10th Sunday After Pentecost

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Beloved, today I want to talk about hunger. Hunger is an universal experience, felt in varying degrees of severity. There are two types of hunger. There is physical hunger, the one we feel in our bodies, the gnawing emptiness, the growl in the stomach that lets you know that you better eat or else. I remember as a young boy at church, when my parents, who had better self-control than I did, would stay to socialize after service, and I’d be begging my parents to cut the chit chat because I was hungry and I needed food now, and I would be relentless. Stubbornness runs in the family. How powerful is the voice of the stomach, that circumvents any other need, even making us forget the needs of others. And of course, we do need food to replenish our bodies. And there is also spiritual hunger. Hunger for an event that transforms our whole lives, not just the stomach, but the mind and the soul. There is such a thing, as declared by the prophets, as hunger for justice, hunger for the reign of the Living God, hunger for righteousness and truth, hunger for love and mercy. Hunger, both physical and spiritual, signals something that is lacking in our lives, something that we yearn for to be satisfied. When that lack goes unattended, the consequences run deep. I don’t have to describe too much how unattended hunger affects the body, how the body consumes itself for lack of food. The same way I don’t have to describe too much how unattended spiritual hunger affects the mind and society. A society that lacks basic human rights, or an unjust society, provokes a ferment that stresses the whole social order and consumes that society from within. Do not think that hunger is a far away reality, it is our reality right now, in these politically and socially anxious United States. Both physical and spiritual hunger is a problem right now, even here in Massachusetts, the second most expensive state in the country, seemingly at the forefront of progress in many respects. Food Insecurity is felt by many families throughout New England, living paycheck to paycheck in a state where a comfortable life for an individual begins at a salary of $116,000 a year. It begs the question,

how do many workers and their families get by on the minimum. And the questions beg even further reflection, when we consider the migrants who were sleeping at Logan Airport, or the many relocated families that have journeyed on foot much farther than many of us will ever do so, hungry for a life of dignity and safety. The effects of hunger run deep indeed. How hungry and thirsty for justice are those clamoring for a ceasefire in Palestine, for an end to the war in Ukraine, for peace within the anarchy of Haiti. How hungry are our young people, subjected to the pressures of an uncertain modern life, facing insecurity on many fronts from housing, to the prospect of climate catastrophe, the debilitating effects that can have on the psyche of any human being is staggering. We are indeed in the midst of a hungry world. How do we even begin to address such a need? One thing is for certain, it can’t be done alone. Hunger is satisfied by what is given to us. Hunger is an open hand, given what it needs by the help of another. Just imagine all the things that need to happen for one plate of food to reach your table today. And even if you scavenge for your own food, remember the manifold processes of nature required for you to eat. Hunger is satisfied by an outpouring of grace.

Thus it is only natural for the Good Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, to feed the 5,000. It is no wonder, that for a faith anchored on grace, we have this miracle of Jesus multiplying the meager yield of loaves and fishes. One of the ways in which Jesus announced the incoming reign of God was by the power of signs and miracles which point at God’s ultimate desire for humanity. And this text from John’s Gospel signals to us it is God’s desire that humanity be wholly fed. Like the text says, Jesus already knew what He was going to do. It was not a matter of if He would feed the hungry crowd, it was a matter of how. When Jesus sees a hungry humanity, He seeks to satisfy the need of His Beloved people. And what are the needs of the crowd? Of course, they were hungry for food, they probably spent a long day seeking out Jesus and listening to His teaching. And Jesus sees this bodily need, and see how He does not negate the need of the body, but tends to it. The God of Love does not give

His child a stone when they ask for bread, very much unlike many of the powers that govern today, who have a difficult time sharing. But there is also another need that lurks beneath the physical, and that is the spiritual hunger for the liberation of God’s people from bondage both to sin and empire. The people are subjected to the powers, and they are hungry for change, so much that when Jesus performs the miracle, they soon after want to force Jesus to be their earthly king. So much was the overbearing hunger of the people for a new thing that would satisfy their needs.

So how does Jesus satisfy? He gives us Himself. It is the reason why we could argue, that this text shows one of Jesus’ ongoing miracles. For what do we come to celebrate and receive every Sunday? Of course, Jesus Himself present in the Communion Meal, we come to give thanks and be fed from the bread from Heaven that nourishes us in both body and soul. The bread that feeds our spiritual energies to fulfill the life that the reign of God comes to inaugurate among us. The same way that Jesus invited that hungry crowd, Jesus is the one that invites us to His table, from the humble offering laid upon the altar, we are given the abundance of true food and drink that is Christ’s Body and Blood for our sake. For it is this Jesus that feeds and offers Himself up that brings to us the reality of liberation from sin and death. It is He that satisfies our hunger for truth, our hunger for the presence of the Living God. It is this meal that offers the satisfying vision of a new world where Love, Justice and Mercy flow in abundance. And thus fed completely in this way by Jesus, both physically and spiritually, how much more are we to become channels by which God’s love feeds the world through Christ? How important it becomes for us to share to the hungry world that God has set the banquet and they are all invited to eat and have their fullness. This reign of God, glimpsed through Holy Communion, is in turn not satisfied with the world’s complacency with leaving humanity to die of hunger, both physical and spiritual. In turn, it is not satisfied that war persists in Palestine and Ukraine, it is not satisfied that here in the United States there is great inequality, it is not satisfied with the politics of hatred and exclusion, it is not satisfied with abandoning the young

to despair, it is not satisfied with the housing crisis that afflicts us. In the face of all the challenges of this world, in the face of all our needs, through Jesus Christ, we can live in a revolutionary hope and joy by we can expect, as written by the apostle Paul, to “be filled with all the fullness of God.” The fullness of God that struggles with this world to allow the Peaceable Kingdom to shine through. Let us then live generously in the generosity of God in Jesus Christ, where our hunger is satisfied, and our vision cleared to reveal the needs of our neighbors, acting as a beloved community that makes the difference from the now unto eternity, by the grace of God. Let us pray with the words of the apostle Paul:

According to the riches of Your glory, O God, grant that we may be strengthened in our inner being with power through Your Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, being rooted and grounded in love. We pray that we may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to You, O Lord, by whose power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to You be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.