Sustenance

I want to begin my sermon this morning with a little thought experiment, so go with me here:

What would you do if you were never hungry? If the human body worked in such a way that you never needed to eat to feel full, to gain energy, to receive vitamins and nutrients—it all just happens naturally for you. You could eat if you wanted to; you could still experience joy at the taste of your favorite foods and participate in the communal experience of eating a meal.... but you don’t have to. How would this change your life? How much time and money do you spend on food: buying it, preparing it, eating it, cleaning up after it? What is the impact of food on your life? For some of you this may be a solo-thought experiment, and for others it might be communal. For example, my wife Becky does the vast majority of cooking and grocery shopping in our household, so to consider the removal of the need for food for each of us individually is also to consider how that might impact our relationship with one another as well. I know that the first year of our marriage, when we lived in a tiny college apartment with no dishwasher would have many fewer arguments about the plates in the sink. I’ll give you just a few seconds to consider these questions for your own life.

Now, I want to continue this thought experiment with a different question: what would you do if you were ALWAYS hungry? If our bodies were broken in a way that no matter how much we ate, we never felt full. As if every single one of us was like a 15-year-old, just grazing our way through life, never able to get enough food to feel satisfied, to give us energy, to give us enough nutrients. How might that shape your life? Would you spend every minute and every dollar trying just trying to be full? Would you be able to focus on anything else? Would you maybe get a little bit grumpy?

This is what is happening in our reading from Exodus today. As the Israelites journey through the wilderness after their deliverance from Egypt, there is no food for them—because it’s a desert. And as they grow hungrier they start to complain; something I’m sure many of us never do when we’re hungry, right? The Israelites even go as far as to wish they were killed back in Egypt, where they were slaves, but had full bellies. Now, its easy for us to read this and see the Israelites as a bunch of ungrateful whiner-babies. After all, they had just been rescued from the hands of their oppressors, brought out of slavery in the most miraculous of fashions, and set on the path toward their promised land—how can they say they’d rather go back? But there is something deeper going on here.

In psychology, this phenomenon is summarized basically in Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs. In this theory, Abraham Maslow posits that humans naturally satisfy needs in a specific order. He argues that humans first must satisfy their physiological needs, such as food, water, warmth, and rest; then their need for safety and security; then the needs of love and belonging-ness; then the needs of self-esteem; before they can finally satisfy the ultimate need of self-actualization, where a person reaches their fullest potential. Now, modern scientists and psychologists are still debating over these categories and their order to some extent, but the general premise of Maslow’s claim is widely accepted to be true: human needs have an order to them. For the Israelites in our story, the need for food was so primal that their very liberation was worthless without it.

This concept is still massively applicable in our modern world, as well. I read recently that over the next three months, the state of Oregon will be sending monthly payments of up to $400 per child to most families, with the money being intended to make up for the loss of free and reduced meals at school during the pandemic. And while the intention behind this idea is great and while I’m sure this money will be helpful to families with children this year, it didn’t feed them last year. This reminded me that many children in our state and nation were not only trying to adjust and stay focused in an entirely new world of online learning, more socially isolated than ever, but many of them were trying to do this while being hungry. Basic needs affect every aspect of our lives, and this is true in many more situations in our world as well: if the sound of gunshots outside your house keeps you from sleeping each night then you’re probably not going to be an A+ employee; and if you live outside and spend every second trying to maintain a survivable level of warmth or coolness, then you’re going to be less concerned about picking your garbage; and if you can’t get a job that pays a living wage, then you can’t even begin to plan for retirement.

Jesus recognizes this natural order of priorities in our gospel passage today. The story immediately follows Jesus famously feeding over 5,000 men, plus all of the women and children who were with them. In this story, some of those people have followed Jesus across the Sea of Galilee, but Jesus recognizes that it wasn’t his teaching that they were after. He says, “you have followed me because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Jesus gets it. The way to our heart is through our stomach. But being a walking bread factory isn’t Jesus’ end goal. He says to them, “do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

In a way, Jesus is reminding them to eat their vegetables.

