‘The Fourth Church Pulpit

HUNGER FOR GOD

February 20, 1994

John M. Buchanan

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126 East Chestnut St, Chicago, IL 60611-2094
Phone: 312.787.4570
John M. Buchanan, Pastor

Scripture: Exodus 16:1-5, 13-18, Mark 6:30-44

“And all ate and were filled.” Mark 6:42 (NRSV)

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done, and taught. He
said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many
. Were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the
boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now Many saw them going and recognized them,
and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went
ashore, he saw a great crowd ;and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep
without a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his
disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late;
send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy
something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.”
They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to
them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they
had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he ordered them to get all the people
to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of
fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and
broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the
two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full

of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had_eaten the loaves numbered five thousand
men. [Mark 6:30-44]

He was born in Bethlehem; grew to manhood in Nazareth and around the age of thirty he came into the
district of Galilee proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is present in the life of the world and inviting people to
live in a new way, to live as if God were actually in charge of the world.

He left no writing behind. He had no biographers. Those who wrote about him did so a full generation, and
more, after his life, and then they were far more interested in his message than personal details.

One thing about the story seems beyond argument: the clear fact of history, that when he came into Galilee

there was an immediate and strong response among the peasants and almost immediately a response by the
authorities in Jerusalem.

The people of Galilee listened to him. They dropped what they were doing and followed him, and the world
has never been the same,

2/20/94 —1_

Professor John Dominic Crossan, in his book on Jesus, says that he proclaimed a Kingdom of “Nuisances and
Nobodies,” and that is who responded. People in that crowd had long ago concluded that they mattered not at . ~
all to anyone. [Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, p. 54]

experience, hungry, they were eager to talk with one another and with him about what they had done and how
ithad gone. You've done that, returned from an important business trip, or some adventure into some new

uncharted territory for you, and returned home wanting and needing nothing more than to talk about it with
someone.

them, make for the other shore of the lake. But the crowd, persistent, insistent, noisy, sees them leaving. The
word spreads and the crowd begins to move and by the time the little boat reaches its destination a few miles
up the shoreline, it isn’t a quiet spot at all. The crowd is already there, only now it’s even larger.

the disciple’s wondering what happened to happy hour and dinner and that good night’s sleep they were finally
going to get. I’m with them. “Uh, Jesus,” they say, “this is the quiet place, isn’t it? Remember us, your friends
— the meal — the nice evening together? It’s getting late. How about we send them away now. They’re getting
hungry too and if they don’t get a move on, the grocery stores are going to be closed.”

A testy exchange follows:
Disciples: “Send them away.”
Jesus: “You give them something to eat.”

Disciples: “We don’t have enough money to buy bread for everybody.”

Jesus: “What do you have?”

Disciples: “Someone came up with five loaves of bread and two fish.”

Jesus; “Sit them down!”

to be God's people; a new idea of a human community in which all are welcome and none are excluded because

2/20/94 °

Douglas John Hall is Professor of Theology at McGill University in Montreal and one of the very important
Christian thinkers of our day. Recently Professor Hall was invited to prepare a paper for the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.). It’s a strong and challenging paper. In it Hall suggests that as this tumultuous century comes
to an end a new millennium dawns and North Americans are involved in four quests. The quest for:

- Moral Authenticity

- Community

- Transcendence and Mystery
- Meaning

Values — Community — Transcendence — Meaning.

Spiritual hunger? Hunger for God perhaps?

Communist dictatorship simply crushed it: executed and jailed the priests, turned churches into concert halls,

“T can’t think of any way to explain the existence of art,” she told the Times, “other than as
a means to express something greater than ourselves. I can't reach a single musical decision
except with the goal of making a connection to God.”

In th
week the paper reported that the new American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic Manual has moved away
from an earlier tendency to treat religion as a delusion or as evidence of immature escapism or neurosis.

And a new book which includes exhaustive interviews with young adults about questions of values, belief
and faith, reveals that among what we call the “Baby Boomer Generation,” spirituality is alive and well. The

biggest single category of “Boomers” regard themselves as “basically religious.” [Vanishing Boundaries, Huge,
Johnson, Luidens]

There are two hungers in us: a hunger for bread anda hunger for God. Sometimes we need to be convinced
~ehat our hunger for God is real.

2/20/94 —3—

In a recent editorial in The Door, Mike Yaconelli, wrote that the trouble with religion is that “it talks too
much about ‘commitment’ and not enough about ‘hunger.’”

If I am committed, then J am consistent, regular, disciplined, strong-willed. Heck, this
doesn’t sound like Christianity, it sounds like a diet.

The word he wants to hear more of js “hunger.”- As a religious word, “hunger,” he says, makes his soul
tingle.

“Faith isn’t so much a discipline asa hunger. I've been hungry for God from the beginning,”
He was told his longing for God was irrelevant. What was relevant was commitment. But
now he knows the truth — that hunger for God isa gift, a sion of the Holy Spirit, an assurance
that God is alive in your heart. [see Martin Marty, Context, 2/2/ 94]

St. Augustine wrote a beautiful truth in the opening of his Confessions.

