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Sermon for Sunday, February 10, 2008
Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith
First Sunday in Lent
Texts: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
Grace to you and peace, from God our creator and from Christ Jesus, who feeds our hungers.
When I was probably four years old, my parents gave my brother and me the game “Hungry Hungry Hippo.” Perhaps you remember this game, too. It is a pretty simple game: basically each player controls the opening and closing of a plastic hippo’s mouth. The goal is to eat as many marbles from the center of the game board as possible. The game consists of the smacking of hippo mouths to gobble up marbles, without concern or finesse, eating as many marbles as possible. It is loud and crazy and doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking. We loved it, particularly my father, who would bring his large 6 foot 4 inch frame down on the floor to eat up marbles. This game, “Hungry Hungry Hippo,” was a favorite of our family, long after it was age appropriate.
It was this game that I thought about today, as we hear about Jesus and his temptation in the wilderness. Jesus, still wet from his baptism is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he fasts for 40 days. Now certainly, after fasting for 40 days, Jesus must have been hungry. It was at this time, at Jesus’ height of hunger, that the devil comes to meet him.
The Tempter tries to tempt Jesus with things that might fill his hunger. The tempter offers Jesus bread, enough bread to not only feed the hungry Jesus, but all the world. The tempter offers Jesus safety and invulnerability, enough to rescue all the world from suffering. The tempter offers Jesus power, enough power to rule victoriously over all people. However, Jesus is not like the hungry hungry hippos of our game, seeking to gobble up whatever he can sink his teeth into. He is not seeking a quick rise to power or an easy path to domination. Rather, Jesus is seeking to be faithful to God. Instead of seeking to fill himself with the empty promises of the devil, Jesus trusts God. Jesus waits, choosing a path that will make certain all people will be filled, not with empty promises, but with the unfailing grace and love of God.
And at the end of this time of temptation, God’s holy angels wait on him, bringing him nourishment and sustenance, feeding him. In the midst of his wilderness, in response to his hunger, God feed Jesus.
The amazing thing is, too, that the things that the devil tempts Jesus with, are eventually, and more completely, given by God. Jesus turns 5 loaves and some fish into enough food to feed the hunger of thousands. Jesus claims the deep vulnerability of his humanity, willingly dying on the cross so that we might be saved, not from suffering, but from sin and death and all its derivatives. Jesus, through his resurrection, brings about the reign of God made known now, and which will be made known in its fullness in the days to come. In Jesus, God fills all of our hungers, though in ways that might be slower and more surprising than we would often wish.
We, quite unlike Jesus, are much more like those hungry hungry hippos than we would like to imagine. We are people with a great many hungers. We hunger for the same sorts of things that the Devil used to tempt Jesus. We hunger for food, for the basic necessities, a roof over our head, clothes to keep us warm, the stuff we need to survive. We hunger for safety and invulnerability, not wanting ourselves or the people we care about to be harmed. We hunger for power, to help ourselves and to help make our world a better place for us and for others. These hungers are good, important, but the temptation is to become like hungry hungry hippos, gobbling up whatever we can sink our teeth into. We are like hungry hungry hippos, filling our hungers with whatever we can find.
The reality is - we are spiritually hungry people, empty and longing to be filled; it is just a part of our humanity. We are broken, empty and longing. We have been left hungry from our days, and months and years in the wilderness - hungry for reconciled relationships, hungry for healing from sickness, hungry for joy and normalcy after loss and change, hungry for community in our loneliness. We are hungry hungry people. The trouble comes when we listen to the empty promises of the many things that tempt us. And there are a whole lot of them, aren’t there - those things that offer their salvation and their hope to us that are full of empty promises? There are many sneaky serpents telling us they can give us some tasty fruit that will give us what we need. Like Adam and Eve of old, we fill our hungers with the stuff that will not feed us, will not sustain us. It begins to hurt us, kill us.
In our living like hungry hungry hippos, we harm not just ourselves, but the people around the world who are impacted by our constant need for stuff and our insatiable appetites for more and more. I heard a story about a farmer in Central America, a strawberry grower, who said to visitors from the US,“My children are starving because I need to use my land to grow strawberries for you.” Our living as hungry hungry hippos, only caring to feed ourselves, harms not just ourselves, but the whole world.
So what are we to do with our hungers? How are we to live in this wilderness that we face? I believe that we are called to name our hungers, to name our emptiness, to turn away from the things that harm us and go to the One who will nourish us and feed us with what we need. Just as Jesus was fed by the angels at the end of his temptation, God, too, will come to us. God’s holy angels will wait on us, will bring us nourishment and sustenance, will feed us. In the midst of our wilderness, in response to our hunger, God will feed us.
We are reminded in this Lenten Season that God is the only one who can feed these deep hungers of our soul. Christ came into the world to remind us that we do no suffer alone, that we do not hunger alone, that we do not face our wilderness by ourselves. Christ came into the world to redeem us from our hungers which starve us, which empty ourselves and hurt our neighbors. Christ came into the world, to fill us with the love of God which will sustain us when nothing else will, which will fill us when we are empty, which gives us a new hunger to love and serve our world. When my husband was in Nicaragua, the visitors taught him the prayer: “Dear God, we give you thanks for this meal. For those who are hungry give bread, and for those who have bread give a hunger for justice.” God feeds our emptiness and gives us a new hunger to serve and love God and our neighbor, to crave justice, to long for peace.
God feeds us in our wilderness. God nourishes us so that we do not need to turn to temptations. God will fill us with a food that will never leave us empty. At this meal of Christ’s body and blood we are fed with the one true food from heaven. Come, as hungry people, hungry for the love and grace the comes from God, hungry for justice and peace. In this meal we are filled, we are nourished, and we are sent, no longer hungry, hungry hippos, but nourished and fed people of God, ready to give ourselves as bread for the hungry.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
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