Food and Faith: Nourishment for the Journey

First Sunday in Lent 2009
Psalm 25 & Mark 1:9-15

The psalmist proclaims, “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness.”

We are beginning our Lenten journey… taking our first steps along the Way towards Holy Week and our remembrances of Christ’s suffering, Christ’s last meal with his disciples, Christ’s prayer for the Church, Christ’s death and resurrection. Along the way, we can be sure that God will feed us, God will nourish us, God will give us strength.

If you’re like me, it’s sometimes the food you remember most from a vacation, a journey, or even just an afternoon walk through the woods. I remember sandwiches with leftover Iowa Chops on the first leg of a family vacation to Nashville, Chattanooga, and the Great Smokey Mountains. I remember packing snacks for a hike in the woods with my oldest son John, years ago in Pella. I remember a trip to the Drake Relays in junior high, packing a whole loaf of sandwiches.

Whenever we travel, we need food along the way.
And God has given us food and drink for our journey of faith.

God has given us the Bible, the Scriptures. The psalmist wrote, “I hid your Word in my heart, so that I might not sin against you.” St. Augustine began a journey of transformation and renewal when he heard the words, “Take and read,” and knew, deep within himself, that this meant to take and read the Bible—to take and eat, to take the stories and the prayers, the teachings and the promises, to eat them, to ingest them, to digest them, to make them a part of himself.
“You are what you eat.” Food becomes part of you when we take it in and digest it. God has given us the Bible to be food along the way. Take and eat.

God has given us other good things to read and take in as spiritual food – Henri Nouwen, a friend and mentor I never had the chance to meet, but who I sometimes feel I know, wrote a book called, “Bread for the Journey.” The written words of others can be spiritual food for us. And so can spoken words: the kind words of others, the words of forgiveness from others, the instructive words of others, can feed us, nurture us, build us up, strengthen us.

God has given us the communion of the saints—the memories and words of wisdom and prayers of those who have gone before us; as well as the body of Christ in this place: Eating with each other, being with each other, worshiping with each other can all be nourishment along the Way.

Finally, God has given us the Feast, the meal, to be nourishment for our souls on our spiritual journeys. Communion has many facets. One of the meanings we too often overlook is that of Communion-as-Meal. We are, by faith, nourished and strengthened at the Table.

The body of Christ, the bread of heaven;
the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.
Christ is our food and drink.
Christ is our strength for the journey.

The gospel lesson for today tells the story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation. Immediately after hearing the nourishing, affirming words of the Father – “you are my dearly loved child in whom I am well-pleased” – Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the desert of aloneness, of solitude, of testing and trials.

And so will you be, on your Lenten journey.

Trust me. The more you desire to follow Christ, the more you take to heart God’s affirmation of Christ as God’s affirmation of you yourself (“You are my child, you are my Beloved, I am well-pleased with you”), and the more you strive to pray and to turn towards God daily, and the more you breathe in the Holy Spirit with every breath… the more certain you can be that the Spirit will lead you into the desert of solitude and testing, just as Jesus was.
But you will not lose hope in the desert. No! You will not lose hope. Because just as you share in Christ’s baptism and in God’s affirmation and blessing of Christ, so you can know—without a doubt—that the angels will wait on you, too, in your times of aloneness and testing and solitude.
Christ is our food and drink.

Come to the Table and feast on him…
Here you will receive nourishment for your soul,
joy in the midst of sorrow,
and strength for the journey.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.