God of Wilderness, Feed Us
1 Kings 19:4-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Gospel: John 6:35, 41-51
Our Christian tradition is rich in stories of wandering in wilderness. The wilderness, as Old Testament and Hebrew scholar David Garber, Jr. writes, is a “liminal space during desperate times where God is encountered.”
Now, when I read these stories of wilderness, I can’t personally help but think back to my own very few experiences of being in the wilderness. For those of you who know the ancient ruins of Petra, a Nabatean city carved into the rocks of the modern day Kingdom of Jordan, I had the opportunity to visit and explore this archeological site one scorching day during my studies abroad. Having lived in Tokyo and Grand Rapids, Michigan up until this point, I was very inexperienced with this kind of climate and I did not bring sunscreen, or even a bottle of water. As I walked the desert paths from site to site, I took shelter in the caverns of these ancient buildings. And as I walked further out, regretting my lack of UV protection and water, I was shocked to see a “Coca Cola” sign in the distance amid the ancient ruins. This was just like those TV shows where someone sees a mirage of an oasis in the middle of nowhere. To my relief, I was not losing it, and there actually was a restaurant in the middle of this archeological site. And it was by far the most refreshing bottle of Coca Cola I had ever had in my life.
In contrast, Elijah’s sustenance of food and water was provided by a much more mysterious source. In today’s reading from the first book of Kings, Elijah awakes in the wilderness to an angel who says to him, “eat.” He finds a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. Later in the passage it is written that this food and water sustained Elijah for forty days and nights. This beautifully parallels today’s Gospel text, where Jesus reminds us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry… or thirsty.” And also, just like in our Elijah text, the words of Jesus in our gospel text are not met with full embrace by those who hear them. The promise and proclamation of holy sustenance and divine presence is ignored or rejected. In Elijah’s case, he eats, yet simply goes back to sleep. It isn’t until the angel wakes him up a second time that the prophet eats again, and then accepts the call to journey further. In the case of our gospel text, Jesus’s proclamation as the Living Bread of eternal sustenance to all who eat is met with protest.
I think these passages today from 1 Kings and the Gospel of John are important to us in a number of ways. First, we are reminded of the promise and power of Christ our God who can sustain and feed us, energize and save us. But we are also reminded through these texts of our collective human experiences of losing hope in that promise, doubting God’s love, doubting God’s goodness, or protesting that Christ is actually enough. It’s great to hear words like “I am all you need,” or “In me, you will never hunger or thirst,” but, friends, isn’t it crushing when we hear those words in moments where we don’t feel it or see it or know it? These texts today not only serve as words of assurance when we believe, but also as a mirror of solidarity in the human experience when we can’t believe, a mirror between us and Elijah, between us and the people Jesus encountered. For even in the literal presence of God in these passages, we can doubt the nature and presence and promise of God.
Yet even in our protest, God feeds again, invites us in again, stays and tries again.
In all of our collective journeys of life in this assembly, many of us may understand the helplessness of Elijah or the scoffing of the people to whom Jesus spoke. Whether we feel it currently, or in the past, the way the world is filled with pain, and suffering, and conflict, and illness, and war, can leave us feeling hollow, parched, like Elijah. In the helplessness of what seemed to be endless triumphs of violent power over justice and peace, Elijah wanted no food, water, or comfort. To him, the wilderness would be his end, far from the pain of the people, far from God. For us, too, witnessing the brutality of our world today is sometimes too heavy for us to bear. Amid all which seems beyond unfair to our fellow beloved siblings – the words, “I am the bread of life, you will never hunger” is not easy to feel all the time. So friends, in this text there is solidarity in the rejection we witness in these passages from Elijah and Jesus’s people. Sometimes, we can’t just accept what we encounter.
When and if we feel this, I invite us to do what God demonstrates for us in both of these scripture passages: Stay present, find repose. In moments when we push against the promise and presence of God, the sustenance of the Holy One, in moments when we don’t feel it, may we find repose. We are people of a God who remains within our protest and push-back. A God who will feed us, let us sleep again, and will try again to empower us on the journey to the next mount. We are a people belonging to a God who tries again and again and doesn’t abandon people who complain or protest. In today’s gospel text, Jesus repeats and remains in the tension. And with Elijah, David Garber, Jr. writes, “The [angel of God] comes to Elijah [in his lament] and neither condemns nor coddles him. Instead, God’s agent recognizes Elijah’s fatigue and offers him respite and recovery.” And in today’s gospel text, Jesus tries again and again, not condemning the people there, but through patient imagery and story-telling, engaging and inviting his people again and again. God remains with us in the wilderness.
The words of Dutch Jewish writer Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) also invite us into the practice of rest and repose in times of helplessness, and finding God within that pause. She writes the following words in the context of the Holocaust: “Reposing in oneself,” she says, “probably best expresses my own love of life: I repose in myself. And that part of myself, that deepest and richest part in which I repose, is what I call ‘God.’”
God is the recognition and companionship in suffering. God is the accompaniment in grief. God is feeding when wanting to die. God is space for repose, rest, and beginning again. God finds us in the wilderness.
And friends, as we are reminded through the beauty and sanctity of baptism and new life today, let us not only notice the ways in which we find God in moments of necessary repose, but how we embody and birth and sustain the God that we encounter in our texts today. Let us ask ourselves, how may we bake the Living Bread among us? Christ in action among us, and to the world? We do it in the same spirit of today’s baptismal commitment we say together, and in the words of today’s Ephesians text: “To promise to support one another, to pray for one another, and to be an example of God’s presence in one another.” And in the words of our Ephesians text: “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”
Through the examples of our scriptures today, and in our witnessing and beholding of baptism this sacred morning, may we be the recreators of Living Bread that sustain and feed one another as we need, divinely meeting one another in wilderness. Let us sustain one another beyond what we can imagine alone. Like bread that nourishes for forty days and forty nights, or forever.