Easter 2, 2006 | “Have Ye Any Meat?” | John 20:19-31

I just returned from a visit to my grandmother, who now lives in the California desert, about twenty minutes from Palm Springs. Next door is my aunt and her family, and on the other side, my cousin Scott and his. It was kind of a sad visit, because my Aunt Reta’s husband, Tom, is having a very hard time, physically. A long-time smoker, he just finished a bout with lung cancer, and now, for mysterious reasons, he is quickly losing his eyesight.

Now, my relationship with Tom has always been a bit of a difficult one. Tom is at least six-foot two, and a Marine through-and-through. He has a biting, gruff personality that has always rubbed me the wrong way. As a child, I watched as he ordered his two sons around like a drill sargeant, and thanked my lucky stars I did not have to go home with HIM after family outings. He used to brush my cousins’ teeth with military efficiency until their gums bled He would bully them into tears and then punish them for crying. I thought in every way he was a monster.

As an adult, my opinion of him has shifted a bit. For one thing, time and fatherhood has softened him somewhat. And I now see that his gruffness is mostly bluster—a lot of it is his way of making a joke, it’s a bluff, but if you’re not clued into this, he still comes across as a monster. I now watch him exchange barbs with my grandmother and share a knowing smile with my aunt. It’s a good shift.

But after having been sick, I see now that Tom has suffered a huge blow to his ego. His myth of self-sufficiency has been shattered, and he is almost totally dependent upon my aunt. He is growing depressed, and I don’t blame him. I have rarely known such a vital man, and even though he is still formidable, he must be led around, is often missing his steps and stumbling, and with every near tumble, and can almost see his self-esteem eroding.

His life, as he formerly knew it, is over, and he must now face the difficult truth of his own dependence. It’s a tough one for my uncle, and I as I watched his family, I wondered what it must be like for them. This man, on whom they had all depended, was now leaning on them in a way that would have horrified all of them just a short time ago.

I was at my grandmother’s as I began to contemplate our Gospel reading for this week, and it struck me that in some important ways, my Uncle Tom and Jesus in our reading share some intriguing similarities. It is in no way a close parallel, of course, but nevertheless, it got me thinking.

Look at Jesus in this reading from John. The disciples are horrified, because a man they knew to be dead was up and walking around, and talking to them. The Jewish purity laws make no provisions for this. You are not supposed to touch a dead body for fear of ritual impurity, but does Moses give any proscriptions for reanimated bodies? He does not.

And they know it is really Jesus, because he shows them the wounds he received just days before. But it’s what he says that I think is fascinating. “Do you have any meat?” They give him some fish and a piece of honeycomb, and Jesus digs in. Now they Orthodox position on this passage is that Jesus was not really hungry, but that he ate in front of them to prove that he was not a Gnostic apparition.

Baloney. Jesus ate in front of them because he was hungry. And like all events in scripture, this scene is a snapshot of something that is true in our experience right now.

Before Jesus, God was perceived as being all-powerful, a being who entered into relationship with humans out of affection, but not out of necessity. Yet, Jesus shows us that there is more to this story. In the coming of Jesus, the God of the Hebrews was given a face, and was revealed to experience the whole range of human emotions. In Jesus we see just how completely we are made in the image of God, or perhaps, how much into our own image God has grown. In Jesus we see a God who loses his temper, who feels pity, who weeps, and who gets both dirty and hurt. But most importantly, I believe, in Jesus we see a God who is hungry. The myth of divine self-sufficiency promulgated in the Old Testament is shattered in the New. Just as baby Ciara lets out a wail when she want to be fed, ours is a God who hungers, and who calls upon us to satisfy his need.

And just what is it that God is hungry for? More than fish and honey, I am certain of that, but that’s a good start. More importantly, however, I believe that God is hungry for a great many intanglible things that only we can provide.

First, God is hungry for friendship. Like every other being, God can only grow and develop morally in community with other beings. Just like us God is lonely and creates life not as some grand experiment, but out of a primal need for community. God earnestly desires the friendship of every creature, especially that of human beings, who can most fully appreciate what that friendship means. In Jesus we saw that Jesus sought out the friendship of children, of men who were his peers, and of women, too, which caused no end of consternation. He also sought out the friendship of criminals and ne’erdowells, of prostitutes and political traitors. Jesus turns our idea of who is valuable and who is not on its ear. God is hungry for relationship with everyone.

Second, God is hungry for justice. The Old Testament prophets make no bones about the fact that God is always on the side of the oppressed, the poor, and the underdog. If you think for one moment that you are somehow favored of God because you are well off, think again. You have just been amazingly lucky at finding the spaces between Kali’s toes as she rampages over the countryside. God’s concern is always for those who are put down or dismissed by society, those who are considered less-than, those that struggle for their next meal. And to the extent that we struggle for or against equity in society, we struggle for or against God.

Finally, God hungers for novelty. There are few things God values more than diversity, creativity, and the thrill of a truly new thing. Just one glance at the staggering diversity in creation is enough to convince us that novelty is one of God’s primary concerns. In fact, I think it is fair to say that if God has an addiction, it is this. God is a novelty junkie. There, I’ve said it. The cat is out of the bag. And once again, the degree to which we are willing to take a risk and try new, creative combinations is the degree to which we are willing to cooperate with God, and the degree to which we settle for the same old thing is the degree to which we resist God.

In seeing my uncle lean upon the shoulder of my aunt, I see the Creator of the cosmos leaning on us. In the death of Jesus the myth of the self-sufficient God went to its grave, and in its place is a God who feels, gets wounded, and hungers. And just as my aunt is the only one my uncle trusts to tend to him, God has a similar relationship with us. It is up to us to provide those things God hungers for.

It is up to us to be God’s community, to create a space where friendship with God can be encouraged and nurtured. It is up to us to be bold and brave enough to stand up to the powers of this world and say, “Hold on just a gall-darned minute, there.” It is up to us to risk making fools of ourselves, to bring new works of beauty and novelty and diversity into the world.

Ours is a God who hungers. Ours is a God who needs us as much as we need God. Ours is a God with a human face and human needs. And this place, where we create community, where we feed one another from this table, where we welcome  babies to earth with a ritual of water, where we cry for justice, and where we invite new art, new liturgy, new combinations into the world, this is where we learn how to feed God.

But God is not just here, of course. Ours is a ravenous God, whose need fills the world. Let us learn to feed him here, so we can go forth into the rest of our lives, and meet the need we see there, as well. For there is so much loneliness in the world, there is so much injustice, there is so much mindless conformity. The world’s need is overwhelming, there is no way we can fill the bottomless hunger of God. But the good news is we don’t have to meet it all. There is a world full of people that God is wooing toward relationship, people in every religion whose prophets exhort them to make justice, artists everywhere who will not, cannot be stopped, no matter what social pressures are brought to bear, who will always bring new combinations into the world.

But the fact that all of these people are out there does not relieve us of our responsibility to feed God where he meets us in the small arenas of our own lives. Jesus sits down with twelve of his closest friends, and he says, “Do you have any meat?” We gather as his friends every Sunday around this table and we answer him, “We don’t. But how about some bread?”

Let us pray.

Jesus, we are truly blessed to behold in thee a God who is not self-sufficient. We are blessed to see in thine eyes a God that hungers for relationship, for justice, for creativity. Help us to be ready and willing to meet those needs whenever we encounter them in the people we meet, even in those whom you called, “the least of these.” For in their eyes we see thee, even as in your eyes, we behold God. Make us a true community of grace, where love, novelty, and righteousness can be encouraged within and amongst us, even unto the ages of ages. Amen.