11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 8, 2021
St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Bristol, CT
4[Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. – 1 Kings 19:4-8
35Jesus said to [the crowd,] “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” – John 6:35, 41-51
I very easily get “hangry.” If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s hungry-angry, irritability from hunger. We all are susceptible but my family knows especially not to mess with me when I’m feeling hungry. If I don’t start the day with a protein-rich breakfast and my cup of coffee you do not want to be around me. If I’ve been distracted or busy and it’s time for a meal, I am liable to snap at my family, have difficulty making decisions, and blame everyone else for the world being just wrong.
Though there was a period of time in childhood when my family was food insecure, that is, on a tight enough budget that the adults had to worry about grocery money, I’ve never gone hungry. I consider that a tremendous privilege and a reason to be generous so that no one in our world has to go hungry. Because when we don’t have enough to eat we cannot function. We cannot carry on. We cannot live without food.
That’s where we find Elijah as he lies down to die under the broom tree. Physical hunger is not his sole problem, clearly, but it’s not exactly helping the bigger picture. He has been God’s voice and presence in a hostile world over and over again. The authorities are out to get him, and the people have no interest in God’s message or his delivery of it. So he says, “That’s it. I’m done. It is enough. I’m not doing anymore of this. I quit. I quit this job. I quit this life.”
Many of us have experienced this level of exhaustion. Whether we give it a clinical diagnosis like major depression, whether we look at the complex social factors that created it, whether it was transitory and situational or a long-term struggle, most of us knows something of what Elijah is feeling. This is for us a glimpse of a Bible hero being real, sharing his very real, very raw struggle with us.
Unfortunately many of the responses that we’re conditioned to give in response often sound something like, “What’s wrong with you? Buck up! You can do this! Just give it a little more!” But this is not God’s response. God’s response is to send a messenger. Not with words of encouragement, not with a pep talk, but with a snack.
No really, Elijah is exhausted and burned out – he doesn’t need a pep talk, coaching, a 5-point success plan. He needs food and rest. The angel comes not once but twice, to allow for rest and ensure that Elijah eats and drinks, “otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” Now of course we understand this is more than ordinary bread – it sustains him for forty days. And yet, it is also actual bread. God could have waved a magic hand or carried him along. God could even have magically plopped the meal down for him to find. But instead God sends a tangible caretaker with actual water and actual bread. God is the one who sends us one to another with simple but powerful means of care, tending not just to our minds and our spirits but to our tired and aching bodies. Generations right through to today have lived out this care cooking meals for the sick and the grieving, providing water for those traveling in desperation through the desert, lending their homes and congregations so that those without a place to lay their heads have a safe place to rest. God, sending messengers to enfold those exhausted and in need with tender care.
It is this care that enables Elijah to carry forward. It’s a bit of food to satisfy his body and clear his mind and spirit. It does not change the circumstances that led him there; it does not make his future easy. But it allows him to stand again, to walk to the next place in his journey. And it’s there that God adds to the care a connection to community. It is after he has walked to meet God on Mt. Horeb that he is told there are others out there who share in his work, who appreciate his message. It’s there he is promised Elisha, one to share with him the burden of the work. It’s there he finds out he is not only cared for but not alone. It’s the same when we provide that tangible care for one another – not just food and drink but the restorative connection to community that makes it more than mere food, but something that has the capacity to carry us forward on the journey.
This is the bread of life that Jesus offers in his very self in today’s gospel reading. Rooted, yes, in real, tangible bread – bread that feeds the five thousand, the bread of the eucharist. In the earliest church the bread and wine of the feast in worship was just that – a part of a larger feast, the sacrament rooted in real human nourishment with a full meal of food shared especially with those in need. And at the same time so much more than mere food for the body. It is nourishment for the soul and connection to community.
That’s part of what made it so challenging to think about eucharist through the pandemic – anyone could eat bread and drink wine. And though for good order we limit it to pastors, there is nothing magical about our saying the words of institution. But it’s the gathered community that is inherently part of the meal – the gathering together of the lost and broken, the distressed and tired, the longing and hurting. It’s the sharing with those in need as an extension of the feast, the caring for one another through food and community. We figured out how to do that in the pandemic, but it took some creative shifts from “the way we’ve always done it before.”
We collectively are hangry for this kind of nourishment. Worldwide and next door in our communities people are literally going hungry. The pandemic has exacerbated inequality and put economically vulnerable families further on the edge. It’s exhausted our mental and emotional resources whatever our income bracket, and it seems the pandemic is far from over yet. We are politically polarized perhaps more so than ever before, people alienated one from another. In it we are too often lashing out at one another. Studies show that for all our advances we have become less socially connected in recent years. Too often we live under the idea that we need to buck up, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and find the markers of success. Even in our churches we hear the call of numbers as success and worry about the shifting landscape of religious engagement – feeling as if perhaps we are out of ideas for how to move forward. All of it makes us cranky, isolated, and exhausted.
So, dear people of God, come and eat. Eat the nourishment of this communion meal we share. It is God come near to you when you feel you cannot take the next step forward, when you think there is nothing more that can be done, when you feel alone and afraid. It is more than mere bread, and yet it is not magical. It will not transport you away from the struggle. It will not even transport you forty days without other food as it did Elijah. But it will remind you of what is always true – that God comes alongside you every step, offering care and love and grace at every turn. It will reconnect you with the communion of saints who become the hands and feet of God for one another and for the world. And – beware! – it will spur you on to do the hard work of serving the world for the sake of liberation, healing, restoration, and even resurrection. By knitting you again into the communion of saints this meal will awaken you to the needs of the community and inspire your response, just as it will tie you to others who will support you. It is the living bread and it will bring you fully alive in Christ now and always.
-Pastor Steven Wilco
Stewarding the Word 