Bread that comes at just the
right time.
Those who are familiar with
the story of the bestselling book or blockbuster movie, The Hunger Games, know that is a familiar theme: bread that comes at
just the right time. As I understand it, the book has been somewhat
controversial. The plot is a bit violent, centered on the events of gladiator-type
games wherein teenagers from different districts are pitted against each other
in a survival-of-the-fittest contest. The circumstances are made even more
harsh by the realities of its bleak, futuristic setting: there are pompous haves
and humble have-nots, and, as the name of the series implies, there is barely
enough food to go around. A disproportionately small class of eccentric elites callously
exerts power and authority over the rest of the population who are divided into
gulag-like districts. The name of this dystopian country, interestingly, is
Panem, a made-up word that happens to bear a strong association with the Latin
word for “bread.”
At several key points in the
story, the heroine and main character, Katniss, is saved just at the most
critical point by the surprise appearance of bread. One of those instances is
when she, as a young girl, is essentially abandoned by the tragic death of her
father and the ensuing despair of her grief-stricken mother. Forced at a young
age into the role of breadwinner for her family, she has nowhere to turn. At
one desperate point, she sits huddled in the rain outside of the town bakery at
the point of extreme starvation, even contemplating death. Suddenly, without
any explanation at all, the baker’s son (whose name also happens to be
Peeta—another bread name) appears from the back kitchen door into the bleak
mist with two burnt loaves in his hand. Katniss originally thinks the discarded
loaves are intended for the pig slop, but then he reaches out to her, without a
word, and places them in her hand. Charred on the surface, but still warm and
steaming underneath, the bread is simple but delicious. Katniss wonders if he
might have burnt them on purpose just for her. Whatever the motivation, whatever
the opportunity for foreshadowing the gesture might provide, it is still bread
that comes at just the right time. Later in the story, bread will appear, again,
right when she needs it—only this time it will literally fall down from the sky
by way of a silver parachute, a gift from a person outside of the arena of the Games
who wants her to live.
For those of you who are not
familiar with the story of Katniss and Peeta and the rest of The Hunger Games need look no further
than this story of Elijah in our first reading to see and example of bread
coming at just the right time. Fleeing for his life from the evil Queen
Jezebel, Elijah takes off empty-handed into the wilderness for protection. He
asks that he might die. Then—voila!—hot
cakes and a jar of water. He continues for another forty days and forty nights,
rejuvenated for his fight against injustice and idolatry. Nice books, Suzanne
Collins, but the prophets of Israel played the original hunger games!
Come to think of it, the
serendipitous appearance of bread—or whatever else it is we really need—is something
we’re all familiar with: the seemingly random gesture of kindness from some
stranger…the Facebook comment or message from a friend who happens to call to
check in just when you’re at your lowest...the rainfall that staves off a record drought. I remember a colleague of mine
telling me of a time when he was in seminary. Between the tuition bills and the
costs for books and housing and health insurance, they were so destitute they
couldn’t rub two pennies together. They opened up the refrigerator one night
for dinner and all that was in there was a package of sliced cheese. Dejected,
he shut the fridge door and instead went to get the mail. There, in the
mailbox, was a simple check written for $25 from someone at their home
congregation.
When we think about it, our
lives are filled with these kinds of occurrences. Bread or some other form of
sustenance often arrives just when we need it, or it is there all along and we
finally wake up to it. The random graciousness of strangers and friends alike points
us to the goodness of God.
Now, if I stopped the sermon there, most of us would
likely take home a good message today, one that might open our eyes a little
more to the ways God is constantly providing us the things we need for life. It
would be a nice reminder, perhaps, of the truthfulness of Martin Luther’s
explanation to the first article of the Apostles’ Creed, as he writes in the Small Catechism: “I believe that God provides
me richly and daily with all that I need to support my life, protects me from
all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of
pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in
me.”[1] Stopping
the sermon here could provoke us to overdue thanksgiving, calling our attention
to the many ways God our Father has always been laying down those cakes on the
hot stone for us, often when we least deserved it. And, as I said, that would
be appropriate and good thing to call us to do.
However, I’m pretty sure that
is not the message that Jesus has for us this morning. The people speaking with
Jesus in this sixth chapter of John are fully aware that God routinely provides
them the stuff of daily bread…yea, even though the world often snatches those
provisions away from us, and even though we misuse and mis-receive them in the
first place. These folks know the story of Moses and the manna God provided in
the wilderness. They know the story of Jezebel and Elijah and the hot cakes
that give him strength for forty days. All those examples of bread—and those
myriad ones we could add to it—are ways, you may say, of God drawing us to himself,
of God drawing us to his great goodness that we may give thanks and praise.
