July 8, 2012 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Food and Water, Faith and Life

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 8
Exodus 16:1–21
Mark 1: 9–11

“And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”

Mark 1:10 (NRSV)

Faith must have something to believe—something to which it may cling and upon which it may plant its feet and take root. Thus faith clings to the water and believes it to be baptism which effects pure salvation and life, not through the water . . . but through the fact that the Word and institution of God are embodied in it and God’s name is joined to it. Now when I believe this, what else does it mean but to believe in God.

Martin Luther

This week a major discovery in physics was reported out of CERN, the multinational research center headquartered in Geneva and home to the Large Hadron Collider. The discovery has to do with the elusive subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson; I read an article about it; I read it slowly and carefully; my comprehension of it might be characterized as subatomic. So rather than talking about the discovery itself, I’m going to talk about the reaction to it among physicists.

On Wednesday, physicists gathered to watch the announcement; they gathered in Aspen, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Princeton, New York, London, and right here in Chicago. At CERN in Switzerland, 1,000 people waited all night to get into the presentation, which one observer described as the closest a physics presentation gets to being a rock concert, and Peter Higgs, the physicist for which the boson is named, entered to applause befitting a rock star.

Higgs and his colleagues began the search for the boson in 1964—forty-eight years ago. Now, to be sure, this is science, and you don’t spend forty-eight years looking for something if you don’t have some evidence that it’s there. But it got me to thinking: what a tremendous act of faith and hope to spend most of one’s life in pursuit of a truth you may not see before you die.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that science is about things we can see and religion is about things we can’t see. Science is about evidence; religion is about faith. Science is about proofs and observations, things we can observe. But religion is different. In church we remind you of Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In church we remind you that Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

So the forty-eight-year search for the Higgs boson, characterized by hope in things unseen, got me thinking: what if, rather than accepting this dichotomy between religion and science, we would sometimes allow our faith to be enriched by evidence? There are many things in the life of faith that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, are very much physical and tangible matters. If we walk around in God’s world assuming that the only things that are valuable for religion are the things we cannot see, we miss many of the most important signs of God’s presence and truth. So this morning I am going to talk about things of God that we can see, smell, taste, hear, and touch—things we can experience and in which God’s magnificence is revealed. And I’m going to focus on two: food, and water.

Several months ago, I started thinking a lot more about food. Well, that’s not entirely true. I like food—a lot—and I’ve always spent time thinking about it, but several months ago I started thinking about food differently. I had been stewing a bit about the fact that in church we are always giving you something more to do or care about, another program to attend, another cause to support, another place to give your money, and sometimes it gets to feel like too much. Should church be, like the rest of life, constantly adding things to your plate? This realization caused me to think differently about food, because, talking to you about food is not adding something else to your plate. Talking about food is, quite literally, dealing with what is already on your plate, three times a day, seven days a week. And how amazing would it be, rather than adding something else to your plate, if we were to take something that is already there and make it more meaningful? What if every time you ate a meal, or let’s be realistic—what if at least some of the time when you ate a meal—it could be a means of connecting with God and with one another? What if your food could truly deepen your walk of faith? That is going to be the substance of our “Hungry for Change” event August 10–11, and I hope you will join us for that conversation. Today, let me simply tell you a Bible story where precisely this thing is happening: people are connecting with God through the food on their plate.

The Israelites have been freed from slavery in Egypt; they are wandering in the wilderness, searching for the Promised Land, and there’s no food out there, so they get hungry. Do you know anyone who gets grumpy when they haven’t eaten? I sure do. A few of them might be sitting in the front row today. So you understand what is going on; the Israelites get hungry and cranky. They get so hungry, in fact, that they wish they were back in slavery again. They complain to Moses, “At least when we were slaves, we had something to eat.” So Moses goes to the Lord and expresses the problem, and God responds. Take note of this because this morning we’re talking about physical, tangible manifestations of God. Notice God’s response: God doesn’t say to Moses, “Tell the people I’ll pray for them.” God gives the people something to eat.

