In the current "Esquire," Jon Reiner, whose digestive track had stopped working, movingly describes what it's like not to be able to eat for 60 days. The organ-shaped nutrition packs he took intravenously did nothing to relieve what he called "the derangement of hunger." It got me thinking how many of the Holy Land places we St. John's pilgrims had visited concerned hunger and eating, especially the traditional sites of Jesus's temptation (at a monastery carved into a mountainside near Jericho, visible in the upper left) and the feeding of the 4,000 as well the two places the risen Christ became known to his discouraged followers over a good meal. Through our faith and the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, Jesus Christ offers himself as the food that never runs out, that gives eternal life. If we don't partake of that blessed meal, how do we mask the derangement of our spiritual hunger? Through addiction, ambition, or apathy, it seems to me. My Sunday sermon is here. This version, artfully fixed by St. John's volunteer audio guru Dale Griffith, does not include the not-quite 18 1/2 minutes of a-gony (for our good congregation even more than me) when I forget my first "a" (addiction) and couldn't proceed with the sermon until I remembered it. I'm addicted to doing things in order!
Monday, August 17, 2009
"Derangement": Sermon For 11 Pentecost
In the current "Esquire," Jon Reiner, whose digestive track had stopped working, movingly describes what it's like not to be able to eat for 60 days. The organ-shaped nutrition packs he took intravenously did nothing to relieve what he called "the derangement of hunger." It got me thinking how many of the Holy Land places we St. John's pilgrims had visited concerned hunger and eating, especially the traditional sites of Jesus's temptation (at a monastery carved into a mountainside near Jericho, visible in the upper left) and the feeding of the 4,000 as well the two places the risen Christ became known to his discouraged followers over a good meal. Through our faith and the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, Jesus Christ offers himself as the food that never runs out, that gives eternal life. If we don't partake of that blessed meal, how do we mask the derangement of our spiritual hunger? Through addiction, ambition, or apathy, it seems to me. My Sunday sermon is here. This version, artfully fixed by St. John's volunteer audio guru Dale Griffith, does not include the not-quite 18 1/2 minutes of a-gony (for our good congregation even more than me) when I forget my first "a" (addiction) and couldn't proceed with the sermon until I remembered it. I'm addicted to doing things in order!
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