I talked this past Sunday about our inbuilt and innate human desire for connection and belonging. Like the song says, we want to be wanted and we need to be needed. We need love. Frederick Buechner describes it as a hunger. He says:
We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them.
Something of this truth was at work on Wednesday night when St. John’s and Holy Apostles geared up and prepared to feed the masses on our first ever “Night Without Hunger”. The invitations went out to literally dozens of agencies, phone calls were made to see how much dinner to make, volunteers were wrangled, food purchased, entertainment arranged, and tables set and the night arrived. When the line did not stretch out of the building and around the corner, when the hungry starving hundreds of the Twin Cities didn’t darken our door, you could see the disappointment etched on the dozens of faces that had come to serve. Heck, that disappointment was on my face or at least in my mind. I wanted to help, wanted to serve, wanted to do something, anything, to alleviate the needs of the world if only for one night and for one meal. And, we had done everything right. We had prepared and planned and prayed and then…where was our opportunity to spread the love, where was our opportunity to welcome the stranger and serve those in need? Buechner gets this aspiration too.
We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.
And it began to sink in Wednesday night as I scanned our gymnasium, buzzing with St. John’s and Holy Apostles parishioners poised to serve. Here we were, hungry and in need, thirsty and searching, hoping upon hope that we might be able to love just as we had been loved, to welcome just as we have encountered welcome, and to give just as we have been given much. My disappointment flew away like a passing cloud. I filled my plate and my cup and joined a table of the many hungry who had come to serve. In the end each of us is hungry and thirsty and a stranger. Only with this understanding can we truly and completely serve.
A genuine and heartfelt thank you is owed to all those who planned, prepared, and showed up for our night without hunger. I was and remain touched by your willingness to serve.
Faithfully,
Jered