Every night, like clockwork, food begins to fall right out of the sky. The Israelites awake in the morning and all around them on the ground is food. They are so confounded that they call it “manna.” Do you know what the Hebrew word manna means? It means “What is it?” Well, it was food—that’s what’s important. Also important is how they are instructed to eat it; notice this part of the story: the manna shows up every day—every day but Sunday, that is (apparently God doesn’t cook on God’s day off). So manna falls from heaven every day, and there is twice as much on Saturday so that the people won’t go hungry on Sunday. Along with this gift, the people are given an instruction and a test of their trust in God’s generosity: if they store up more than they can eat on a particular day, it goes bad. Manna goes bad more quickly than airport sushi; it changes color faster than guacamole. If the people take more than they need, it gets rancid and stinks and it isn’t any good for eating. God says that when we eat, we should remember how much we need and not take more than our share.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, the earliest stories we have in the New Testament about the Lord’s Supper contain the same message. Paul writes to the Corinthians because he hears about how they are misusing the Lord’s Supper, and he gets mad. This is in the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians:

“When you come together,” he writes, “it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What!” says Paul, “Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!” (1 Corinthians 11:20–22 NRSV).

Some people were coming early to Communion and taking more than their share; others who were hungry and needed some help from the church had nothing. Paul corrected those taking more than their share.

Taking more than you need is not God’s way with food, not in the Old Testament and not in the New Testament. I just cannot imagine that God’s way with food is any different today.

There is abundant evidence that, for at least the past four decades, humankind has had the knowledge, tools, and resources to end chronic hunger worldwide and that the hunger problem is really about the way we employ those resources. Roger Thurow, who will be our speaker in August, is an expert on the subject. Roger’s new book follows the lives of four Kenyan farmers who are working to adopt new farming practices so that they can get past what is known as “the hunger season.” For Africa’s small-holder farmers, farmers who own less than 1 acre of land, the “hunger season” is the time between harvests when the food from the last harvest has run out and the food from the next harvest has not yet come in. It is the time of deepest hunger for the hungriest people in our world. And Roger tells the story of organizations, some of them faith based, that are introducing farming techniques to these small-holder farmers in order to increase their yield, improve their storage, and put an end to the hunger season. For the most part, the techniques are decades old; hunger seasons have not been the norm in India or South America for some time now. But the powerful and well-fed people of the world have not taken it upon ourselves to share with much of Africa our discoveries about how to grow food. Back here in Chicago, we take great interest in the newest or most exotic cuisine; in the United States we expend tremendous political energy storing up our own food in order to keep the worldwide prices of food where we think they should be. But we have largely forgotten Africa. Perhaps the most damning statistic I heard from Roger is this: in parts of Kenya, 30 percent of food that is grown goes to waste because farmers do not have the resources to store it adequately; weather and rodents destroy it. By contrast, in America, 40 percent of the food that is prepared, that is cooked and comes to the table, goes into the garbage. Let me be clear that I am pointing no fingers, because I really like to eat, and for the most part, I do it the way most Americans do. But as we gather more manna than we need for the day, we are allowing our brothers and sisters in God’s family to live through a hunger season, to come to the table and find that there is nothing left. Can there be anything less faithful, less Christian, than when we know that people are hungry and we do not help them to eat? I’m not sure. But if you have ever wondered where to find God in the world, if you’ve been wondering why you don’t have a greater sense of spirituality in your life, if you are seeking a greater sense of meaning, a greater sense of how you can make a difference for another member of God’s human family, look at what is on your plate. And look at it as you throw it away. God’s presence is not an esoteric matter of believing in things we have not yet seen. God’s presence is right there on the table.

Then there’s water. When it comes to water, one could say many of the same things I already have mentioned about food: that it is common and essential to life, that the lack of it makes us not just irritable but willing to do just about anything to get it, and that there is a radical disparity in our world between those who have a tremendous need for water while others waste it with abandon. But because I have said those things about food already, I’d like to say something different about water. Water, the Bible tells us, is about life and death. Water is a constant reminder of our mortality and fragility, and yet it is also the source of all that is good and restorative. Water has the power to drown us and water has the power to carry us to new and better places.

The idea that water has the power to transform life is obvious enough to have been one of the oldest ideas in religion, and it is not unique to Christianity. A cleansing ritual with water was a common practice in Jewish tradition for Gentiles who wanted to convert. Those of you who have visited a mosque will know that in Islam a ritual ablution with water, washing the face, head, arms and feet, is a routine part of one’s preparation for prayer. Indeed almost every major world religion uses water to some sort of ritual purpose.

