Taste and see that the LORD is good. Psalm 34:8
Tonight – Maundy Thursday – many of us will be feasting as we remember the first Last Supper. How hungry are you?
I have three thoughts about that:
- I remember a parishioner who told me – years ago – that she loved coming to worship because it fed her to the point that missing worship = hole in her soul. She was thoroughly hungry for spiritual food. She was young and single then, but as time passed, she dropped out of church altogether. No longer hungry?
- I staff the Commission on Preparation for Ministry in my Presbytery and we (the CPM) can tell when a candidate for professional ministry is hungry for spiritual food. We see a spark in their eyes. We hear a clear calling in their words. You can’t fake this.
- I work with a few churches who have forgotten what the church is supposed to be. They are satisfied (or unwittingly stuck) crossing the threshold of their long-time place of worship on most Sunday mornings neither expecting much nor receiving much in the way of spiritual food. But it’s okay with them, it seems, because they’ve done what they’ve always believed they were supposed to do.
I want to be hungry.
And I want to serve a Church that’s hungry for spiritual food: people who must grapple with the things of faith because their life depends on it. I want to be part of a Church of people who are in it to pray deeply, struggle mightily, and love sacrificially.
I relish connecting with a congregation that longs to understand people who are not like them, who are curious about the world and what God is doing. I am hungry for more congregations who take Jesus seriously.
Our hunger for holy food will determine the future of Christ’s Church in the 21st Century. I hope we find ourselves very, very hungry.
A Church for Starving Artists 