Hungry

In the good time when God comes, those who hunger on earth for bread and thirst on earth for water, will also thirst for the word of God. – Amos 8:11 (adapted) 

The worst thing that happened to me in a while was an uneventful “burger meeting,” called to be special but ending up as reflection of the new ordinary. Ecumenical colleagues joined some members at our church to talk about whether we should continue to have vigils at the federal building like we did on Good Friday. Or like we did that Tuesday night when you could taste your own hunger and thirst in the form of outright fear about a threatened nuclear bomb being dropped at 8 p.m. 

The conversation in our kitchen went on and on. We had white bean soup and stale bread, the kind that camps in church refrigerators. Who would come? Why bother? Aren’t we in a state of constant emergency? Do we have to have emergency prayer vigils every day, or will we just have them when the bomb is finally dropped?  

It was like a course I taught once about How to Pray at the Next School Shooting. That course also lacked enthusiasm for its subject. I have little shame or blame for my colleagues or myself. We just didn’t know what to do. 

Rosemary Radford Reuther, a great theologian, had a five-dollar word for it: “eucharistic starvation.” It is physical longing attached to spiritual longing. It is a double whammy. It is the source of the poverty of poverty itself. It is the absence of the experience and presence of the nurturing word of God. We starve for each other and for God. 

Prayer
Logos, please bring us beyond stale lunch meetings and instead feed us the Word of and from God. Amen.

About the Author
Donna Schaper is an interim Pastor at the United Church of Gainesville, Florida, and author, most recently of Remove the Pews—first from your theology, then from your building.