"So what did you do today in Vacation
Bible School?" I asked one of our preschoolers.
"I ate apples!" he proudly declared.
"How about you," I asked his older brother. "What
did you do?"
"I ate ice cream," came the one-upping reply.
Clearly the food snacks were an important part of our Bible School,
at least in the immediate short term memory of those who attended.
"How was camp?" I asked a couple
of the boys in the congregation I knew had just returned from
a week at Lutherdale Bible Camp in Wisconsin.
"Great," came the reply. "The food was really good!"
It's interesting the criteria we use to evaluate the world around us.
A week ago Chris and I made a quick trip east
to visit five colleges as we begin the quest for a college for
son number two.
Our last stop on a five day 2,000 mile swing from Chicago through
New York and Pennsylvania was Gettysburg College.
It was my first visit to the college that borders the famous civil
war battle field. The visit was very interesting and the school
presented itself well in terms of academics and study. Our campus
tour culminated in the dining hall where our tour guide made a
point of telling us with pride and in some detail that Gettysburg
ranked third last year of all colleges and universities
for quality of food service. The third best food service in the
academic world is at a Lutheran college in Pennsylvania.
Two thousand miles of travel, and not once
did we worry about finding food. We may have struggled a little
to find the type of restaurant we were seeking some evenings but
we never worried for food. Quite a contrast to the experience
of the Israelites
described in our Old Testament lesson for today. Having been led
out of Egypt into the wilderness by Moses the people began to
worry for food. The answer to their need was manna--bread from
heaven--provided by God. As the centuries and millennia passed
the manna--the bread from heaven--has become a symbol of God's
ability to provide. God's answering of a human need in unexpected
grace.
The challenge of the story is the crisis of faith--will the people trust in God or insist on finding their own way. Do they believe God will provide or not?
The seeking after answers to our wants. We want food. We want something to drink. We want shelter. We want a comfortable safe life with time to enjoy the world around us. There are some who see this story telling them that God will provide--that manna was the answer to all their prayers and wants. If you but trust in God we will have our every need met. Others would say the story encourages us to do the best we can to provide for ourselves from the resources we have been given--the manna was but a starting point. Don't expect every prayer to be answered to your specifications, but rather be open to discover what God will provide--perhaps even the grace moment of a miracle.
At the center of our lessons for today is the question "Where do we find God's grace?" How much does God depend on us for the miracle, or are we simply the recipients of God's grace? Is there something we must do first or is it enough to be open--to live by faith alone? Faith in God leads in unusual directions and enables sometimes curious results.
The Lutheran
magazine--our national church publication--recently had an article
about Mike Menz, a Lutheran from Greeneville, Tennessee who appeared
on the television show, "Who wants to be a Millionaire?"
Probably everyone by now knows how the questions become more
difficult as the prize money increases. Mr. Menz did fine until
he got to the big-money questions. He wasn't sure of the answers
to three of his four final questions. Rather than panic, he said,
he found himself letting go. "I just had this feeling that
I was in God's hands and that it would be OK to take a chance,"
he recalls.
Mr. Menz finally arrived at the $500,000 question which was:
"What is the Middle Eastern area known as the Rub' al Khali?"
Given the choices of:
(a) rugged mountains
(b) a vast desert
(c) a grassy valley, and
(d) a vast delta
he guessed the correct answer of (b) "a vast desert."
When he returned home to Greeneville, Tennessee he then donated
$50,000 (ten percent) to Reformation Lutheran Church for the purchase
of a minibus the church had been seeking for youth and senior
ministries. The mystery of our world and God's grace.
Few people would say God caused Mike Menz to go to New York to win a half million dollars so a church could get the van it needed for ministry, but that is what happened. Prayers, wants, and needs were met--but there is also something more.
Our wants--our needs--sometimes they have a lot in common with each other; sometimes not. In the gospel lesson we find the people seeking Jesus. In our lesson last Sunday we witnessed Jesus feeding the 5,000 with a few loaves of bread and fishes--their needs being met. Now some of the people come seeking Jesus. Jesus suggests that they are seeking him not because of the miracle or sign but because he provided food.
Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life"
Jesus is saying that we must move beyond "the
bare necessities" of bread to eat and material survival to
find something more--God's bread of life. Meeting people's physical
needs is important but there is more to life than just our basic
needs.
