Intersections

          My wife and I were trying to put Aaron to bed the other night. As soon as we wanted to get his pajamas on, he shouts, “I’m hungry!!!” It’s a pretty common experience in my house, and Aaron isn’t known for being the most consistent eater. So I said, had you eaten your dinner, you probably wouldn’t be hungry right now. Then it hit me. This is kind of what Jesus is saying in this passage for our gospel reading today.             As we left off last week, the people are standing right in front of Jesus, wanting him to fulfill all their earthly needs, not even realizing what else heaven could be asking of them. And they’re saying, “I’m still hungry!!!” And Jesus shouting back, like a parent tired of arguing with their child, “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE!! I’M RIGHT HERE!! Let me teach you; let me feed your brains and hearts and souls.” Now, this is maybe a bit of a leap, but as children of God, that perhaps rings more tru...

     I hope last week’s message was satisfying for you - but thanks for getting hungry for more Jesus because there are two more weeks in our food and faith series.      Last week, more specifically, we talked about food insecurity and how a significant portion of our community struggles with affordability and access to fresh food. We may have needed to talk about how for some, it’s not quite as dire as not knowing where your next meal is coming from, but sometimes about tricky choices - do I eat or pay rent? Do I eat or buy school supplies? When resources are scarce, food gets placed on the table, though not in the way we’d like it to be. One facet is in an area where fresh and affordable food is inaccessible. These places are called food deserts, which means that there are no local means to get groceries. They either have to drive far out of their neighborhood or use fast food or gas station food, which is not the healthiest.      Accordi...

We are starting an adventure today, also known as my first preaching series! We will be taking a deep dive into the Gospel of John chapter 6 to see how food and faith intersect to bring us closer together as a community. I hope you came here today hungry for ice cream, but most importantly, JESUS! We will be checking out the first 21 verses for this first week. Here they are, in the Contemporary English Version:  “Jesus crossed Lake Galilee, which was also known as Lake Tiberias. A large crowd had seen him work miracles to heal the sick, and those people went with him. It was almost time for the Jewish festival of Passover, and Jesus went up on a mountain with his disciples and sat down. When Jesus saw the large crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, “Where will we get enough food to feed all these people?” He said this to test Philip since he already knew what he was going to do. Philip answered, “Don’t you know that it would take almost a year’s wages just to buy only a littl...