Lent 4(C) – Joshua 5:9-12, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. Preached at Christ Lutheran, West Boylston.
Father, I am hungry.
Says the little girl to her dad as they walk another day through the wilderness. The man is weary from the walk, surrounded by thousands of other Israelite families, wandering toward some land that they supposedly were promised by some supposed God who was supposed to have rescued them from Egypt. Certainly life was difficult in Egypt. Working hard labor, long hours with little reward; working for the pharaoh and not for yourself; barely able to feed your family. But barely able is still able. There was still something, still some opportunity to provide for your children.
Now, instead, the plaintive pleas of his daughter breaks his heart. There is vegetation in the desert, but not enough of it to feed the masses of people consistently. They ration it so that everyone gets a little, which means that everyone has empty bellies. The man has been giving his own rations to his daughter whenever possible, but it hasn’t helped enough. He can’t stand to watch his little girl suffer, her belly ache and growl.
So he goes to the leader of his clan, and asks for help. And he gets none, of course, but watches, as the exasperated pleas go up the chain of command. And finally it goes to the top, to Moses himself, who storms off in disgust. These people have gotten exactly what they wanted. They cried out to God for help, and God came and rescued them, and now? They can do nothing but complain. Why did God saddle him with this ungrateful people.
And he looks over the crowd, and Moses sees the tired people, he sees the hungry children, he sees the withering cattle, and he wonders just what God is thinking about all this. Isn’t there some way to feed this people, to satisfy their hunger? Why has God given him a responsibility he can’t fulfill? Why has God entrusted him with a people that he can’t feed, that he can’t lead, that he can’t provide for?
And the sky opens up, and quails fall from the heavens, and the ground in the morning is covered with a dewy, flaky manna-bread, and everyone eats and has their fill, and it doesn’t stop, not until they finally arrive forty years later in the land God promised them, and Joshua proclaimed the passover at Gilgal, and they were able to survive off the produce of the land.
* *
Father, I am hungry.
Is what the younger son is prepared to say when he returns to his father’s home. It was a day working for next-to-nothing wages, feeding a farmer’s pigs, animals that good Jewish boys like him knew were unclean and forbidden, and looking at the leftover slop, looking at how much better it looked than what he ate, that he realized how low he’d fallen. Fallen from the days of high living, of wine and women and LIFE! And now, what was left? Nothing, brokenness, emptiness, hunger.
So he planned to go back to his father. His father who, if he knew what was best for him, would turn him away. After all, what had he done the last time he was home? Told his father he was done with him. “I’d rather you were dead,” was practically his message. “All I want from you is your money, and I want it now.” And his father had given it to him, and he’d wasted it.
Was he really repentant? He couldn’t tell. Maybe he really did love his father, want to be back in his good graces, want to repair his relationship. He couldn’t really tell over his hungry stomach. And so he came up with a plan. “Father, I’ve sinned against God and against you,” he’d say. “I’m not worth being your son. Will you let me be one of your servants? Please? I’ll do anything. I’m so hungry.” He’d beg, he’d grovel, he’d give up his dignity, if only he could get something to eat.
And instead, as he approaches, his father runs out to meet him. He can’t get a word of his pleas out before his father embraces him, throws his mantle around his neck, and begins shouting for joy. The son that was lost has been found! He orders the fatted calf to be prepared for a banquet, for an enormous feast, more food than the son has seen in his whole life, and the neighbors are rounded up, and everyone eats their fill, even the older son who thinks it’s all a little unfair, who never liked is brother to begin with, who has been a good son all along, even he cannot help but celebrate, as the banquet is so big, and the father so joyful that the joy spills over without bound.
* *
Father, I am hungry.
Say children all over the United States, and all over the world. Did you know that one in every eight children in the world is suffering from hunger? Or that there are over a hundred thousand people in Worcester County alone who rely on the services of the food bank? The problem seems insurmountable. If we can’t deal effectively enough with poverty to cure hunger here in one of the most affluent areas in the world, how can we ever hope to provide real help, to provide lasting change in our world, to be God’s hands as He works to bring healing to the world?
