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Drink for the Thirsty, Food for the HungryMarch 11, 2007 Third Sunday in Lent “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food…”[1] I find this an astonishingly beautiful and profoundly stirring image concerning what we consume to satisfy our deepest desires. We could easily spend a month’s worth of sermons unpacking the implications of these two verses, and they seem especially relevant in our season of Lent. We could advance our conversation from a number of angles. For instance, I could ask this question: What is your deepest hunger and thirst? Or this one: What motivates your days – what fills them up? If you took an actual inventory, what would be listed? What do you consume to sate your deepest needs? Or we could ask this: How can it be that what we most need is readily available and free of charge? After all, we live in a “pay-as-you-go” society, don’t we? How could something so valuable actually come free-of-charge? What exactly is this rich food, anyway? And why don’t we avail ourselves of it more readily? Come to think of it, these questions might provide good stimulants for those of you in covenant groups. You’ll be able to pick them up from the sermon online tomorrow. As these questions occurred to me this week, the contemporary cliché, “you are what you eat,” came to mind; as did all of the news that bombards us concerning our diets and health, organics and supplements, food labeling and restaurant disclosures, all in service of our paying attention to the fact that what we put in our mouths becomes our physical selves. As a little diversion I googled the phrase, “you are what you eat,” and came up with approximately 107,000 hits, even including a wikipedia entry about controversial British television programming. One of the more intriguing bits that popped up changed the phrase to, “you do what you eat,” and concerned several studies on the relationship between food and behavior. As reported in Ode Magazine[2], a criminal-justice professor at California State University has been researching the relationship between food and behavior for more than 20 years. He demonstrates that reducing the sugar and fat intake in our daily diets leads to higher IQs and better grades in school. When he supervised a change in meals served at 803 schools in low-income neighborhoods in New York City, the number of students passing final exams rose from 11 percent below the national average to five percent above. He is best known for his work in youth detention centers. One of his studies showed that the number of violations of house rules fell by 37 percent when vending machines were removed and canned food in the cafeteria was replaced by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings this way: “Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behavior.” That seemed a little overstated for the tastes of many scientists, but even the skeptics are struck by the findings of Bernard Gesch, a physiologist at the University of Oxford, who decided to test the anecdotal clues pointing to the relationship between food and behavior. In an English prison, 231 volunteers were divided into two groups: one was given nutrition supplements along with their meals; the other group got placebos. Neither the prisoners, nor the guards, nor the researchers at the prison knew who took fake supplements and who got the real thing. The prisoners given supplements for four consecutive months committed an average of 26 percent fewer violations compared to the preceding period. Those given placebos showed no marked change in behavior. For serious breaches of conduct, particularly the use of violence, the number of violations decreased 37 percent for the men given nutrition supplements, while the placebo group showed no change. This field of research is still young and immature and has many doubters in the scientific community, but as Bernard Gesch says this: “Few scientists are not convinced that diet is fundamental for the development of the human brain. Is it plausible that in the last 50 years we could have made spectacular changes to the human diet without any implications for the brain? I don’t think so. Now, evidence is mounting that putting poor fuel into the brain significantly affects social behavior. We need to know more about the composition of the right nutrients. It could be the recipe for peace.”[3] Another rather grandiose conclusion, but still, common sense alone tells us that what we consume we become. Which leads to a rather important corollary about our spiritual selves. Perhaps I’m only preaching to the converted on this point, but then again, even the converted need a refresher on the obvious. What we consume spiritually is what we shall become spiritually. It stands to reason that feeding on spiritual junk food will lead to a certain sort of outcome. Whereas, drinking from deep spiritual wellsprings is exactly what we need to sate our most profound thirst. That’s what Isaiah invites when he says, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters!” Who thirsts? Well, I would tell you everyone does. Who hungers? Everyone hungers for real food that will satisfy their deepest needs. That’s right, isn’t it? We could say with some confidence that the large majority of you are here as a result of responding to this hunger and thirst. At least, that would be the healthy church. There are other reasons for going to a church, of course, that have to do with history, culture, social and professional connections, the maintenance of certain exclusionary prejudices, and their like. The healthiest church will be the one that lays bare the universal hunger and thirst inherent in the human condition. To not flinch from it, but to expose it, see it for what it is, and then to drink from the life-giving wellsprings and eat from the life-giving table. That’s reflected in our reading from 1st Peter: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” [4] That’s a gloriously earthy image that blends the physical and spiritual – “you have tasted the kindness of the Lord” through pure spiritual milk. Jesus often invoked the imagery of true food. It’s all over John’s gospel with many allusions and metaphors. One particularly poignant one follows the story of the feeding of the five thousand, where everyone had enough to eat with twelve baskets left over. A rather remarkable conversation ensues between Jesus and his followers that John reports this way: Jesus said, “’Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life…my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.’ They said, ‘Lord give us this bread always.” [5] This then led to an astonishing response by Jesus who said, “’I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst. “ [6] This sating of hunger and thirst takes tangible form when we gather around the communion table; one of the great graces of the Christian tradition – an act of consuming real food. That’s the challenge that’s embedded here – to consider what we deeply long for and what we consume to satisfy the desire. That’s as good a Lenten work as I can think of. And about as difficult a task as we Americans could imagine. For surely you would have to agree with me that among the things at which we excel, is our ability to consume. When our leaders speak of preserving our so-called “way of life” in the face of a threatening terrorism, the cynical Steve thinks that a large part of what is meant involves our phenomenal capacity to feed our addictions for every conceivable commodity. In fact, we turn even intangible things, like relationships for instance, into commodities, just so we might consume them. The national advance of our growing girth is just one simple and small manifestation of our rapacious appetites. In sharp contrast, during Lent we follow Jesus’ path as he makes his way to Jerusalem. It will be just a few weeks when he’s brought to his violent demise. In the meantime, we’re busily consumed with our consuming, and the act of will that’s required to refocus our attention on the living waters and real food is enormous. In fact, as I think about this, it seems that most every competitor for our drinking living water and eating real bread is some other form of consumption. Consuming may very well be our spiritual Achilles heel and it may be so deeply embedded within every aspect of our lives that we can’t see it for what it is. What do you think about that?
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