Hangry
Jesus
Pastor Mathew Magera – 8/26/18 – Sermon 302
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
“You're not you when you're hungry.” This
catchphrase was taken global by the Snicker's candy bar sales campaign that
began about 10 years ago. This campaign put out television ads in which every
day people in normal situations began to show abnormal personalities when
hungry. These pseudo-personalities were played by celebrities in such a way to show
the intensity and humor of the social disruption, for example, Betty White
playing a scrimmage football game, Robin Williams as a high school coach, Kenny
G playing his Soprano sax around a poker table. We were drawn into the fact
that something was not quite right. The solution to the obvious disruption in
social interaction was of course the Snickers bar, which when eaten by the
celebrities, would cause them to turn into the people that fit more correctly
in that situation, showing the public that you might tend to be a little loopy,
whiny, crazy or angry when you're hungry, that there is obviously something
different about you and that eating a Snickers bar would make everything
better. They are humorous ads that try to convince us that maybe our friends or
family think that we, also, are not ourselves when we are hungry.
Perhaps you know someone who
acts a little different when they’re hungry. I know I’m one of those people. I
know I'm not me when I'm hungry. It's not even a slow transformation either.
I'm either patient or hungry and irritable. There's a perfect term that is used
nowadays to describe this feeling that combine the words hungry and angry into
one perfect word: hangry. It has become so popular among the culture that it
was added to the Oxford English Dictionary this year. Hangry also delivers the
truth that we might not be ourselves when we are hungry.
In our Gospel reading today,
I had little choice but to use this word to describe Jesus. Hangry. It's one of
the more human sides of Jesus that we see in his lifetime. We see him feeling a
human need, hunger. Then, we see what we believe can come from feeling hunger,
just a little change in personality. Jesus, you’re not you when you’re hungry. Cursing
a fig tree, turning tables in the Temple courts. Jesus is acting just a little
odd. But, what I don't see in this story is the part when Peter comes up to
Jesus and offers him a Snickers bar to calm him down. Somehow Mark left that
part out. But, don't you see it too? If you read just this section of Mark,
doesn't it appear that something about Jesus just isn't right, that he doesn't
appear to be himself? This is not what we expect of Jesus. No matter the number
of times you hear of him overturning the tables in the Temple courts, you still
have to wonder about his attitude and behavior.
What’s more, nobody calls
him out on it. Not one person. Not even Jesus really describes his actions
here, aside from his brief comment in the Temple. But, what we find when it
comes to the fig tree, Jesus was out to teach a different sort of lesson. Mark
tends to jump around a bit in his writing. Mark seems to have a little
difficulty paying attention. He writes about Jesus’ anger at the fig tree and
then remembers that Jesus was also angry in the Temple courts before coming
back to finish the point he was going to make about the fig tree. In Matthew’s
Gospel, this story of the fig tree takes place as a single unit, the fig tree
withers immediately. In Mark, however, we wait until the next day for the
disciples to see the result of Jesus’ prayer. This observation by the disciples
brings about Jesus’ point. Now he can teach. The disciples had witnessed Jesus’
disappointment, his seemingly hangry attitude in his prayer and finally seeing
something happen as a result of that prayer. It’s time for Jesus to teach what
comes off as a very difficult teaching.
Jesus says, "Have faith
in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself
into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they
say will happen, it will be done for them." This isn't exactly one of the
easiest lessons Jesus teaches us and to be honest, I struggled with this
teaching all week. All this talk of moving mountains, having faith and not
doubting. How exactly can one have faith that can move a mountain? How can I
not doubt? For me the very definition of faith must include some ounce of doubt
in order for it to be faith. Without doubt, doesn't faith become certainty?
For example, I want to tell
you I have a Detroit Tigers hat inside my pulpit here. How many of you believe
me? How many of you don't? How many of you know for certain that you are right?
You do not know for sure one way or the other but you either have faith that
I'm telling the truth or you have faith that I'm lying, but there is still
doubt on either side.
Considering that, I struggle
with faith as something that comes without doubt. Maybe it's just that I find
myself asking, is it okay to doubt? Is it okay to doubt so much? I think that
doubt is something that we will continue to live with until the day Jesus comes
again. I think it comes down to reading this teaching from Jesus and just
owning up to the fact that we can't do it. Jesus says, "Have faith in God.
Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the
sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will
happen, it will be done for them." I say, I can't. I just can't. And
before I know it, there is a mountain of doubt staring me in the face. Does
that sound familiar to you? You want to have faith, you want to be rid of
doubt, and yet, there you are staring at doubt like it's a mountain in your
way? What do you do? Is it, then, even worth it to have faith?
