8-4-2024 Soul Food by Rev. Marie Duquette

Jesus calls himself The Bread of Life for the world. What does this mean? How does faith fill hunger?

Transcript

What we have here is, we have just come from a miscommunication, at least four ways, between Jesus and his disciples. And it's kind of troubling, because the disciples and Jesus keep sort-of talking past each other. Did you notice that? They're saying a lot of words, to be sure, but they talk past one another. The disciples you might say are thinking small, tangible, specific, something along the lines of ‘what are we going to have for dinner’. And while that is one of those never-ending, sometimes-annoying questions…what are we going to have for dinner? If the disciples are talking too small, Jesus it seems is talking too big! I’m not talking about dinner! I’m talking about satisfying a deeper hunger…a pressing hunger…a hunger for a world in which not just you are fed…but all are fed. A world in which you can more easily sleep at night KNOWING all are fed.  He was alluding to that, right? And they were thinking of bread. Bread, something you put butter on. Something that was dropped from the sky in the form of Mana in the wilderness. And we understand this right; this miscommunication thing that happened. I mean, let me just, since it's been a minute and you had to get distracted by the catawampus cat, let me just remind you of a couple different places here. When they find him on the other side of the sea, they say, ‘Rabbi when did you come here?’, which technically, um, in the Greek means, ‘How did you come to be here?’ It's kind of oddly about how he got here at all. He replies “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes…the Son of Man[MD1]  will give you…God the Father has set his seal on it.” And I just imagining if I was one of those disciples I would be thinking, what? We just wanted to know how you got here. And then it happens again. They say to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ And Jesus says, ‘This is the work of God that you believe in him who has sent me.’ And they say, ‘What sign are you going to give us? What work are you performing?’ And Jesus says, ‘It was not Moses who gave you the bread from Heaven. It is my father…’  You see where I'm going with this? Like, I like, when I ask somebody a question, I like for the answer to fall into the realm I expect. Do you want to order a pizza? In my mind, there's two maybe three answers to that. Yes. No. Maybe or not yet, right? But maybe you've had this happen to you before where you say, do you want to order a pizza or do you want chicken for dinner? And the person replies with something like, the last time that we had pizza when we were visiting your sister's friend, that pizza was square, but they still put it in a round box… and meanwhile you're going just yes or no. Should I, should I order it or not? That kind of thing that happens to us every day is a little bit like what this gospel is of like. They're talking past each other and it's a little bit troubling. Here's a couple more examples of talking past each other, because I think it's useful and it's amusing. It's easy for us to read gospel stories like this and think why couldn't they communicate more clearly, except that you know and I know we still do this all the time, right? You go into the basement. Your wife calls down and says honey while you're down there will you, um, ditch the hose? And you think ditch the hose? And then your mind starts wildly trying to figure out what might have sounded like that, based on where you are in the basement, so you start looking around, playing a rhyming game in your head, until at last you see the washing machine and realize she wants you to switch the clothes, right? These things happen. There's a famous one that has lived for decades in my family. When my grandfather said he was going out to get something and my grandmother sat on the couch for over an hour, befuddled, trying to figure out what could possibly be getting because it could not be a fork wench, which is what she heard. And he came back with a torque wrench, right? So, it isn't that unusual for people to talk past each other. What is also common, though, is that we get mad when it happens. We get mad. We get mad when people don't listen all the way through what we're saying. They get mad when we stop listening while the person that’s talking to us still has words. There are lots of ways to miscommunicate and that's what strikes me about today's Gospel. Disciples thinking about a sandwich. Jesus is talking about world hunger. Disciples are talking about food for the belly. Jesus is talking about food for the soul. Another troubling thing is that the disciples want to negotiate a quid pro quo kind of arrangement with Jesus. What must we do to perform the works of God? Because why? Because that's the way the world works, right? You scratch my back I'll scratch yours. We are accustomed to this trading. We were trading before we ever had money. Right? So, we're accustomed to that's how it work but it's not how it works in the kingdom of God, and to some extent, we wonder if Jesus is annoyed that they ask that. 

