Sermon 2007 10 07

Breakfast: 1/2 grapefruit, slice whole wheat toast, 8 oz. skim milk.

Lunch: 4 oz. lean broiled chicken breast, 1 cup steamed zucchini, 1 oreo cookie, Herb tea.

Mid-Afternoon Snack: Rest of the package of Oreos, 1 quart of Rocky Road ice cream, 1 jar of hot fudge.

Supper: 2 loaves garlic bread, large pepperoni and mushroom pizza with double cheese, 2 quarts of Coca Cola, 3 Milky Way Candy Bars, and an entire Sara Lee Pound Cake eaten directly from the refrigerator!

The reason why people fail so miserably at dieting, is because they are so hungry. That sounds pretty obvious doesn't it? Perhaps people are so hungry because they are not eating the right things. What they eat doesn't fill them up.

And so we're talking diets. I'm sure that most of us will probably feel filled this weekend. Most of us will be eating all the old traditional Thanksgiving food. Turkey, potatoes, beans, turnip, bread. The reason why they are the traditional thanksgiving foods, is that they were the foods which were available to the people at the time. They were staple foods, they still are - basic and wholesome.

Jesus fed the multitude with basic food in the story which just precedes today's Gospel lesson. Basic bread and basic fish were what was usually available to the people of Galilee. Jesus was given 5 loaves of bread and two fish. These he multiplied until everyone had more than enough.

I must say that of all the staples, bread has got to be my favorite. I can still remember so clearly how often I would do parish visits in my last parish and would enter a parishioner's kitchen to the smell of bread baking. It was a rural parish, and especially the older people lived simpler lives, and so they baked their own bread.

When I was single I would often return home in the evening to find a bag hung over the door handle with some home-baked bread, and perhaps some home-made jam. Sometimes there would be meat pies or a pot of baked beans. Sometimes there would be a note telling me who left the gift. Sometimes not. Perhaps my parishioners were feeding me because I was so much skinnier than I am today.

Once Katherine and I were married, I remember that the gifts of bread and other baking mostly stopped. Katherine and I simply could not come up with a subtle way of getting the message out: "now that there are two of us, we'd both appreciate the home-baked bread." When I think of words like "plenty" and "abundance", bread is the image which first comes to mind. And I'd getting hungry just thinking about it.

Many of the people who followed Jesus were hungry people. And not hungry like I am now, but really, really hungry. Jesus ministered among the needy. They had never experienced plenty. They followed Jesus because they wanted the miracle of the bread and fishes again.

It is hard to understand how Jesus seems to dismiss their physical need in today's Gospel reading. But Jesus is saying that they only want material things, but it is really spiritual food which they need.

Perhaps, like we do, they were trying to fill their deepest spiritual hunger with physical things. And so , when we feel our hunger, we try to fill it with Rocky Road ice cream with hot fudge. Sometimes we try to fill it with other material things.

There's a cartoon of Broom Hilda in which she is sitting on the couch, watching TV and complaining to her friend that they get 400 channels, but that she is no happier than the days when they only got 200 channels. As he is walking away, her friend says, "Something is wrong."

"Darn right", she says, "Maybe if we had 600 channels, things would be better."

It seems like we are like Broom Hilda these days. We are the generation which has more material things than ever before in history, and yet, there seems to be the drive to get more and more - people just don't seem able to be satisfied in their lives.

Just like Broom Hilda's friend says, "Something is wrong." We go looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places.

Jesus tells those who are following him that they really need to seek for spiritual food and that he is the bread of life. "Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

The Good News of today's Gospel for us all is that there is an answer our deepest hunger. That answer is having a relationship with Jesus who will fill our deepest need.

Our Eucharistic meal is a sacrament of this living bread. When we receive the bread and wine at our altar we remember that Jesus is present with us, in the moment, and throughout our lives. Remembering this week by week is the way that we can stay spiritually nourished.

As our relationship with Jesus grows, we will find that instead of feeling the need for more things, we can truly be grateful for all that God gives to us. Our response to God's generosity to us, is to give thanks and to share what we have: to give back to God. As the reading from Deuteronomy says:

"When you have come into the land that the Lord God is giving you ... you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, ... you shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house."

This is what we do today, and I ask you, as you celebrate thanksgiving here and with your families, remember that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks, to a God who has given us more than enough. Enough for our needs, and enough to share. And the greatest thing which God has given us, is a relationship with Jesus who is the bread of life. Amen.