesus, God of Salvation, you
hear us even when we grumble and complain and murmur. And even then you provide for us bread in the
wilderness, your Bread, the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of angels. We thank you
for feeding us and making us whole. And we ask that you may strengthen us in
this food we eat to go out and feed others so that they too made be whole. We ask
this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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