Fast Food Jesus, Drive Through Grace

Most people don’t need church. Most people today, if we’re really honest, don’t need Jesus. We’re not hungry. We’re not thirsty. If we need something, we’ll do it for ourselves. If we can’t do it ourselves, we’ll do without or find someone else who can do it for us. So we chase after pride, power, prestige, money, chiseling our bodies through surgery and fad diets, filling our need for connection with social media, whose lifeless pictures remind us of the times when we felt alive. At the same time, our society is one of the most medicated, most numb, living close to the internet but often not knowing our neighbors. We live in anxiety and depression and fear, with many of us having a sense of who we are meant to be but few of us having the courage to live into that reality. Sometimes, we know we’re hungry, but we are so busy trying to stave the hunger that we don’t know what we’re hungry for.

            The people who were following Jesus were hungry for more. Having eaten their fill of bread, the people took off in their boats, looking for Jesus. Jesus’ accusation that they were looking for him not because of signs – not because they believed – but because they were hungry. They didn’t think they needed Jesus, not really; they just thought they needed more bread. Would they have cared if it someone other than Jesus provided bread? Maybe, but likely not. So long as their hunger in that moment was staved, they were content to let things remain as they were. As though they had never experienced the miracle of the bread and the fishes, they ask Jesus: What sign are you going to do for us? What proof are you going to give us that you are who you say you are? How do we know that you’re not going to let us go hungry like all of the other people who have promised us food, peace, and security?

            When things are going well, humans have an incredible capacity to think that they have somehow arrived of their own accord. When things are going poorly, the questions come: where was God when…? We rarely ever ask: “where were you when God showed up?” because, to be honest, most of us are so used to staving off our hunger for love, acceptance, and connection with other things that we don’t expect God to show up. We don’t expect Jesus to be the bread of life any more than the crowd does. We don’t expect Jesus to change much, except to maybe feed us just enough to remind us that we are hungry. Until things start crashing down around us. Then, we raise our fists at God, uttering the first prayer that many of us have said in months, maybe years, blaming God for not showing up exactly when and where we wanted God to show up. But, dear brothers and sisters, when this happens, God is already there, making way ahead of us. Often, we don’t recognize it; like the crowds, we see the miracle and – for a moment – feel fulfilled. Then, when the next crisis happens, we ask Jesus for another sign, having forgotten the first one. We ask Jesus for more promises to show up, to be in the midst of the chaos and mess of life with us. We ask Jesus why we’re so hungry. We ask why the world is so hungry, so full of pain, why life is so difficult.

            These are important questions. They are important not because they represent a negation of the promises, but because they place us in a position in which we realize that we do not live by ourselves. They draw us into conversation with God and with each other. They cause us to reflect on ourselves and on our lives and the places in our lives when we sensed God’s presence. They are a reminder that we have been baptized into Christ, into a community of saints, into the forgiveness that offends our understanding and the promise that God will remain faithful even when we do not. We are a broken people who break promises – to each other, to God – almost as soon as we’ve made them. We need forgiveness more often than we would like to admit. We stay mad and refuse to forgive as we have been forgiven. And, at the same time, we are loved beyond belief.

            As infants, like Corbin, we come to the waters of baptism undeserving, incapable of understanding the love that has claimed us. As some of us grow older, we start to feel like the promises and words at baptism are just a ritual, just a rite, just something that we do to check the “salvation” box so that we can get on with the business of living, to the business of acting as though we are the ones that are able to satisfy our own hunger. But, dear little Corbin, it is so much more than that. Baptism isn’t magic. It won’t teach you how to believe. It won’t teach you that the depths of hunger within you – the hunger for something more than bread, for something more than a life whose destination is death – cannot be filled by anything you do. These waters draw you into a community of people who love you and are praying for you and are watching out for you. They draw you into a group of sinners who have been made saints, who remind each other that the hunger that gnaws at the depths of our souls is not something that can be filled with fast-food Jesus, a drive through of grace with a side of forgiveness. This grace is real, and this forgiveness is real, but we need practice living into it. This is why we all – parents, sponsors, church – make promises to Corbin. We make promises to help him live into this grace and forgiveness, to teach him about this Jesus guy who walked on earth and performed miracles and loved the unlovable and forgave the unforgivable. We make promises to remind him that whatever identity the world gives him, whatever his newsfeed tells him his identity is, says so little of the depths of who he is.

Corbin, you are a child of a God who makes promises to you along with us. This is a God who loves you so much that God saves you before you learn what it means to sin. You have been claimed by Christ, who wraps you in your arms when it seems there is nobody else to hold you. You have been sealed by the Spirit, who continues breathing life into creation, who walks with us in our fear and doubt. The hunger deep within you has been instilled and can only be fulfilled by this God. And it keeps us coming back, always looking for more, always looking for the reassurance that this grace and this forgiveness are real. So we come, week after week, to remind each other that these words are true, that this hunger is the reminder that God’s love remains, even when all others fail. This hunger is the reminder that we have been drawn into one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, under one God, whose love for us knows no bounds.

This is why we come. This is why we need Jesus. We are hungry, and we are thirsty. And all of the things that we have tried to stave off our hunger and thirst come up wanting because they were never meant to satisfy us. You cannot drink the waters of baptism dry. The bread of life does not run out. These Sacraments are more than a ritual or a reminder of a story long ago and far away. These are the continuation of the story that has wrapped countless people in the waters of baptism and fed them with the bread of life, the story that tells us who and whose we are. You, beloved of God, have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.