When I read the Gospels, I know that Jesus must have been a Baptist, and the twelve disciples must have been the Deacons of the First Baptist Church of Galilee. Must have been! Do you know why?
Because there is all this talk about eating! Everywhere you turn in the Gospels, there are stories about food! There is a wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus brewed up a few extra jars of wine. (Actually, that doesn’t sound all that Baptist!) There is that parable Jesus told about giving a great banquet and going out to the highways and hedges to compel guests to come in. There is that moment when Jesus looked up in a tree and found a little man named Zacchaeus, and then promptly invited himself over for dinner. There is that scene with Mary and Martha, and, although Jesus said that Mary’s interest in things spiritual was better than Martha’s concern with things physical, the record does not show that he turned down Martha’s food! Everywhere in the Gospels there are stories having to do with food, banquets and feasts, eating and drinking, the joys of the table. It was so much they accused him and his deacons, I mean his disciples, of being gluttons and drunkards! Wow!
I say again, they must have been Baptists! If our church had to choose between building a kitchen and constructing a sanctuary, we’d pick the kitchen every time, wouldn’t we? And I wouldn’t even want to raise the question, "What if we had to choose between employing a pastor and retaining the church hostess?" I am afraid I would be in the ranks of the unemployed in a hurry!
We love to eat! We think it’s important! We even think it has something to do with being spiritual. Rather like the old mother hen who was so proud because so many of her sons had gone into the ministry! The Gospels have a lot to say about food. Maybe that’s because we do know, instinctively, that everyone is hungry, everyone is a starving soul.
Everyone is a starving soul; we just are starving in different ways, but everyone is a starving soul.
One of Jesus’ great food stories is the parable of the prodigal son. You may never have thought of it as a food story, but it is. Just listen and watch for all the references to hunger and food:
Luke 15:11-32
God’s mercy is all about relieving hunger. God’s love and mercy are all about satisfying starving souls. And He will do whatever it takes to satisfy the starving souls of His sons and daughters. He may have to sort through their sins and go slopping with the swine in order to do it, but He will do it. That is what our God is always about: satisfying the starving souls of His sons and His daughters, though sin and swine be in the way.
There are three very important characters in this story. There is the prodigal son; there is the elder brother; and then there is the waiting father. All three are starving souls. All three of the people who show up in this food story, this Baptists-Iove-to-eat, this Americans-Iove-their-burgers-and-fries story, all three of them, are starving souls, each in his own way.
I
The younger brother is a starving soul. The younger brother is a starving soul who one day decided that he was entitled. He wanted what he wanted, and he wanted it now. Entitled. Like most American politicians and a good many American voters, he just felt that nobody should mess with his entitlements.
"Father, give me the share of property that will belong to me." Not satisfied with what he had right now; not satisfied with the bright promise of the future; not satisfied with waiting for nature to take its course. This is an early warning sign of a starving soul. Well fed physically, but a shriveled, starving soul, who wants more, more, more.
"A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his field to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything"
It wasn’t long before the younger brother had to meet reality. It wasn’t long before the bank account ran low and the distant country’s allure dimmed, not long before the fair-weather friends deserted him and the notion of an endlessly youthful summer began to fade. And he got in touch with his own starving soul, this younger brother.
I like the line that comes next in the text, "But when he came to himself..." When he came to himself. When he did a reality check and got in touch with his own starving soul, he figured out what was really important.
Survival was important. Sheer survival took precedence over everything. He had to swallow his pride, since he had no food to swallow, and go home. A starving soul is obsessed with survival.
Do you know that much of the world lives right there, on the edge of survival? The statistics are just as gloomy today as they were twenty or thirty years ago, when people first got interested in the issue of world hunger. The hollow-eyed faces of malnourished children stare at us from TV news cameras in Liberia or London, in Atlanta, Georgia, or Atlantic Avenue Southeast. What do they care about most? What drives these people? Survival. Sheer survival.