And my theological mentor, Professor Joseph Sittler, University of Chicago, put it ina way I remember a lot.

Hunger, unabated, is a kind of testimony to the reality of food. To want to have may become
a Strange kind of having. [Grace Notes and Other Fragments, p. 56]

There are two hungers in us. Trust your hunger for God as much as you trust your hunger for food. And
before you start thinking about and worrying about what you are doing or not doing to fulfill your commitment
— simply be hungry, and put yourself in that crowd and allow Jesus Christ to serve you — to break life-giving
bread and feed you... with the assurance that no matter what you think of yourself and the meaning of your
life — your life is precious to God .. . with the promises that God's gracious love extends to you, touches you
even when you feel yourself to be untouchable, loves you even when you are unlovable, forgives you even
when you think you are unforgivable. You are invited into anew community where all are welcome and where
all know the good news that there is nothing in creation, nothing that can ever happen to you that will separate

We need that as much as we need bread. We need to know that we matter, that God’s love for us seeks us,
finds us, welcomes us and will never let us go.

There is a wonderful short story by the late Raymond Carver, A Small, Good Thing. It is about the intense,
almost life-threatening hunger we experience in the extremes, when we must face suffering, and loss and death.

It is in Robert Altman's film, “Short Cuts,” although some reviewers, including Robert Coles, think Altman
didn’t get Carver's point. I'd like to try to tell it to you.

A couple in their early thirties are Preparing to celebrate the tenth birthday of their son, Scotty. His mother
has ordered a birthday cake, and negotiated the decorations, the price and the exact day and time she will pick
it up, with a gruff, unpleasant baker. On his birthday Scotty is hit by a car, later collapses, is rushed to the
hospital and as he lapses into unconsciousness, every parent’s nightmare begins. Doctors, at first confident,
become concerned. When the father goes home in the evening to feed the dog the phone rings.

“There’s a cake here that wasn't picked up,” the voice says.

“T don’t know anything about a cake.”
“Don’t hand me that” the voice says, and the man hangs up.

2/20/94 —*

begins to pray for their son. They wait all the next day but Scotty doesn’t wake up. On the evening of the
second day, his mother goes home to take a bath and rest. The phone rings.

“Mrs. Weiss?” the voice asks,
“This is Mrs. Weiss. What is it please. Is it Scotty?”

“Scotty,” the man’s voice said. “It’s about Scotty. Have you forgotten Scotty?” the man said.
Then he hung up,

Scotty continues to decline slowly. His unconsciousness is now a coma, and then incredibly, he dies in their
arms just before surgery... a “hidden occlusion, one-in-a million,”

Devastated, confused, stunned, numb, they return to their home. The phone rings.

“Who is this?” she demands.
“Your Scotty, I got him ready for you.”

And then she remembers the cake. The baker. In a blind rage, fueled by grief they drive to the bakery,
pound on the door and a terrible, profane encounter ensues — which almost becomes violent. Finally she
manages to get it out. “My son is dead.” And then her rage disappears and she begins to cry and the baker
realizes what has occurred and what he has done and then the most wonderful thing happens — something not
unlike whatever it was that happened near the shore of the Sea of Galilee as the sun was setting, long ago.

The baker put the rolling pin back on the counter. He undid his apron. He looked at them,
and then he shook his head slowly. He pulled a chair out from under the card table that
held papers and receipts, an adding machine, and telephone directory. “Please sit down,”
he said. “Let me get you a chair,” he said to Howard. “Please sit down, you people.”

Ann wiped her eyes and looked at the baker. “I wanted to kill you,” she said. “I wanted
you dead.”

“Let me say how sorry | am,” the baker said, putting his elbows on the table. “God alone
knows how sorry. Listen to me. I'm sorry for your son, and sorry for my part in this,” the
baker said. He spread his hands out on the table and turned them over to reveal his palms.
“I don’t have any children myself, so I can only imagine what you must be feeling. Alli can
say to you now is that I’m sorry. Forgive me if you can.”

The baker looked at them fora minute and then nodded and got up from the table. He went
to the oven and turned off some switches. He found cups and poured coffee from an electric
coffee-maker. He put a carton of cream on the table, and a bowl of sugar.

“You probably need to eat something,” the baker said. “I hope you'll eat some of my hot

rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” he
said.

He served them warm cinnamon rolls just out of the oven, the icing still runny. He put
butter on the table and knives to spread the butter. Then the baker sat down at the table
with them. “It’s goad io eat something,” he said, watching them. “There’s more. Eat up.
Eat all you want. There’s all the rolls in the world in here.”

They ate rolls and drank coffee. Ann was suddenly hungry, and the rolls were warm and
sweet. She ate three of them, which pleased the baker. Then he began to talk. They listened

2/20/94 °

[Where I’m

, and they did not think of leaving.
Calling From: A Smal] Good Thing, p. 87/88]

Jesus, taking the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves, and

gave them to his disciples to

There are two hungers in us. And there is bread...

Amen,

2/20/94

set before the people. And

all ate and were filled.

. Bread of Life. Thanks be to God.