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The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies

St. Martin’s Church

August 2, 2009

Proper 13 B

              One of the pleasures of the kind of small group bible studies that Lindsay and I have been organizing this summer is the chance to hear a passage read several times in different translations. Sometimes an unfamiliar translation can open up a well-known passage in an entirely new and unexpected way. And no translation does that better than “The Message”, a version written by Eugene Peterson, a prolific Presbyterian scholar, pastor and preacher.

              Here’s how the New Revised Standard Version, the one we use every week, presents verse 27 of our gospel passage from John: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” And this is Eugene Peterson’s translation: "Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last."

              Don’t waste your energy. Now, I’ve preached on this sixth chapter of John every three years since I’ve been ordained – so at least 8 times – but when Cheryl Bischkoff read that last Monday evening, it was as if I were hearing it for the first time. Our skeptical, literal-minded ears might have trouble with the mystical language Jesus uses to refer to himself as the bread of life, but if there’s one thing we most certainly do understand, it’s what it means to “waste energy.”

              One of my favorite metaphors for those frustrating moments in organizational or in individual lives when we expend more and more energy for fewer and fewer results is the hamster wheel. You know, those wheels in pet rodent cages where the hamster or mouse or rat can run and run and run, spinning a wheel that goes absolutely nowhere. It may keep the hamster busy, but it is a splendid waste of energy. The wheel spins and spins and spins and the hamster eventually loses interest or gets tired, but the wheel is in exactly the same place as when the hamster started. I’ve been in plenty of meetings, or had plenty of arguments with Gerry, or tried to change something in myself or in others that left me feeling just like that hamster – like I’ve run and run and run, but haven’t managed to move an inch.

              The crowd has pursued Jesus across the sea of Galilee because they are hungry again. Last week we heard the first part of John, chapter 6 – which is the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus takes five loaves of bread and two small fish and provides food for thousands and the crowd is duly amazed – but as soon as they’ve been fed, they are hungry again. They are on a hamster wheel of unsatisfied need, spinning and spinning and spinning, looking for something to fill that aching hunger and chasing after anyone or anything they think can satisfy it.

              And Jesus responds to them by saying essentially, “I have what you need, but you are going to have to get off the wheel. You can’t waste energy running after food that will never satisfy you.”

              The crowd does not or cannot understand – they keep wanting more of that bread. This is one of John’s favorite literary techniques – Jesus does or says something, and his audience misunderstands, and then Jesus goes on to explain more fully. The crowd is thinking of Moses, and the miracle of manna in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt. But they don’t even understand their own Scripture – they claim that Moses gave them that bread, but Jesus points out that God was the source of the manna as God is now the source of the life-giving bread that Jesus is offering the world.

              “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

              We spin and spin and spin on our various hamster wheels, always trying to fill ourselves up, to satisfy our longings or heal our own wounds, to compete with others or shore up our faltering egos, but deep down we know we’ll never be satisfied. There is a deep, deep psychic hunger in us, a longing that Jesus puts his finger on. We are hungry for something that will fill up that empty, aching space within us, and Jesus has the spiritual bread that can fill that space, but the hard part is that we have to get off the wheel to receive it.

              The more we keep running after that perishable food that will never fill us up, the less we can receive the living bread that Jesus offers us. The hamster wheel may make us feel busy, or important, or successful or popular – but in the end it’s still just a spinning wheel going nowhere and we’ll never stop feeling hungry.

              I have some wheels that I leap into and start spinning before I even think about it. I expect you have wheels of your own, too. I like especially the wheel that says I don’t need anyone’s help or support, that I can do it all myself. And I also like the wheel that says my value is some how tied into how much I accomplish, into what I do instead of who I am. And then of course there’s the wheel that is powered entirely by my unspoken, even unknown fears – those deep and universal human fears that are rooted in our mortality.

              Gerry’s illness this summer, and the looming transition of both Andy and Mary leaving for college have at least made me more conscious of the wheels I’m likely to spin. Whether or not I’ve been pushed far enough to actually climb off those wheels and let Jesus fill me with the bread that lasts forever remains to be seen. But I do have a new awareness of just how much energy I’m wasting trying to justify myself and make myself invulnerable. I’m at least beginning to suspect that what Jesus offers me can indeed fill those deep empty places.

              Churches get on hamster wheels, too – and one of the things that’s begun to happen at St. Martin’s is a re-evaluation of exactly what kind of hamster wheels tempt us to run and run and run without getting anywhere. What, really, are people hungry for? What are people looking for when they come through our doors? What is essential for our mission and ministry, and what just keeps us running on our various hamster wheel? How can we keep from wasting the energy of our leaders and our volunteers? How do we stop running after that perishable bread and begin to seek instead the bread that nourishes us, and gives us life that will last?

              One answer lies, I think, in our passage from Ephesians – that talks about how God’s gifts given to individuals are all put together in order to build us all into the body of Christ. “To each was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” the author of Ephesians, “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

              This passage is often read at ordinations, and I’m afraid that most of us heard it as saying we had to – magically –  the moment the bishop’s hands left our head – become all those things: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teacher. We had to be all those things, and we had to be them perfectly, and we had to fool far wiser and more mature Christians that ourselves into believing that we had all the answers.

              The church has gotten smarter since the days of my ordination, and mostly tries to teach that ministry belongs to all the holy people of God and not just to the few who like wearing funny collars. But I think, whether we are ordained or not, we still hear a list like this one in Ephesians and we think, wow – that’s a pretty impressive list – where does an ordinary person like me fit in?

              There’s another way to read this list. Instead of thinking that this is some kind of exhaustive laundry list that every parish needs to tick off, what if we read it instead as a jumping off point? The author of Ephesians says – each and every one of us has received gifts poured out from the abundance of Christ’s grace. No one is going to have exactly the same gift as another, and any congregation is going to be a rich stew of gifts – some we don’t recognize right away and some we not know yet quite how to use, but every member, no matter how young, how old, how active or how committed has something that can help build up this part of the body of Christ.

              But here’s my new insight this week. No one person has every gift, and I’m beginning to understand that no one congregation has every gift either. And that’s one way for any parish to get itself off the hamster wheel. As long as I’ve been here, I’ve heard us compare our education program for children to the thriving, very successful program at Central Congregational. We’re always lamenting that we’re not as good as they are. But a few months ago, I learned from Mimi Nash, that our sense of inferiority goes back at least 40 years. That’s a long time to be comparing yourself to someone else and always come up lacking. That’s a hamster wheel.

              Maybe instead, we’re called to do something different for our children and young people – maybe our Christian formation is going to take different direction, have different goals. Maybe we’re called to celebrate the gift we most certainly do have, which is to worship God in the beauty of holiness. We offer the best of ourselves every week to sing God’s praises, to create a sense of sacred time and space in which anyone – member or not – can rest and be refreshed. Maybe we’re called to continue to develop our extraordinary gift for hospitality – maybe it’s our gift to lift up ways to welcome and incorporate those who seek a deeper life in our community.

              I absolutely know that this congregation has rich, mightily rich gifts for ministry. I would love to climb off the hamster wheels that keep us obsessing with what we don’t have and instead begin to celebrate who we are and what God has given us – which is indeed grace sufficient to build us up into mature Christian faith and practice. And when we climb off that wheel, and quit wasting energy on the perishable food of what can’t be achieved, which always leaves us frustrated and hungry, then we will find ourselves fed on the very bread of heaven, the food that sticks with us and nourishes our everlasting life. We will find ourselves, together, growing into the full stature of Christ.