While this concept of food that endures might sound confusing to both Jesus’ early listeners as well as our modern ears, it’s actually an enduring concept, even pre-dating Jesus himself.

At the risk of oversimplifying it, I think this concept is at the core of the old adage, “give a man a fish, and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and feed him for life.” Giving the man a fish can solve the problem of his hunger for a short while, while teaching him to fish gives him the tools to never be hungry again.

Now, I realize we are running wild with the food metaphors, but we know Jesus isn’t talking about food. He is talking about the way we can get caught up in life chasing after temporary pleasure, things that might provide relief in the short term but do nothing for us long term. Maybe they placate the desires of our body or numb the stresses of our mind while completely neglecting the enduring needs of our soul.

In Ecclesiastes, the Teacher speaks about money as one of these things. He says, “Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. “For whom am I toiling,” they ask, “and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone?” The Teacher is contrasting two different kinds of sustenance: the money which perishes, and the relationships which endure. To quote another old adage that sums up the Teacher’s point: “you can’t take it with you.”

I’ve shared before about my journey looking for sales jobs before I found my way to St. Andrew, but there’s a story within that story—that I’m not sure I have ever shared anywhere before this week—that I think helps clarify the concept Jesus is teaching us through this Gospel text.

The story is set in the last job interview I had prior to St. Andrew, in a high-rise office building downtown. I was interviewing for a business-to-business sales job for this company which curated and sold elite, VIP experiences for other companies and their employees. For example, if a company wanted to gift 200 employees a trip to the Master’s golf tournament, it would have been my job to sell it to them.

The interview was going great—until the final question. The interviewer told me that I would be great at the job, and that I had the chance to make a lot of money doing it. But then he looked down at my resume and said, “I see your bachelor’s degree is in Christian Ministry… how do you see that fitting in to what you’ll be doing here?”

He had me. I had no answer to that question… So, I lied. I made something up about how my passion is helping people and I believed this job would allow me to do that. I don’t think he bought it. I don’t even think I bought it.

Yet, offered me the job, with one condition: I needed to sleep on it overnight before giving him an answer. I think he and I both knew when I walked out that door what my answer would be.

As I reflect on this experience, the first thing I think is, “that guy is probably a very good boss.” Sure, he was probably just looking to make sure whoever he hired would stick around long enough to become really good at the job. But in our 30 minutes together, he read me, he figured me out—what makes me tick, what I’m passionate about—and he figured out what I hadn’t even admitted to myself yet: that as soon as I made enough money to get my wife Becky through her graduate degree, I would leave and go do something I was really passionate about. He knew this job might sustain me when I got each paycheck, but not for the periods in between. Better yet, he didn’t tell me this, but rather insisted that I figure it out on my own.

The lesson for today is in that interview, its in Ecclesiastes, its in giving a man a fish, and its in the very words of Jesus. It is something very old and deeply true.

The church has an extensive history here as well; some of the earliest stories of the Christian church are about pooling all that they have to make sure everyone in the community has enough to eat. Yet, this was only part of their mission to spread the Gospel. Look at our church: during the pandemic season we raised an amazing amount of money to feed members of our community, and quilts go out from our church to places all over the world, providing the gift of warmth to those who need it. But if we stopped there, we would be failing. The church cannot just be a soup kitchen or a neighborhood closet. To truly share the Good News of Jesus is to walk alongside each other in rejoicing and in suffering; to care for one another; to build a community, culture, and world that emphasizes the nearness of God; and—shameless plug—to teach our children how to do the same.

The call of Jesus in today’s story is one of “yes, and.” Yes, we must continue help meet the most basic needs of those in our community and in communities around the world, but we must do this because we know that only when those needs are met do we have a chance to meet the needs of love and belonging, of self esteem, and of self-actualization. To live life in a way that is full, rich, and enduring; the way that Jesus calls eternal life.

Knowing this, may we continue to go forward in service, driven by compassion and love. Amen.