The reasons seem clear: water has power, and religious people have always known that. It is out of the deep, unordered waters of the cosmos that God creates life. Water destroys the world in the story of Noah. God divides the waters of the sea to allow the Hebrews to escape slavery and again when they enter into the Promised Land.

In our own time, water is still an absolute necessity; no one can live without it. Water takes up more real estate than anything else in our bodies. Without water, it’s hard to cook and almost impossible to keep clean. Water carries the same power as it always has: we are far from mastering the power of water, and not only is it still essential, but it is still destructive. Whether we consider the massive destruction of the Asian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina or read about the loss of three precious children in the waters of the Hudson River earlier this week, there is no denying that we should not think of water too lightly, because water has the power to kill us.

Being honest about the power and danger of water is essential to our proper understanding of baptism. Baptizing children is, beyond a doubt, one of the greatest privileges of ministry, and being able to participate in that is one of the great joys of my life, but let me be clear, it is not because of the cuteness of the babies; it is not because of the joy in the eyes of the parents or the doting love of their grandparents. I love baptism because of what it says that God is doing for us through this water. There is a promise here that is not trivial. In life and as they grow, these children will be constantly at risk of drowning. As life does with all of us, at times, life’s dangers and troubles will threaten to wash over them and overwhelm them; the mistakes they make and the accidents that they suffer will threaten to rise above their heads and take their breath away. So before we face any of that, God blesses us with water, water that God has made safe for us through the baptism of Jesus. God claimed Jesus as his Son when Jesus emerged from water, and this is to tell us that God has claimed us as well. We no longer need to approach life with fear. God intends to protect and defend us, in this community of faith and everywhere we will ever go. Through our baptism in water, the power and presence of God are now with us.

What is going on here is real. It is a bath and a cleansing of our whole being; it clears the dirt out of our lives. In baptism, God uses water to make it clear that wherever you have been, whatever you have done, Jesus has made you part of God’s family and there is nothing you can ever do to take that away. There is no amount of filth you can gather around you in life that this water has not already cleaned.

Food and water. These are not merely symbolic acts. They are God’s proofs, evidences of God’s movement and presence in the world, given in a way that is common to every member of our vast human family. It is the same for these new little children as it was for their parents. It is the same for infants that are brought by their parents for baptism, and adults who are led to consider this gift of grace for the very first time. It is the same for Catholics and Protestants, conservative and liberal Christians, citizens of Chicago who worship God in this architectural masterpiece and small-holder farmers in Kenya who gather in churches of corrugated metal and rough-hewn wood. Our need for food and our need for the cleansing power of water unites us as a human family.

During his year of research in Kenya, Roger Thurow met an elderly woman named Agnes, one of the matriarchs of the community. Agnes had high hopes for her young neighbors who signed on to work with a micro-lending program Roger was studying; they were bringing new farming techniques and better quality seeds to rural parts of Africa, hoping to bring an end to the hunger season. All those who had signed on did so at some risk. They invested what little they had. If the yields did not return their investment as expected, the hunger season would be even more severe, families would starve, diets would be reduced, and children would not have money to return to school. As Agnes watched and waited, the need for food collided with the need for water. The rainy season was late, first by days, then by weeks. But as Roger stood asking Agnes if she was afraid, she looked to the horizon in the direction from which the rains would come, and said, no, she was not afraid. “It must rain,” Agnes declared, unwavering in her faith. “God knows who we are. God knows where we live” (Roger Thurow, The Last Hunger Season, p. 93). For faithful Agnes, even the lack of water was an occasion not for fear, but for hope.

This is perhaps the most important thing to remember about baptism, about this gift given to us through water: in baptism, God claims us as God’s own; in baptism, God knows who we are. None of us are anonymous or forgotten before God. Through water, God remembers the small-holder farmer in Kenya whom the rest of us have allowed to become a nameless statistic. Through water, God claims by name the sweatshop assembly-line worker who feels like an unknown cog in the machine, and God claims the cubicle-trapped businesswoman who feels the same way. Through the waters of baptism, God also claims people who are often known by name—people in positions of power, people who have the opportunity and the resources to help people who cannot help themselves. In baptism, God reminds us all that we are known by God and that we must take responsibility for one another. The water is not just a symbol. It is as real as life gets. God’s love surrounds us as much as a jump in the lake. God’s love is as full as having too much to eat at Thanksgiving, and God’s love is as immediate and available as every meal you eat and every single time it rains. Thanks be to God. Amen.