Do you think Jesus was
speaking to that? Do you think Jesus was speaking to those questions, to the
fact that, with us, until we see and experience God's will in its completeness,
that doubt will always be with us? Jesus speaks to us from another perspective.
Imagine a little girl
standing at the edge of a swimming pool and her father in the water inviting
her to jump in. The little girl hesitates in her uncertainty that her dad would
catch her. The father, on the other hand, already knows that things will be
okay and he speaks to his daughter with that certainty in his voice as if to
encourage her to jump. It's not that her uncertainty ultimately disappears
completely before she jumps but it moves enough that she can see past it.
Taking that leap of faith, the little girl will still close her eyes and hope
for the best but she has pushed past her doubt to believe the encouragement
from her father who knows it will be fine.
So, in one way of reading
this teaching from Jesus, we don’t often go around talking to mountains but we
are faced with mountain-sized problems, of which our doubt is one of those
mountains. Our doubt is staring us in the face and causing us disappointment as
we wonder if we can ever keep moving forward.
Faith is being able to
recognize that we do doubt but being willing to start running anyway because
God's will is more trustworthy than our own. That leap of faith speaks to us,
saying, I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be doing this. But, here I
go. Just like when I told you I have a Tigers hat in my pulpit here, perhaps
trusting me and hearing my words saying, “don’t doubt my words, but believe with
certainty” can push your doubt aside enough to believe that what I am saying is
true even though part of you says it couldn’t be true.
When you are in a situation
where you are faced with a mountain-sized problem, everything you see is
telling you that trusting in God is not worth it. Everything you see says
nothing good can come out of this. Everything says there is no direction you
can go and yet, we still find that when we pray 'thy will be done' we are able
to see past that mountain of doubt and trust that what God says will be. When
the disciples saw the withered fig tree, it shows us this exact point. When
Jesus cursed the fig tree, why would they believe that no one would ever eat
from it again? It had leaves, it wasn’t dead. It would probably have figs as
soon as the season started. Everything the disciples could see showed them that
this tree could indeed bear fruit at some point. Still, they come the next day
and see that it was dead. God’s will had proven effective against all odds.
When Jesus says that faith
can move mountains, praying with confidence removes doubt from your vision so
that you can see God's will. Faith says I know this mountain is here but
because of faith in Christ, he moves it so I can keep my eyes focused on God's
will. We know we can’t remove doubt on our own. We have to depend on God to
remove it.
Jesus is speaking to his
disciples like a father speaks from the water to his daughter at the edge of
the pool with that perspective that knows what is, not from the little girl’s
perspective that only knows what is not yet. Jesus speaks to us to encourage
us, to give us a promise. Jesus speaks that it will be alright, the mountains
can be moved. His promise may not cause every ounce of doubt to disappear yet but
his promise moves that mountain so that we can trust him enough to take that
leap of faith, knowing that one day our doubt will be completely gone.
When Jesus speaks to us
about prayer and being confident in it, we can be confident that even in our
doubt we can trust that God is still there, still loves us, still shows us
mercy, still shows us grace. Such confidence in prayer does not come from being
sure that what we want we will get but being sure that what God promises will
be. Such confidence in prayer is being able to finally see past that mountain,
to let go of selfish ambition and say, "thy will be done." Such
confidence in prayer reminds us that God's will withers fig trees and moves
mountains.
Jesus' death on the cross frees
us, not to say that doubt is okay or good to have on our part but that we can
own up to the doubt that we so clearly have and surrender it into God's hands
to get rid of. We are freed to acknowledge our mountains before the throne of God
and to therefore trust that when we give those mountains to God, God will take
them away.
So, I’ll show your curious
minds that I do have a Tigers hat in my pulpit here and now that I’ve shown it
to you to take your doubt fully away and give you the certainty of my words, let
me remind you that just as we have faith today, Jesus will one day fully reveal
himself and his promise to us when he comes again, completely taking our doubt
away and giving us the certainty of our salvation and our hope that comes only
from him.
In the meantime, It’s
challenging to walk in faith when there is a mountain in our way. When the
going gets tough we become completely different people without hope. You’re not
you when you are hungry for hope. You know how true that is. You know the
frustration of being disappointed, let down, up against something too big for
you to handle. You know how hangry you get for hope. When you get desperate,
loopy, whiny, crazy, angry. Rather than satisfying that hunger for hope with a
chocolate bar, however, we are given Jesus himself and his promise that if we
ask him to take that doubt away like we ask food to take away our hunger, he
will do it, and that in the process we will be able to be focused on the hope
he gives us, to be confident in his plan, his love, his grace. To God be the
glory, now and always. Amen.