Despite these impossible odds, I spent the night last night with twenty-one teenagers who thought they COULD do something. They went without food for thirty hours, bellies truly hungry for, some of them, the first time in their life, to choose to experience what billions of people are forced to experience every day. They want to understand; they want to raise awareness; and they want to raise funds, too, to help stop the problem.
Just a few years ago, one national agency estimated the cost of ending hunger at $40 a person per year. That is, if everyone in the world who had an extra $40 for luxuries would give it to world hunger, there would be no hunger. Period. But instead of stopping at $40 a person, those teenagers are well on their way to their goal this year of $3,500.
And when you put the Thirty-Hour Famine in Holden together with the one I saw announced here in West Boylston at Our Lady of Good Counsel, and the thousands of other events this month across the country, and the hundred thousand teens who have been doing this work year after year, well, you can imagine how quickly that adds up.
Why, it doesn’t take a very strong imagination to see the masses of people being fed at all. The numbers are telling. In the last few years, hunger ministries worldwide have grown to feed an additional 150 million people every year. Just push a little further, and we’ll quickly be able to see how God provides for his people, yes even through us, even through the work of children in an odd corner of Massachusetts, to make sure that everyone has their fill, that God’s bounty truly flows over.
* *
Father, I am hungry.
Is what the little girl must have said on the night before I met her. There in the village of La Estación was their home, if you can call it that. To get there, I and other people in my seminary class trip to Mexico City walked down streets running with sewage to get to the doorway tucked in among the sheets of tin roofing and random siding that people had collected from wherever they could find it in order to construct their homes. We entered the front door and found the entryway open to the sky, buckets sitting on the ground to collect rainwater so that the family had something to drink. Then we passed into the home’s single living room/bedroom, where we gathered to meet those who lived there. A dirt floor with a cast off piece of carpet serving as the rug; a bed tucked in the corner as the single piece of furniture.
We were there to learn about poverty in Mexico, and in this house we could not help but see it everywhere we looked. It would have been easy to reduce the people living there to “impoverished Mexicans,” something we Americans know exists “out there somewhere.” The temptation to do so was present even there as we sat and spoke with these people, got to know them, their lives, their hopes, their fears.
But then the woman asked us if we would like something to drink, as she brought out a small bottle of Coca-Cola. For this small luxury, the family had gone to bed hungry for several days, and now it was being offered to us. Why? Because they knew something of our prodigal way of life in the United States. Because they wanted us to feel comfortable and welcome in their home. Because to this family, hospitality to their guests was more important than their own comfort. Because this a a way for them to give each of us our fill of God’s overflowing, overpowering love.
* *
Father, we are hungry.
We are hungry for so much. We are hungry for healing, for wholeness, for minds and bodies and spirits that function the glorious way you designed them to do, instead of the broken ways we live in them. We are hungry for restored relationships, for righteous living with our loved ones, for a community that reflects the love that we truly have for one another, the unity that you bring forth in us, rather than the broken ways we live with each other when we speak thoughtless words, act brashly, are too slow to listen and quick to anger. We are hungry for a world that sings of the love we know you have for it, for each and every created part of it, for a world that is holy and whole as you made it to be, and not the sinful, captive, broken place we have made it into, with our greed and violence and selfishness and fear. We are hungry for you, your presence, your love.
And God’s promise to us is a banquet where everyone will have their fill and more. Where the fatted calf is carved and the milk and honey flow without end. Where the quails and manna are replenished, and the fruits of the land are offered up without number. Where loaves abound and the hills drip with sweet wine. Where God offers His own self on the cross for each one of us, providing not just food and drink but LIFE, life abundant for each and every creature God has made, life rich with love.
This banquet here is just the beginning of what God has poured out for us. Come, eat and drink, and be satisfied. Amen.