November 8, 2011

Texts: Psalm 63, Joel 1:1-14, 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Being married to a chef, I think it is interesting when the greatest indication of mourning is the way in which we eat. But I don't think it is so much about what we eat, but by how we are fed. We have been spending quite some time with the prophets. Israel had decided that she was no longer satisfied by God, no longer filled by God's presence. Israel began "hedging their bets", often worshipping the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, along with household deities: one for fertility, one for wealth, and on and on. I wonder if, when things were going well, Israel believed it to be the result of the household gods; when things went poorly, they despaired. Israel was, indeed, hungry, but they tried to fill it by things other than God.

It is intimidating to have a God that demands our entire allegiance. We tell ourselves that God wants us to be blessed (I believe God does), but when we cast that blessing in the image of wealth, of power, of the so-called "American Dream," in which the rich have pulled themselves up from their bootstraps and the poor are lazy or incompetent, we create a system of life that points to ourselves as our own household God. "She has made a good life for herself..." or "If he would just pull himself together he would be okay..."

"The fields are devastaed, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil fails... the vine withers, the fig tree droops, poegranate, palm, and apple - all the tries of the field are dried up; surely, joy withers away among the people."

It seems spiritual and physical hunger are linked for Joel, or, at least, one is an indication of the other. When we allow ourselves to be filled, to be satisfied, by God, we are welcomed to the feast. We feast whether poor, hungry, oppressed, or lonely, and we are called to invite those who are poor, hungry, oppressed, or lonely to the feast. It would be nice if this were only an esoteric suggestion that we could say, "How nice." It's not a pie-in-the-sky ordeal. Hunger and hunger-related illnesses claim the lives of 25,000 people each day according to the UN (poverty.com). This is a physical and a spiritual reality at the same time. There are many of us who have only ever known one type of hunger but not the other. God has promised to fill both. How? Only God knows. We trust and have faith that the selfsame God that invites us to the spiritual feast calls us to feed the hungry as well. Surely there is something to these two being linked. We feed others not because our salvation depends on it, but theirs - whether physical or spiritual - might.