Proper 14B – St James the Fisherman, Wellfleet, MA
I’ve been thinking a lot about Elijah this week. In so many ways I feel sorry for the guy. What has happened to him just doesn’t seem right, fair, or warranted. I mean, all the while, through his relationship with God and God’s people, he was rather successful.
But here he is in the wilderness, he’s given up. He appears to be exhausted, overwhelmed, and to a point, irrational as he shouts out to his God, IT IS ENOUGH!
Haven’t we heard these words before? Haven’t our friends uttered these exact words to us when their life seemingly was filled with despair? Haven’t you and I shouted out these same words?
In so many ways Elijah’s voice is my voice. I get what has happened to him, because in all honesty, I too have been led into the wilderness without hope, and all I want to do is to give up. To go to sleep and to never be wakened.
I am sure that we could share our own stories of pain, grief, despair that left us without an ounce of hope. Stories that tell of finding the easy way out, stories that shout out, what an impossible year this has been, a year filled with trauma and sometimes abuse. Times when we are fleeing into the wilderness for our life.
But God sent an angel to Elijah not once, but twice, and even though the story doesn’t directly say this, I would imagine, as many times as needed. God sent Elijah an angel to wake him up, to nourish him, to give him strength to go on.
For Elijah the story didn’t end there. How about you and me?
In the midst of my anger, pain, grief, denial and hopelessness God quite often sends angels to feed and nourish me. To tell me; ok – enough, get up – stop dwelling on those things that are not causing life.
So the question for me becomes, what is it that gives me life? And how do I let go of those things that are getting in the way of the life and person that God already knows and sees in me?
I’m sure the answer might appear to be easier said than done. And sometimes before I leave the wilderness to do the wonderful work and pleasure of being me, I tend to act-out. Instead of going toward the healthy places that I am called to live in, I continue to hang out in the wilderness.
But the promise for you and for me is that God sends angels – to waken us, to nourish us, to remind us to actually live into those things, situations, hobbies, relationships that indeed give us life.
Over the years I have discovered that the thing that delights me most is cooking. Oh I dream about recipes. I imagine how good they will taste, and mostly I imagine the delight of my friends, family and sometimes strangers when they taste my food.
My mother died when I was a senior in High School. In so many ways I entered into a wilderness that was numbing and completely distracting. One day my mother’s oldest sister, my Aunt Jackie, called and invited me to really learn how to cook. I say really because both my mother’s sisters used to say that my mother’s cooking wasn’t the best because she used cheap ingredients.
We began with learning to make dough – Pouring out the flour on the counter top, creating a little well to put in the yeast, salt and a little sugar, and then slowly adding the water, not too hot – not too cold, and begin mixing all the ingredients together, (as this southern woman on Instagram says: allow the ingredients to get well acquainted with one another. And don’t forget to smile for Jesus.) and of course we can never just use a mixer, you’ve got to use your hands, soon it starts to take shape, kneading it with the palm of your hand and really working the dough until it’s just right.
Making dough for a loaf of bread requires lots of, as my father would say, elbow grease. It also requires patience. Patience for the first rise, the kneading, the second rise, the kneading, forming the loaf, adding all the toppings or brushing the top of the loaf with an egg wash, placing it in the oven and just waiting for that incredible aroma to fill the house. Let’s be honest, there’s nothing like the smell of fresh bread baking in the oven, not to mention the anticipation of how good it will taste when it’s done.
In essence Aunt Jackie helped me to understand that we were not just throwing some ingredients together, but we were part of the ingredients, we became that bread, that baked ziti, that meatloaf, and that birthday cake.
When people gathered around my table for a meal, part of me is in that meal.
I wonder if that is what Jesus was getting at when he proclaimed that he was the Bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry or thirsty again.
But no one gets it! Or maybe no one wants to get it.
All the muttering, all the complaining, all the bickering, all the arguing among themselves; is it actually about not wanting to do the work? Making excuses. Not having the patience or the willingness to allow, what seems to be an unorthodox teaching, to rise in their minds?
But if we listen closely, it’s all about what it means to be in a relationship and not just with each other and God, but a relationship with the earth. Jesus tries to open their minds to new possibilities by pointing out his own relationship with his Father in heaven or rather in the sky. If you enter into this relationship, he says, you will even be fulfilling the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “And they’ll all be taught by God.” Everyone who’s listened to and learned from the Father is coming to me. . . . I tell you, whoever believes, has life for all time.”
Are you hungry enough to be filled by God? Are your thirsty enough to see beyond the present to a life that will never end?
It’s tough stuff. I mean bread is bread and water is water, how can it satisfy my needs, my wants, my desires beyond today?
The bread of Christ is the bread that answers the question for us: What happens when all is lost? Or when things are just not working out and I feel overwhelmed? Jesus gives himself as food. St Catherine of Siena once said: Christ is a mad lover – so much so, that he gives himself to us as food.
Maybe that’s just the work. Being in a relationship requires work, it doesn’t just happen – it is a learning process – it’s about trusting one another enough to let down the walls – to tell the stories that frighten us and to shout out the stories that make us rejoice. And when all is said and done, it’s about the gift of life, life that lasts forever, life that is not just for us, but for the world.
Angus Dun wrote in his book, Not by bread alone, “To feed on him is to take his thoughts within our minds so that they become a living part of us – his thought of God and humankind and life and death. It is to take his affections into our hearts so that we come to love what he loves and with his own love. To feed on him is to permit his large and generous purposes to penetrate and work within our wills.”
I’m reminded of the Cole Porter song, “I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me, so deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me, I’ve got you under my skin.”
There is a Greek Proverb that proclaims: A society grows when old men & women plant trees whose shad they will never sit in.
Oh my gosh, that’s it! It’s all about abundance. It’s all about eternal life. It’s all about us becoming the very bread for the life of the world.