• And then the third thing that happens is they say, What work are you performing? Okay, Jesus JUST fed 5000 people with two loaves of bread and five fish and THEN walked on water. This is literally what just happened. I can just imagine Jesus when they ask this thinking, “Really? You guys are killing me.”
• We understand you might even say we have compassion for the disciples because we understand that it was not easy to always understand Jesus… when you are worrying about your next meal… when you are worrying about an upcoming operation… when you are worrying about your child who you wish would call more often but you'd be happy with a text …when you are still looking for a job 6 weeks longer than you thought it was going to take to find one. It is easy for miscommunications to happen because we are simply distracted. This is how the world works. But what Jesus was actually talking about was something that addressed not only their hunger but all those situations that I just named. Their worries, their fears, their disconnects with people in their families, their longings. Jesus is talking about the reign of God. The world that God intends for all people. And Jesus is talking about how that reign gets ushered in. It begins with belief in Jesus.
   
  • And may I just stop to say I think a huge welcome mat that says ‘Welcome to Faith’ is brilliant. Way to go. That is what we welcome people to. We're not welcoming to a building are we? We're welcoming them to something far deeper than that, our faith. Belief in Jesus, faith, real faith, it grows over time. It happens when we practice modeling our lives after the one that we follow. The kind, this kind of belief, leads to thousands of people being fed, not just us. Take a look at world hunger. Take a look at Lutheran Refugee Services. The kind of faith and belief that grows inspires us and gives us to have dreams and visions of what we the body of Christ can do to serve more people, to love more people. Think about how creative we were during the pandemic. Yes, we locked down at home. Yes, we learned about solitude in new ways. Yes, we found ways to connect. Did we not? We found ways. In 2002, I went to Philadelphia, and I toured something called The Home Project in Philadelphia. It's one of the most successful programs for helping homeless people or people without housing, um, in the whole nation. And this is how it . They train people to go out 2 by two into the city. That's biblical… and just meet the people who are on the street. Get to know them. Talk to them. Maybe take them a cup of coffee on Tuesdays and just get to know them with no expectations at all. And the reason they start there is so that when the temperatures plummet below zero and it is dangerous for people to be outside, those same two people can go into the streets and now talk to people who they know and invite them into the shelter, because it's scary for people to go into a shelter not knowing who will be in there with them. Right? So they start by building trust. They bring them into the building, and once they're in the building, they give them not just cots to sleep on, but community. In the morning they're offered showers… that twice a week they have a dentist and a doctor on site to look at people who need medical care. They can connect them with getting their eyeglasses repaired. They provide the people who decide to stay at the shelter with a renewed sense of purpose, because after one week they ask you, ‘…and how would you like to serve here?’ You could serve in our kitchen. You can help with our clothes closet. You can come over here and welcome the people who come in here for art classes… and they take the people off the street and immediately surround them with community, but they bring them in such that they're not just serving them, they're teaching them to serve as well. I use this example because it parallels the difference between what the disciples were talking about and what Jesus was talking about. The difference between one meal, and a community that works together to provide meals for all who hunger; water for all who thirst; beds for all who would otherwise be sleeping outside in the middle of winter.

Reverend Dr O Benjamin Sparks wrote this. “We are accustomed to inviting people into the community of faith for all the wrong reasons: for the "right" kind of worship; for political engagement on behalf of the poor and downtrodden; for the sake of a Christian America; for a strong youth and family ministry; for the opportunity to practice mission in a downtown location, or to go on mission trips to Africa or Central America. Yet what we have to offer—in Christ and by Christ and because of Christ—first and foremost is "soul food,"… soul that lasts forever and does not change with the changing circumstances of the church or the world. It is a soul food that we desire, and soul food in which we will rejoice, long after our bellies are full of rice and our lives know justice in a free society.” This is what we have to offer, faith. Faith, belief, is a force to be reckoned with. It's intangible and yet it paves the way for miracles to happen. Last night, I think it was last night, um, the Ukraine women's fencing team won a gold medal in the Olympics last night. Ukraine, they would call that a miracle and so should we. There's a refugee time team now, as part of the Olympics, began in 2015. They represent 100 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide. It contains 37 athletes that's hosted by 15 national Olympic committees. They compete in 12 sports. Why? To bring a message of hope and belonging that refugees are valued and not forgotten. That's a miracle, too. Whenever community looks differently at a situation and opens up their hearts and minds and allows themselves to be inspired by God's own Spirit to include more in the community, that is the Holy Spirit acting in our lives today. I think about that, the people from Ukraine that came to the Olympics, in Paris. I think about all the people that believed in them, and how they believed in one another, and how they believed something beyond their war ravaged homeland, and that they were looking towards a horizon with a more hopeful tomorrow. So, the good news for us today is that God's Holy Spirit invited you into this community and continues to walk with each of you as to together we love and serve the Lord. And this work to which we are called, feeds our souls so that we can care for those we are called to serve.

 [MD1]Why 3rd person here? Why not say I?