Sermon for August 1, 2021 - The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm

You do not want to be around me when I am hungry – I mean, really hungry. I get cranky, very cranky. When I first went to school for half-day kindergarten, my mother had to get me home pronto for lunch; otherwise there would be you-know-what to pay. Over half a century later, it is still the same – once my blood sugar starts dropping, I will not be able to concentrate on anything else until I eat something.

Our bodies tell us when they lack the sustenance they require. It is a matter of survival – if we did not feel hunger, we would not have the urge to find nourishment. And if we did not have the urge to find food, our bodies would soon waste away, and we would die. Our hunger, as disconcerting as it may sometimes be, saves us.

In our gospel reading for today we find Jesus on the other side of the sea, having fed thousands with five barley loaves and a few fish. In him the power of God to feed and save has been manifest, and the people cannot help but follow him, longing for more of the miraculous and lifegiving power they have witnessed. What is going on, they want to know – when they ask Jesus, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” I think they are really asking, how can we continue to experience the saving power of God as you have shown us? We are hungry, Jesus – yes, for physical food, but also for the mystery that you have shown us. 

Jesus implies that they are only interested in physical hunger, saying, “you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” This may be true, but Jesus’ next words reveal that he understands the connection between physical and spiritual hunger. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Our hunger for bread and fish may be temporary, but it tells us something about our deeper, more eternal longings, and Jesus knows that.

The connection between physical and spiritual hunger has been much on my mind lately, partly because this week the Brookline Food Pantry held its last distribution from St. Paul’s before moving to a bigger and more accessible space at United Parish. The food pantry has been responding to physical hunger for decades, all because parishioners here at St. Paul’s saw a need and acted to help alleviate that hunger. The desire to feed the hungry is itself a spiritual hunger, a longing born of connection to God and the realization that only response to God will fill the void. 

A table grace written by Polly Moore says it well: “God bless this food we are about to receive. Give bread to those who hunger; and hunger for justice to us who have bread.” Our own physical hunger is a continual symbol of our hunger for God, for each other, for meaning in our lives. Each time we gather to bless a meal, or for the Holy Eucharist, it has the potential to rekindle that hunger for God, which means it ought to rekindle our hunger for justice. And the reverse is also true – when we act on our longing to feed the hungry and bring justice, we are called to acknowledge that act directly as coming from the hunger for God that has been ours from the beginning of creation.

On Thursday I had a chance to mark that connection, as I stood in the Great Hall with Elizabeth, the director of the food pantry, and Arielle, the operations manager, as the afternoon distribution session came to an end. I wanted them to know that our hunger for justice at St. Paul’s was not gone, and that God honors and inhabits not only our spiritual hunger, but the very real physical hunger that the food pantry has been trying to fill for so many years. 

I remembered how the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the kingdom of God is most of all a vision of a great feast, where people can come buy without money and without price. And I blessed their departure with the Franciscan blessing that we hear from time to time at St. Paul’s, asking God to bless them with discomfort at easy answers, with anger at injustice and oppression, and with enough foolishness to believe they can make a difference in the world.

What I am seeing now is that I was essentially asking that they – and all of us – be blessed with hunger. Hunger for a world in which God’s abundance and justice are fully realized. It is that hunger that keeps us looking for food not only for ourselves but for others. 

I know that at the end of today’s gospel Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” If Jesus promises we will never be hungry, how can we see our hunger as a blessing? I think this is what he might mean: coming to Jesus, our hunger for God will not overwhelm or debilitate us. Believing, giving our hearts to Jesus, we may know spiritual thirst but will have enough to keep us going in the wilderness. 

There is a difference between being hungry, and really starving. Jesus promises that when we bring our hunger for God, for meaning and purpose, for a world that is just, we will not be forsaken or left to starve. We will discover what to do with our lives and our communities, what to do with the longing that God has created within us.

This moment in the life of our parish is a pivotal one. The food pantry will not be located at 15 St. Paul Street, but that does not mean that our hunger to do God’s work will abate. We will need to listen to our longing even more intently, to probe what Jesus is teaching us. Our building may not be filled with canned goods, but it will be used for the glory of God and to nourish the community in some other way. 

What is your hunger telling you? How are your hunger for God and your hunger for justice connecting in your life, and the life of this parish, right now? What is God calling us to do, knowing that God has given us everything we need to perform the works of God, to be the change we want to see in the world? Our hunger for God and for justice will lead the way. 

Glory to God, whose power, working in us, 

can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. 

Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, 

and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.