A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, October 3, 2010
Luke 17:5, 6
Mark 6:35-44
God’s children are hungry and thirsty. Tragically, if we look to the four corners of the earth we see two billion of the world population is food-insecure living with barely enough to sustain life. In the US food insecurity has grown to more than 15%, the highest level since numbers have been kept. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security)
On this World Communion Sunday we recognize that so many of our sisters and brothers live daily with far to little. Many more of us have plenty to eat and drink, but are hungry and thirsty for a whole litany of other things: for love, for home, for respect, for meaning, for faith…
Clearly the disciples felt that hunger when they came to Jesus as told in Luke 17 and said “Increase our faith!” You might think Jesus would respond warmly saying “oh, my dear friends. How sensitive of you to come to me and ask for a deeper, stronger faith.” Instead it feels as though he turned on them and said through gritted teeth “if you had any faith you’d be able to uproot that tree and throw it into the ocean. But since you can’t do that you apparently don’t have any faith at all.”
Put another way – the tension isn’t between a little faith and a lot; it’s between any amount and none at all. When you have faith – any, even as little as a mustard seed – you can do great and good things in the name and spirit of Jesus. I remember my mother had a necklace with a small glass sphere – about the size of a marble – with a tiny seed inside. It was a mustard seed and whenever she wore it I remembered that a mustard see is tiny and a mustard large bush can be well over six feet.
Faith that begins small will grow and equip us to face life, such that the challenges are less fearsome and the celebrations are more joyful.
We’re hungry and thirsty for faith. But more and more we hunger for knowledge. It used to be that each generation was carefully instructed about the faith – Bible stories, rather than TV, Sunday school rather than traveling soccer, confirmation as a welcome into the church rather than a time to walk out the door.
Just this past week the Pew Charitable Trust pointed out the level of religious ignorance in our country. Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations.
• Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives, and roughly four-in-ten say they attend worship services at least once a week. But the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own. Many people also think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are stricter than they really are.
• More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ.
• About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity.
• Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.
Ironically, we have more access to data than every before in the history of the world. In an instant we can confirm the distance from earth to moon, the average temperature in Antarctica in July, and even how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. We have tons of data, all right. But data is simply bits of information without context – binary code of ones and zeroes.
Our true hunger is for knowledge, for meaning. When we’re ignorant of our religious tradition we see the trees but no forest. When we’re ignorant of others’ religious traditions, we become suspicious and often hostile.
From our earliest days, Congregationalists have emphasized both spirit and knowledge – faith and faith formation. Congregationalists started Harvard and Yale and dozens of other colleges to shape the lives of young Christian men and women – knowing that faith is important, but faith with knowledge can heal the world. And so it is that in many churches like ours there’s a much stronger response to study and discussion groups than to prayer circles.
Jesus knew that, as he looked at the hungry crowd who came for spiritual food. He fed them with knowledge and meaning. He encouraged them in the faith.
But then their growling stomachs got the best of them as the day stretched on. “Lord, they need food!” said the disciples. “You’re right,” said Jesus. “Feed them.” And they looked at what they had – five loaves and two fish – and they muttered “right… ‘feed them!’ this would take a miracle…”
When we encounter the hunger and thirst of the world, let’s remember that we do have something to share.
• Through our worship we can encounter the living presence of God and feel strength in our faith;
• By remembering and sharing the story we can move beyond data and find meaning – the deeper foundation on which we can build our lives and those of generations to come.
• Through our “Neighbors in Need” offering we can make a real and lasting difference in the life of a neighbor we’ll never meet;
The world isn’t hungry for more gadgets or toys, more placebos or easy answers. The true spiritual hunger is for meaning. And here, together, as we come to the table – hungry and thirsty in familiar ways – let’s be truly open to all that the grace of God can offer.
Amen.