Can you blame them if they sound desperate and make unpleasant noises? Can you challenge their plight and wish they would go away? If you are hungry, you are hungry, and you know you have to do something in order to survive. That becomes the absolute most important thing in the world. You cannot do anything else, you cannot think of anything else, if you are afraid you will not survive.
The Bread for the World organization tells us that more than thirteen and a half million children in the United States are chronically hungry. How can they possibly go to school and learn? How can they be concerned with art and music and culture, when they are hungry? How can they go to Sunday School and read the Bible and learn about God, if they cannot even satisfy their hunger? Survival takes over!
The World Watch Institute tells us that almost 800 million people are undernourished and cannot sustain anything more than light physical activity. They are just barely surviving. That’s all they can do. It takes over. Nothing else matters.
You and I may think, well, if these people had any pride, they would get up and do something about it. You and I may imagine that if we were in such desperate circumstances, we would find a way to work and lift ourselves out of the mess. But, you know, when people are desperate enough, they lose their pride. They lose perspective, they forget who they are and they forget what they are about. They are starved in soul.
Here is the younger brother. He’s made a mess of his life. No doubt about it. He started off thinking he had everything, and now he has nothing. And the worst of it is, he has no pride left. No humanity left. He is saddled with feeding the swine, for a Jew the most awful thing he could imagine. Swine, unclean, forbidden by the law of God, just plain distasteful. Even standing out there in the pen with them was sickening, and he had to feed them, and wished he could eat as well as they did. Rough business! Surviving!
But that’s what hunger does. It reduces people to the swine level. It destroys their self-confidence, it erodes their personhood. Give me no myths about genteel poverty or the nobility of hard labor. Poverty is just plain demoralizing, dehumanizing.
Ah, but this younger brother, thanks be to God, did have one thing going for him. He had one asset he had not used up yet. He had a starving soul. In addition to his well-worn physique, he had a starving soul. In his heart there was a desire for something better, there was an honesty that had not altogether been lost. And, as the text says, "when he came to himself’, he repented his foolishness. He turned around from the mess he had made. And he went home. His sin had been serious, yes, but at least he had not become one of the swine. He had not lost touch with his humanity. It was not too late to save him, because he had a starving soul, and he knew there was, back home, a loving father who would not turn him away.
And I just have to say to anybody today, in this congregation, who feels lonely or desperate, hungry or deprived, don’t give up. Don’t give up! Whether the problem is your fault or not, there is help and there is hope. Whether the problem is with sin or with the swine, whether it is something you created or something which has just overtaken you, don’t abandon hope. This body of believers will help. We will help. We may not be able to do everything, but we can do something. If you are that younger son, or daughter, don’t let your soul starve. Don’t let your pride and your humanity drain away. Come and ask for help, and some way, some how, we will find it. Starving souls can be satisfied.
II
But now I want quickly to turn and point out that the elder brother also had a starving soul. The elder brother, the first son, he who stayed at home and did it right, he who fulfilled his father’s expectations, he who tended his knitting and dotted every i and crossed every t, he too had a starving soul. He too had a heart that was empty and a spirit that was sagging.
Feel the emptiness, the soul starvation, in these words: "Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!"
0, what a poor starved soul this man is! He has everything material it is possible to have, but he has nothing that really matters! He has a full stomach, a fat wallet, a secure home, and a place in his family, but he feels nothing! He is a starving soul, this first son, this elder brother! And though he is not surrounded with the swine, he might as well be, because he is mired in sin. His passion is for himself and nothing else. His hunger is for his due, and for nothing else.
You see, if starving people, physically hungry people, can think of nothing but survival, then it is also true that spiritually starving people can seem to think of nothing but self. Everything offends them because their egos are empty, their souls are starved. They just cannot get out of that selfish concern.
