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August 09, 2009

“What's The Hunger?” John 6:35, 41-51 Rev. Phil Blackwell

      This is the third week of five focused on bread.  The makers of the lectionary, the three-year cycle of readings used by many major Christian bodies to shape worship, loved the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.  It all hinges on this declaration attributed to Jesus, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

      This is a common pattern in John: I am the door, I am the way, I am the good shepherd, I am the bread of life.  And describing Jesus as the bread of life is probably an apt metaphor since there is nothing more basic or more universal on the meal tables of the world than bread.

      But, if Jesus is the bread of life, then what is the hunger that he feeds in us?  “We had the manna from heaven given to us by Moses,” the people say.  “That is what sustained us in the wilderness.  What do you offer?”  And Jesus says, “Eternity.  Daily bread is good, necessary; but what I offer lasts beyond time.”

      Most of us are not hungry.  Most of us do not get to the point where hunger defines our lives and drives our actions.  Most of us are more concerned about losing weight than gaining it.  There is an epidemic in our culture, we are told, where we are inflating ourselves with empty calories to the point that we are over-sized and under-nourished.

      So, Jesus as the bread of life may not move us at first hearing, that is, until we identify our hunger not for food but for meaning.  John Douglas Hall, one of my favorite theologians, nails it when he identifies our greatest emptiness as meaninglessness.  In a world buzzing with information and new-found knowledge, we still cannot figure out what life means.  We are starved for a way to make sense out of things.

       All religions are attempts to make meaning in our lives.  Christianity is a structured way of looking at the world through the lens of Jesus Christ in order to make sense of our lives.  Judaism is another way to explain life, and Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all of the other substantial world’s religions.  But they are not the same.  President Eisenhower was being generous back in the 1950’s, but not accurate, when he said, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe something.”  Are they all different paths leading up the same mountain?  We do not know for sure.  No mere human has made it to the summit and come back down to tell us.  But certainly we see different things as we travel different paths.  Life looks different from each religious perspective.

      Now, some people, more and more it seems, are making meaning independently of any religious tradition.  Some people say, with a certain tone of superiority, “I am spiritual, but not religious,” as if there is some sort of purity to be had by staying above the fray in an aura of generality.  But in my mind that is not good enough.  Spirituality has to be anchored in something, something that touches reality on the ground as we experience it.  Religious systems shape the emotion of spirituality into an understanding of life that directs our actions day to day.

      Jesus is the bread of life.  So, what is the hunger?  Meaning.

      Human brains are “hard-wired” to make meaning.  That was the gist of an article in one of the local newspapers last week. It is how we survive.  We see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon and we seek shelter from the blast that is coming.  We have seen it before; we know the signs.  We hear a noise in the grass, and we back up.  It could be a snake.  It was the last time.  We are driving on the expressway, and we see the brake lights flash on all of the cars in front of us.  So, we instinctively pump our brakes.  We know the pattern.  We are predisposed to see meaning.

      But, the article goes on, we sometimes see patterns when they are not there.  Conspiracy theories.  Was President Bush really in on bombing the twin towers?  Or President Obama’s birth – American or otherwise?  Or candidate Palin’s baby – hers or her daughter’s?

      I am writing a letter to the editor this week about video poker, making the point that the devices are built to trick us into seeing patterns that are not there.  They are sophisticated, high-tech machines expertly designed to give the semblance of meaningful patterns so that we will, as the manufacturers lovingly put it, “play to extinction.”  It is a con game that the state government now aggressively is promoting in order to entice residents to go broke for the purpose of balancing the budget.  Natarsha Dow Schull, an assistant professor at MIT, was here in Pierce Hall a few months ago at a press conference we hosted to tell about her research on these machines.  The mathematical structures, the visual graphics, the sound dynamics, even the positioning of the seat and the screen all are calibrated to deceive us into thinking that there are patterns we can beat, if we have enough savvy.  The only pattern, really, is us reaching for our wallets.

      Meaning?  Where is it?  Everyone is trying to sell us meaning . . . the political parties, the conservative and liberal pundits, the self-help authors, the auto manufacturers, the movie makers, the advertising people.  And Jesus.  Very simply, in the midst of all the confusion and chaos, where we see patterns that are not there and cannot discern patterns that are, Jesus says, “If you really are hungering for meaning, watch what I do and listen to what I say.  And then imitate me.”  One of the great spiritual reflections of all times is Thomas a’ Kempis’ work, “The Imitation of Christ.”

