Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
We are a hungry
people with cravings that long to be satisfied, and those cravings control our
lives.
Craving: a
powerful desire for something. That’s
the definition.
It’s a deep
longing, a yearning, a wanting, a hunger and thirst that aches to be satisfied.
At their best,
cravings play a crucial role in our lives.
We need food, we need water, and without them we die. And so part of our natural makeup is that God
has placed within us a craving, a hunger and thirst for these essentials of
life so that we might seek them out and be satisfied.
This is true even
for specific items.
Take salt, for
example. When we sweat, we lose the essential
chemicals that salt contains, and so we must replenish them. And so we crave things that are salty. All animals do.
Near Sandpoint we
have the Scotchman Peaks wilderness area.
There are mountain goats up there that are often present alongside the
well hiked trail.
These goats have
become accustomed to the frequent visits of humans and have even become accustomed
to licking these visitors.
Wildlife
biologists are quick to explain that the goats are not just friendly, they
crave the salt that is present on our skin and see us as a ‘salt lick’, a place
to replenish this natural requirement.
If you want to
attract deer or other animals to a particular place, one of the ways is to set
out a block of salt. That’ll do it.
These are the
natural and healthy cravings that are intended to sustain our lives.
We have other
cravings that will destroy us.
There is an
addictive element to this cycle of craving something, and then satisfying that
craving.
It’s a most basic
experience of pain and pleasure that holds us captive.
We hunger and
satisfy ourselves with good food.
We thirst and
satisfy ourselves with a drink.
Part of our
fallen nature is that these most basic desires and satisfactions that are
essential to life get distorted, to the point of being harmful to us.
Yes, we hunger
and are satisfied, but some people so crave food that they eat to excess, and
are never fully satisfied, and gain extraordinary amounts of weight to the
point that their very lives are jeopardized.
And then we also
find ourselves getting hooked satisfying cravings for things that are harmful
to us.
Alcohol is one
example.
Taken in
moderation, alcoholic beverages are a natural form of beverage that are not
harmful.
And yet, they are
intoxicating.
Some people will
crave the effect that alcohol has when consumed in a large quantity.
I’m one such
person.
I liked the way I
felt when I drank.
Karla is quite
different. She never could stand the
feeling of intoxication, and so the most she would ever drink was a half glass
of wine, or so.
What happens for
people like me begins with the craving for the feeling of intoxication, the “buzz”
that comes with drinking, and then the satisfaction when that craving is met.
Actually, the
feelings of intoxication are the body’s adverse reaction to alcohol, and are
intended to warn us, to alert us when enough is enough.
But if we crave
that feeling, and seek to constantly satisfy it, eventually our bodies become
accustomed to a level of alcohol in the system.
This is called habituation. We
might also refer to it as an increasing tolerance for alcohol.
What happens is
that more and more alcohol is required to achieve the same feeling.
The next phase is
that we become so accustomed to a certain amount of alcohol that our bodies
experience withdrawal if we don’t get enough.
At this point we are not drinking for the pleasure it produces, but to
avoid the pain of withdrawal. We are
hooked. And we will drink even to the
point of dying.
To crave
something--
At its best it leads us to the most basic requirements of life.
At its best it leads us to the most basic requirements of life.
At its worst it
leads us down a pathway to death.
It’s not just
substances that we crave.
We crave other
things such as power and prosperity.
One of the most
far reaching examples of this is what happened in Germany during the last
century.
The Treaty of
Versailles brought an end to the first world war, but it did so by imposing
very punitive restrictions on the German nation. Coupled with that was the great depression
that left Germany both powerless and impoverished.
Into the vacuum
of powerlessness and impoverishment Hitler came with a promise.
To use today’s
lingo, he offered the promise to the German people to ‘make Germany great again’
by promising that which they craved: power and prosperity.
In seeking
satisfy this craving for power and prosperity, the German people were led down
a path that led ultimately to their destruction, again, during World War
II. Atrocities were committed all in the
name of satisfying these two basic desires.
Cravings.
As a nation we
also have an unquenchable hunger and thirst for power and prosperity.
We might defend
ourselves and maintain that we’ve not been led down a pathway like Germany, but
the craving is there, nonetheless.
Power.
Imagine a
president of our country proposing that we downsize our military and relinquish
some of our power. Some politicians,
such as Ron Paul has suggested that we do that, maintaining that we just can’t
afford to do that. His candidacy never
got very far.
Our craving for
power is such that we would never willingly accept being less than the most
powerful nation in the world.
Likewise with
prosperity.
We want to be the
largest economy in the world. And there
seems to be no end to our appetite for material things.
One example of
our prosperity is our phones.
Our appetite for
cell phones, that didn’t even exist a few years ago, is such that we have made
Apple, the maker of the iPhone the first Trillion dollar company in our
nation. The only companies that have
exceeded Apple’s net worth are oil companies in China and Saudi Arabia, also
signs of our prosperity.
And every
politician in our country is judged based on the effect of their policies on
the economy.
Power and
prosperity, two of our basic cravings and desires.
The problem is
that you can never have enough of either to be satisfied, and the quest for
both power and prosperity will end the end, destroy us.
St. Augustine
wrote:
“You have made us
for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.”
These words from
the opening lines of his “Confessions” might be paraphrased to read:
“We crave you, O
Lord, and we will never be satisfied until we are filled with you.”
From our Gospel
lesson:
“Very truly, I tell
you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have
no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life,
and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my
blood is true drink.”
That we hunger
and thirst is no secret.
But the only
thing that will satisfy the yearning within our souls is Jesus.
Everything else
will, in the end, lead to our destruction.
Jesus, will lead
us to God our Father, and our life and salvation.
On the surface,
it doesn’t seem so.
We crave power,
and Jesus died on the cross.
We crave
prosperity, and Jesus told the rich young man to sell all that he had, and come
follow him.
In 1 Timothy 6
Paul writes:
“For the love of money is a root of all
kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from
the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”
And as regards
power, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians:
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire
wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and
foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
We are a curious
people, we who follow Jesus.
In a world
consumed with the craving for pleasure, for prosperity, and for power, we kneel at the altar to receive a morsel of bread, and a few drops of wine.
It is hardly
enough to satisfy the hunger and thirst within us, one would think, hardly
enough.
Except that it is
Jesus.
In the Sermon on
the Mount Jesus says:
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Jesus.
Only Jesus.
There is a reason
Jesus was first laid in a manger, a feeding trough,
Because he, and
he alone, is the one food which nourishes the soul and satisfies the desire of
every living thing.
Would that we might
all recognize that the craving that lies deep within us is not for food, or
drink, or pleasure, power, and prosperity, but for him.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment