Hungry

New Testament: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

“The Hunger Games” is series of books set far in the future, after the United States has collapsed and then been pulled back together by an oppressive, dictatorial leader. Every year, each of the twelve districts are forced to send two children to The Capital to fight to the death on national television. It’s a dark vision of human nature – one that highlights some of the most disturbing truths about the selfishness and desire for control that often define us.

But it’s also a story of hope, and as I was reflecting on the story of the Prodigal Son, his hunger reminded me of a crucial scene in the first book of the series. The main character, Katniss, is forced to grow up too early; she had to take responsibility for providing for her mother and younger sister after her father was killed.

There comes a point where Katniss has nothing for her family to eat – she even looks through the trash bins, discovering they’ve just been emptied.

“When I passed the baker’s,” she narrates, “the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen door. I stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life.”

All of a sudden, the baker’s wife is yelling at Katniss, telling her to move on, shrieking that she’s sick of brats always coming around. The young girl notices a boy peering out from behind the screaming woman and recognizes him from school. She will come to learn that his name is Peeta, but at this point he is a complete stranger to her. Katniss moves along, trying to take some shelter under a tree that’s just beyond the baker’s pigsty.

“The realization that I’d have nothing to take home had finally sunk in,” she says. “My knees buckled and I slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. I was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired.

“There was a clatter in the bakery and I heard the woman screaming again … Feet sloshed toward me through the mud. … It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were scorched black.

“His mother was yelling, ‘Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No one … will buy burned bread!’

“He began to tear off chunks from the burned parts and toss them into the trough … [He] took one look back to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in my direction. The second [loaf] quickly followed, and he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.

“By the time I reached home, the loaves had cooled somewhat, but the insides were still warm. When I dropped them on the table, [my sister’s] hands reached to tear off a chunk, but I made her sit, forced my mother to join us at the table, and poured warm tea. … We ate an entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good, hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.”[1]

This story reminds me of the situation in which many of us – perhaps all of us – find ourselves, at one time or another. I expect that everyone here has food enough to keep them from the kind of physical hunger that Katniss and the Prodigal Son experienced. But scripture tells us that people don’t live by bread alone. That’s something that Jesus knew very well. He quoted that passage of scripture when he was fasting in the wilderness and Satan tried to tempt him into turning stones into bread that he could eat. There are so many things for which we hunger.

I believe there is food out there, and sustenance for a starving world. People don’t live on bread alone. Physical exercise keeps our bodies strong and active. Our minds are nourished as we engage in critical thinking and test what we believe.

Positive, encouraging relationships help us to grow in our sense of who we are and what we can accomplish. Spiritual practices like prayer, confession, meditation, reading scripture, and gathering for worship nourish our connection with God and the people around us. We have to pay attention to each of these aspects of our lives, making sure that we receive the sustenance we need for each of them.

We don’t just live by bread alone.

Often, we are hungry for something else. Jesus understood how people can spiritually starve to death, and I think that’s why he decided that the last thing he’d do with his disciples was share a meal with them. He gathered them all together to eat the Passover meal – but he changed things a little. As he gave out the bread, he said, “This is my body.” And he blessed it and broke it. He told them that, every time they ate bread, they should remember God and remember how God feeds people. Not just our bodies, but our spirits as well.

If we look at Katniss’ experience, it may be more similar to ours than we’d like to admit.

First, she tried to feed herself – and we try to do that, too. We try to solve our own problems and tell ourselves that we’re strong enough or smart enough to get through life all on our own. That didn’t work for Katniss, and it doesn’t work for us. Next, she looked in the trash, and we do that sometimes. We look for our spiritual food in the wrong places – in destructive relationships, in drugs and alcohol, in the latest technology or the most prestigious job or whatever it is that the world tells us should satisfy our deep, insatiable longing. But those things are fleeting, and while they might make us feel better for a minute or a day or even a week, they don’t last. Soon enough that hunger returns.

Finally, Katniss gave up. She laid down with hunger gnawing at her stomach, and that was when the bread finally came. Unearned. Undeserved. From an unexpected source – a stranger who would one day become an ally, perhaps even a friend. And that bread wasn’t trash, it wasn’t stale or dry – “It was good hearty bread, filled with
raisins and nuts.”

Friends, that is the kind of spiritual bread that Christ offers to us: bread that is fulfilling and nourishing, bread that awakens our spirits, even when we feel trapped in the cold and the rain, even when we feel like we might be dead inside. The task for us is admit that we’re hungry, and to look to the one who is willing to risk a beating for us – who is willing to take on death itself – to provide the food and connection that we so desperately need.

For what do you hunger today? Love? Justice? Hope? Courage? Forgiveness? Companionship? Connection? Christ offers us all these things and more at his table. Sometimes his table looks like the table at the front of our sanctuary; and sometimes it looks like the table where a father and his two sons share a fatted calf; and sometimes it looks like the table where a daughter, mother, and sister share a loaf of hearty bread; and sometimes it just looks like your own kitchen table, battered and banged up over the years. Native American poet Joy Harjo writes beautifully about the metaphor of a table:

The world begins at a kitchen table, she writes. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.[2]

So come: you who have much faith and you who have little,

you who have been here often,

and you who have not been for a long time,

you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.

Come, not because I invite you: it is the Lord,

and it is God’s will that those who desire life should meet God here,[3]

in good, hearty bread – to the last sweet bite.

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[1] Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008, p.31

[2] "Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. 

[3] From the Iona community