      John Wesley made it even simpler, I think.  He was a very practical man who tried to communicate the gospel to very plain people.  He himself was a scholar, one of the best-read people of his age.  He was no mere popularizer of the faith, but he tried to go to the heart of the matter.  What is the pattern seen in Jesus that gives our lives meaning?  Very simple: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. 

      This was his way of distilling the truths of the entire scripture, the Hebrerw text and the Christian text.  He included them in his “General Rules” for people called “Methodist,” nicely documented in this little book by Bishop Rueben Job, “Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living.”  Do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.

      I used that pattern for a prayer at the opening of a County Board meeting several months ago.  We clergy at the Temple get asked to do that occasionally, given our proximity to the County Building and City Hall.  It always is a delicate balance of civic responsibility and religious authenticity.  This was back at the time when the County Board was deciding on cutbacks in health care at County Hospital.  So, I started out with something like, “Dear God, we bow before you today as public servants to ask that at the very least we do no harm with the decisions we make today.”  And I must have prayed on behalf of the poor and the homeless and the chronically sick, all for whom the county has some responsibility.

      Well, the next week they had an emergency meeting and called our office and asked, “Do you have someone beside Rev. Blackwell who can come over and give the invocation?”  Maybe it was just a matter of over-exposure.  But maybe it had hit home that “do no harm” is easy to say and hard to achieve.  Do nothing that injures another.  Think of all the decisions that we make that impact the lives of others, even others whom we will never see. No insults allowed.  No gossip.

      And then, do good.  Again, easy to say, but . . . That is why I point to the meal program for people in desperate circumstances that we host every Saturday morning at Grace Church on South Dearborn.  That so obviously is doing good, and if we cannot be there to volunteer on Saturdays then we need to do some good somewhere else.  Tutor, visit members in the hospitals, paint walls at Marcy-Newberry, give money to mission projects far away, buy something at the rummage sale coming up.  But also to do good is to encourage, to build up, to strengthen, to share with others the patterns we see that bring our lives meaning.  It is good to speak of Jesus.

      Do no harm.  Do good.  And stay in love with God.  The first two are like Jesus telling us to love our neighbor.  The third is like Jesus commanding us to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Develop a relationship with God and protect it.  This was at the heart of the early Methodist movement.

      How do we develop a relationship with God?  John Wesley exhorted his lay preachers, “Preach faith until you get, and then preach faith because you have it.”  Or, as one of my early mentors put it, “Faith is caught, not taught.”  More simply put, place ourselves where faith is.

      For Wesley it was a matter of discipline.  What is the title of the book by which the United Methodist Church organizes itself?  “The Book of Discipline.”  There is no accident in that.  What are the disciplines of a person of faith?  How do we develop a relationship with God and protect it?  Worship with others, read the Bible, pray, take Holy Communion (the bread of life), talk about deep things with others, and fast.  Fast.  Make ourselves hungry.  Feel the need to eat.  Realize that we are dependent upon others in this life, not living in splendid isolation, at least not living meaningfully.

      It is, after all, in the community of faith that we test out the patterns we see in life.  “Do you see what I see?” we ask one another.  “Or am I make it up?  Am I connecting the dots when there is nothing there?”

      Do you see that being kind to the stranger is good when the world tells us that it is too dangerous?  Do you see the goodness in that kid about to be released from jail when others have decided that he is not worth our attention?  Do you see how much we have to share with others when the culture encourages us to amass and hoard?  Do you see that justice must be done on behalf of the least of these when our systems tend to crush them?  Help me to understand this passage of scripture.  Please explain this ancient doctrine to me.  How do you make sense of new discoveries?  What have you experienced that I have not which will help me to understand.  The community of faith as the context for finding meaning.

      What is the hunger?  Meaning.  What is the bread?  Jesus the Christ.  By taking him into our hearts, or by ingesting him, to fall back on the ancient metaphor of imitation, (in a couple of weeks we will hear Jesus instructing us to eat his flesh and drink his blood), we begin to see a pattern that will sustain us: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.

      And then we seek out the community that will invite us to join the feast by worshipping together, reading the Bible, praying, taking Holy Communion, talking about matters of substance, and fasting.  Feeling the hunger so that we crave the bread of life when it is here in front of us.  Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
August 9, 2009