What's For Dinner?

Sermon by Pr. Michelle Sevig on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 18 + August 4, 2024

What’s for dinner? That’s the dreaded question asked nearly every day at my house. You’d think I’d be motivated to make a meal plan each week, especially since I love scrolling through recipes on Instagram. But no, each day, when we come home from our daily work, someone asks, “What’s for dinner?” And usually I don’t have an answer, so I ask, “I don’t know, what are you hungry for?” 

I’ve been asked that question several times this past week, but in different contexts. First, when trying to decide what’s for dinner on Thursday, my wife Julie and I decided it was too hot to cook, so we’d go out for a meal instead. “What are you hungry for,” she asked, and truthfully I didn’t really care. I just knew I needed to eat something, anything so that I wouldn’t hear my stomach growling later in the evening. 

But I was also asked this question during our staff Bible study as we pondered the scripture texts for this week. Pastor Mueller asked us, “What are you hungering for? What is your deepest longing? What does our faith community hunger for? Those questions could not be answered by a quick trip to the grocery store or with a meal in an air-conditioned restaurant.

In today's reading from Exodus we hear the story of the Israelites who were hungry for something to eat. They didn’t just ask Moses, “what’s for dinner?” No, they were in full on complaint mode, saying, “Did you bring us out in the wilderness to die?” They had just escaped the Egyptian forces that kept them in bondage. They crossed the Red Sea and celebrated their freedom, but now just a few months later they are longing to go back to their oppressor, where at least they knew they would be fed. The people are hungry, and they turn on Moses and Aaron, who are probably hot, tired and hungry too. 

To feed them, God gave a daily gift –a fine flaky substance that appeared on the ground in the morning. This substance some scholars believe is actually sweet tasting insect excrement left on the tamarisk trees. It drops to the ground in the morning and melts in the hot sun, so to gather it up they’d have to go early in the morning to get it. Naming the miraculous food “manna” developed from a pun on the Hebrew expression man hu, an expression that’s like saying “whaddayacallit” or “what’s-its-name.” 

Manna may not have been what they were craving to eat, but it was a wondrous food provided by God that appeared in the mystery of the night, while they were asleep, out of nowhere, as a sign of God’s mercy. The manna is theirs with no work, no slave labor, just grace–fresh and new every morning.  And it was enough. Just enough. No more and no less than what they needed. 

Food is a central image in the bible– a sign of God’s divine mercy. In Genesis the plants and trees that God created are given to humans as food. Ancient narratives, like this one from Exodus, told of God providing food during famine. Poems described the law of God as if it is nourishing food. Christ was born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread.” In John’s metaphorical theology, Christ is the bread of life. 

Every three years, we get to spend five long weeks in John’s gospel reading texts about bread and feeding; contemplating emptiness and fullness, hunger and nourishment, Christ and bread. And in this reading from John 6 a connection is made between the manna God provided in the wilderness to the Israelites and the manna God provides now in Jesus–the living bread from heaven. 

In a meditation on Jesus as bread, Lauren Winer writes, “In calling himself the bread of life–and not say, (creme caramel or) caviar–Jesus is identifying with basic food, with sustenance, with the food that, for centuries afterward would figure into the protest efforts of poor and marginalized people. No one holds caviar riots, people riot for bread. So to speak of God as bread is to speak of God’s most elemental provision for us.”

What are you hungry for? What are the deep hungers beneath the surface hungers? Debi Thomas, a biblical scholar that I follow says, “of course there are people who hunger for literal bread; they’re poor, food is scarce and they need to feed themselves and their families. There's nothing wrong, substandard or unspiritual about physical hunger. Remember Jeus tends to people’s physical needs first without reservations or preconditions. But he doesn’t stop there. Instead he asks the crowds to probe the soul hungers that drive them restlessly into his presence.

Jesus is more than a provocative teacher or a generic good guy. He doesn’t stop them from learning, believing in him or even following him. But Jesus issues an invitation that is far more intimate and provocative when he calls himself our bread. He invites us to eat him and never be hungry again.” 

What are you hungry for? Security and belonging? Meaning and purpose? Connection. Community. Intimacy. Love. An ongoing hunger for wholeness, courage or a healing of old wounds? 

One preacher said, “It’s one thing to name our hungers, but quite another to trust that Jesus will satisfy them. After all, we're so good at finding substitutes for communion with God. Mine include perpetual business, social media, books, movies and a 24 hour news cycle. Do I really trust that Jesus  is my bread?” she asks. “Maybe I don’t recognize my daily dependance on his generosity,” she concludes. 

In a powerful sermon on God’s generosity, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber describes the shame that often keeps us from feasting on Jesus:  “It’s hard to accept not just that God welcomes all, but that God welcomes all of me, all of you.  (He welcomes) Even that within us we wish to hide: the part that cursed at our children this week, or drank alone, or has a problem with lying, or hates our body.  That part within us that suffers from depression and can’t admit it, or is too fearful to give our money away, or is riddled with shame over our sexuality, or cheats on taxes.  All these parts of us we wish Jesus had the good sense to not welcome to his table are invited to taste and see that the Lord is good."

Each week in this community we are invited to feast on the bread of life–Jesus. To taste and see that the lord is good. To be refreshed by his presence, lifted up by his forgiveness, restored by his healing and sent out to be his body in the world. We are what we eat, the common saying goes. So come and eat the bread of life, the body of Christ, and then go out and be the body of Christ–loving others with a love stronger than death, feeding those who are hungering for wholeness and belonging, caring for the creation God called good and welcoming those who feel like they don’t belong. As we are empowered through his sacrament to be the body of Christ in our daily lives, we will also be fed again and again by his grace and mercy, which is as fresh and new as the morning manna the Israelites counted on for their survival.