But they are not the way our
Father intends to draw us though Jesus. All those other stories do include ways
in which a hunger was satisfied, often at the last minute, but Jesus comes to
address a deeper hunger yet. Jesus, by contrast, has not come to draw us to God
by handing out gifts, one by one, showing up as a surprise $25 in the mailbox, or
as morsel of food at just the right time, or even as the man who can feed 5000 with
five loaves and two fish. Jesus, rather, comes to satisfy a hunger for eternal
life, a hunger for true union with the one who created us. Jesus comes to draw
us to God by giving, yes, but by giving his life. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. Whoever eats of this bread will live
forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
You see, the kind bread that
the Israelites ate in the desert may fill our bellies, but it is Jesus’ words
of grace and forgiveness that God’s people may truly live on. They give us life
because in them we hear that God loves us—indeed, that God loves the entire
world. Love is what we’re created for—it’s what we’re created from—and is what
our lives really desire above all else. Jesus comes to provide that, and like the
hot cakes of bread that fuel Elijah for his escape from the vengeful Jezebel,
the assurance of God’s love revitalizes us as we engage the world. Jesus’ words
also bring love in the form of forgiveness, which satisfies the hunger caused
by our sin. Like the character Katniss in her Hunger Games, we are ravaged by
the brokenness of the world and our own sorry shortcomings. Appetites of
selfishness have left us incomplete and starving. Only the One who created us
can rescue us and set us free from sin...from outside our arena.
It is Jesus, then, who is
then given at just the right time. On the cross we see that not just his words,
but his own flesh, nailed to a tree, will be what rescues us from the brutal
hunger games of our human existence. Provided at the point we are at our
lowest, at the point the world is at its darkest, Jesus’ body on the cross
becomes the guarantee that God will
never, ever, ever leave us hungry and alone. In this complete gift of
Jesus—words and flesh—we are able to see the self-giving nature of our Father. No
other demonstration of bread-giving in the history of time even comes close to
showing the depth of God’s love as Jesus in his death. He is handed over, not
just so that we may be saved from starvation, but that we may be saved from an
eternal separation from God, that we may be raised with him on the last day. This
is the message Jesus wants us to hear.
And we respond, as Jesus
tells the crowd, by hearing and learning what this means. It is not always easy
to understand, and I’m not sure we can ever completely learn what Jesus brings
it in its entirety, but faith begins and is restored when the Holy Spirit prods
us to wake up, see the cakes of bread beside us, and eat...to wake up and take
the words of Jesus offered here…and feast. Then journey will then not be too
much for us.
Over the next couple of weeks
some of our Epiphany young people will make the trek to college. Those who just
finished high school this past June will be going entering the college environment
for the first time. As they leave us for a while, other college students will
begin joining us here in worship at Epiphany as students at the University of
Richmond or VCU. Jezebel won’t be chasing any of them—thank God!—but they will
be entering a time of wandering and wilderness. It will be an exciting time of
discovery and new beginnings, yes, but also a time of temptation, loneliness,
and disorientation. They will encounter beliefs and ideas and communities that
may challenge long-held assertions, just like we all do, from time to time.
Years ago I heard one ELCA
pastor who has experience in campus ministry talk about this disorientation
that college Christians often face in those first years from home. She
explained how many of them felt as if their faith was even being dismantled,
brick by brick. She urged them to watch for the gifts of bread amidst that
feeling of falling and losing. Those gifts would be there, often just at the
right time, but not to shun them, even when it all didn’t make sense. Hers was
a reminder for them to wake up, make their way to a community that was gathered
around the bread and wine of our Lord, to seek out periodically those people who
were gathering around the living words of Jesus and learning to live by them.
Years before the trilogy of The Hunger Games was ever written, this pastor
was offering advice about how to survive in a world that is simultaneously
exciting and discouraging. Take the bread, she said, when the arms reach out to
you in the rain. Take the bread, she urged, when the silver parachute descends
on a Sunday morning at the nearby congregation. Take the bread, she advised, as
the pastor offers it at the altar, for I do believe that is part of what Jesus
is talking about here.
We will hold all of our
students in prayer, but over the next few weeks in particular, just as we are aware
of the perils and surprises of our own lives. Following that pastor's advice, and following
the example of exhausted Elijah, we wake up and grasp at that life-saving
morsel so that the journey will not be too much for us. A piece of the One who
will raise us on the last day, it will often be coming at just...the right...time.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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