Let me ask you: what do you and I develop a passion about? What really gets our blood boiling and our juices flowing? What are the issues that get you excited and set your mind afire? Here we are less than a month before the election and it seems that our nation is stuck in some spiritually starved ways. We are caught up in which candidate will save us more money with welfare reform, instead of asking who is really going to help the poor and shape the souls of the starving.
We are counting our tax cuts and building walls to keep people out of this nation, in a world where the number of refugees has gone up ten-fold in just twenty years. And we are trying to dry up assistance to nations whose resources we have used without hesitation, but who don’t even have safe drinking water and whose children will suffer irreversible brain damage because of poor nutrition. We Americans are the world’s elder brothers, wanting more for ourselves, recklessly dismissing the aspirations of other nations. We are starving souls!
So again, what do you and I get passionate about? What gets our blood boiling and our juices flowing? I pray God that in this church we will get so excited about caring for those in need that there will never be any question about who deserves help and who does not. I pray God that the wellsprings of compassion will be so opened up by the Spirit of God and by study of His word, that whether it is AIDS or disability, whether it is hunger or unemployment, whether it is aging or mental illness, whatever it is that our brothers and sisters have to contend with, we will find a way to help, and we will celebrate the resources God has given us to use.
Elder brothers, you see, have to watch out for their starving souls. No more telling words than these which fell from his lips, "This son of yours came back". This son of yours! I want to scream at him, "No, man, he is your brother. He is your brother. Just like you, a son of the father. And at least he knew he had to come back and ask for help. You think you’re self-sufficient, you think you’ve done it all by yourself, and you are the starving soul who has a problem! A sin problem." Sons, sin, swine, and starving souls.
III
But I would be remiss indeed if I did not point out to you this morning that there is a third starving soul. That the younger son and the elder son are not the only ones whose souls hunger and thirst for something they do not have. There is another character in the story, and he too possesses a starving soul. The Father. The Father.
The Father too is a starving soul, for his soul starves for fellowship with his sons. His heart yearns for these sons of his, each of whom is estranged. Each of whom has turned into his own way, and gone astray, like a lost sheep.
The father is a starving soul, who seeks to love and embrace both his sons with all the passion at his command and with all the joy his heart can muster. The father cares profoundly about both of his sons. It does not matter that one of them has wallowed with the swine and the other of them is acting like a swine. He loves them and wants them at his side. The father is a starving soul, whose hunger will be satisfied only when both of his sons are with him.
To the one he says, "Come home, come home, ye who are weary, come home." And we will celebrate. To this child who was barely surviving, come taste and see that the Father is good. "For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!" The Father’s starving soul finds satisfaction when His lost son leaves the sin and the swine and comes home.
And to the other son he says, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." To those of us who feel we’ve always done it right, his word is that he has loved us too, always He has loved us. The father’s starving soul finds satisfaction in assuring His other son that he has never been forgotten, has never been set aside.
That’s what God is all about, don’t you see? God’s mercy is all about relieving hunger. God’s love and mercy are all about satisfying starving souls. And He will do whatever it takes to satisfy the starving souls of His sons and daughters. He may have to sort through their sins and go slopping with the swine in order to do it, but He will do it. That is what our God is always about: satisfying the starving souls of His sons and His daughters, though sin and swine be in the way.
And He does it because His soul starves for fellowship with us. He wants us to feast at the table of His love.
The ultimate answer to a hungry world is the starving soul of the Father, who wants us all by His side, satisfied. The starving soul of the Father, who will not rest until the last one of us has come home from the swine and the least one of us has shed his sin.
It’s not just about wallowing with the swine. Younger sons can come out of that.
It’s not just about wanting one more young goat for the well-stocked freezer. Elder brothers can be freed from that.
It’s not even about who gets to eat the fatted calf. lt’s about the lamb, the lamb of God, the lamb slain before the foundations of the world, the lamb which takes away the sins of the world.
For God so loved, God so starved, for His world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever trusts in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