Daniel Defoe, in The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
describes the world this way:
"I saw the world around me, one part laboring for bread,
and the other part squandering in vile excess or empty pleasures,
equally miserable, because the end they proposed still fled from
them...living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily
bread were the only end of a wearisome life, and a wearisome life
the only occasion of daily bread."
"Living but to work and working but to live"--such is the condition of many in the world. But there is more to life--more to work. Jesus invites those who encounter him to discover the meaning of working and living by faith. Of opening ourselves to a view of the world that takes us to places we might not otherwise discover. Jesus speaks of a different kind of food "that endures for eternal life."
In Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town,"
Emily, the young bride who had died in childbirth, is permitted
to return to her home in Grover's Corners to observe one day with
her family. She chooses to relive her twelfth birthday. The experience
is not a happy one for her, for she sees everyone in her family
too preoccupied with the busy-ness of their lives to listen to
others and to enjoy life itself. Finally she asks to be taken
back and she says her goodbyes in the words:
"Oh, Earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."
And then she asks the stage manager,
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?
Every, every minute?"
"No," he answers, but then adds,
"the Saints and poets maybe, they do some."
Jesus uses the image of the manna from heaven to describe his bread as giving "life to the world." This is not just a description of flour and yeast properly mixed and baked. It is not just a matter of putting something in our mouths or filling our stomachs--the invitation is to something more.
What those among the 5000 who were fed came seeking was not more food. They may have thought it was food--like the Bible school kids or the campers at church camp, but there was something more--something more elusive and yet ultimately more real.
It is almost four decades now but I still remember
summer afternoons on my grandparent's farm. In my memory there
was always field work, but mid-morning and mid-afternoon there
was always a little lunch to take to the fields where my grandfather
would be working with the tractor. We would walk out to the field,
my grandmother and my brothers and me,
carrying a lunch basket that almost always contained fresh baked
rolls, slices of ham and cheese--not from the deli but from the
farm itself--a thermos of coffee, and for us kids orange drink
made from the orange syrup the Schwan man delivered--and to finish
lunch off--fresh baked sugar cookies. My grandfather always dipped
his cookie in his coffee, turning the white cookie a rich coffee
color. Now I remember what we had to eat, and I remember how we
ate it, but there is something more. I remember that in those
moments in the field we would feel the sun a bit more deeply and
appreciate the shade of a wagon with more relief. I remember my
grandfather pausing with bowed head before he took a sip of coffee
or a bite of roll. Faith witnessed not in dynamic action or even
unexpected miracle but in the quiet promise of prayer and a life
open to God in any moment or place. A moment that placed all of
life in perspective, and that provided another generation's foundation
for faith.
We did not always wash our hands before a meal in the field, but
there always was a moment that acknowledged God's presence, that
placed the rest of the day in God's hands. The memory of that
shared time together created a reservoir of peace and certainty
that transcends time--grandparents long gone still live in tastes-aromas-textures-faith.
There are moments that are provided by God--that give life to
the world--that bring us close to the eternal--it is for these
moments that each of us yearn. It is seeking this gift that led
the people to say to Jesus,
"Sir, give us this bread always."
It is not just a piece of bread or a sip of wine--there is something
more here. The very bread of life, that something more for which
we hunger, that fills us more than any food. That which we cannot
live without.
Thomas Long recalls a story from the horrors
of the holocaust and Second World War. A rabbi recalls how when
he was a young boy, he and his family were prisoners in a Nazi
death camp. In the camp, the prisoners were given just barely
enough food to survive, some grain, a bit of stale bread, and
a few grams of lard (like butter) each week. Despite the harsh
environment this boy's family continued to observe the Sabbath
which begins with the lighting of a candle at sundown Friday and
the Sabbath meal. Somehow they managed to scrounge up a piece
of candle and a little food each week--they said the Sabbath prayers
and pronounced the Sabbath blessings. One week, however, there
was no candle. So when the evening came and the Sabbath was at
hand, the boy's father took some of their precious lard and molded
it around a bit of string. Lighting this makeshift candle, he
began to lead his family in the prayers and blessings. The son
was enraged. When the prayers were done, he confronted his father.
"How could you do that?" he raged.
"How could you waste what little lard we have to make a candle?
It's the only food we have."
His father answered, "Son, without food we can live for several
days.
Without hope, we cannot live one hour."
"Without hope, we cannot live one hour"
Do not work for the food that perishes, Jesus said, but for the food that endures for eternal life.
Amen.