Friends, I want begin with some heartfelt gratitude. Thank you for the sacred gift of sabbatical. Thank you to those who stepped in and stepped up so that I could fully embrace this season of renewal, especially Chris, Linda, and the members of the sabbatical task force. And thank you for all the notes you left me in the sabbatical box. I am so grateful for this peek into your thoughts and the happenings of your lives while I was away.

In late July, my spouse Jen and I spent a few days camping, just the two of us. It was hot and buggy and there was a whopper of rainstorm. We were feeling anxious about our returns to work, and how our family would weather these transitions. Jen was about to begin an exciting yet intimidating new job as Bishop (yikes). And I was realizing how thoroughly I had burrowed into a slower, more spacious, and somewhat wandering rhythm of daily life, something I simply came to call “sabbaticaling.” I love being your pastor and I missed being with you. At the same time, I dreaded the prospect of returning to a hectic and depleting pace.

On that hot, anxiety-filled Sunday morning, Jen and I decided to take a sabbath walk, choosing Psalm 116 for our scripture. We sat and read, back and forth, to each other. And then we walked and talked, noticed, listened, and prayed. We sought spiritual guidance from our “Seek” and “Merlin” apps. The path wound through a blooming prairie land full of big bluestem grasses, purple bergamot, and yellow coreopsis. We saw and heard woodpeckers, bluebirds, redwing blackbirds. We tasted the sweet tanginess of ripe blackberries. This verse of the Psalm spoke to me: “O my soul, return to your rest. For our God has dealt bountifully with you.” I heard a promise that even as I returned to my work, I could also return, again and again, to rest, which is not idleness, but a harmonious rhythm that incorporates work, play, and prayer, sleep and exertion, solitude and community. Our sabbath walk was a feast of beauty and wisdom, a moment of soul-deep healing and care. The wildflowers and grasses, the birds, sun, and wind—these companions all amplified and embodied the message I heard from the Spirit, “God will sustain you.”

Today’s passages from I Kings and the Gospel of John are both focused on a God who sustains us. When the journey is too much, God meets us with shade in the desert, freshly baked cakes, and jugs of cool water. God is bread for the world, in both a material and spiritual way. I do believe it’s true, and yet for me, the notion that God sustains us often raises tension, creates dissonance. How many people in this very neighborhood are hungry in body and spirit? I noticed, on the kitchen fridge, that the Community Kitchen has been serving meals to 30 or 40 folks who are walking up to the door of this church each week. I imagine it’s hard to believe, when you’re hungry and sick and living in your car, when you don’t speak the language or understand the culture, that God is sustaining you, that the bread of life is abundant, that there is enough.

Today’s story presents the vulnerable, struggling side of Elijah, Israel’s legendary prophet. He had just called down fire from heaven, slaughtered hundreds of rival prophets and brought rain after a prolonged drought. And yet, he found himself in the lowest of low places. Maybe all that killing wasn’t good for his soul. Maybe preferred that God take his life so that his enemies couldn’t. Exhausted and in despair, he laid down and collapsed into sleep. The Hebrew language of this story is fascinating and illuminating. The cake the prophet ate was baked on “coals”—a very rare word in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, the only other occurrence is in the story of the call of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s response to a profound vision of God in the temple was to cry out: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” In response God’s angel took a live coal from the altar and held it to Isaiah’s lips. The word for jug is also uncommon. This same word appears in a story from Elijah’s own ministry, describing a widow’s jar of flour. The widow and her son were on the brink of starvation during a famine. Even so, Elijah insisted that she make him some bread out of her meager stock of flour, and from that day on, no matter how much flour the widow used from her jar, she never ran out.  

So, the cake and the jug fill the prophet with renewed physical energy. They also heal his sense of unworthiness and remind him of past times when God has provided for his needs and, through him, the needs of the community. This holy meal offered Elijah challenge as well as care and comfort. The angel messenger agitated the prophet, prodded him to get up, to eat, and to trust that God would continue to sustain him. The text also plays with a word that can mean either “enough” or “too much.” “It is enough” Elijah declared, before he asked to die and went to sleep. “Get up, and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” God gave the prophet’s own words back to him with a crucial reframing. The journey would not be too much. The prophet would have enough. He would be enough. 

Today’s Gospel text is one heck of a conversation, confusing and confounding. Just when we think we’re grasping what Jesus has to say, he seems to dart in a new direction or contradict himself. I think John, the Gospel writer, does this on purpose, as if to communicate that it’s a mystery beyond our human understanding how God feeds the world, and how Jesus is our bread. And yet, I think this conversation is circling around the same truth the prophet Elijah experienced in the wilderness: God sustains us. I am drawn to the very last line of the conversation: “The bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.” We can hear this in an individualistic way—the flesh of Jesus, a particular human who lived 2,000 years ago, is food for the world. But I really think when Jesus referenced “my flesh” he meant the community of his followers who collectively embody his teachings and his sustaining relationship with God. He meant us. He meant that God sustains us so that we can sustain creation.

There are a few intentions and insights I’m bringing with me as I return to you after these sabbatical months. Here’s a slightly random and somewhat cryptic list for you:

I am recommitting myself to practices that connect me to God’s sustaining energy—centering prayer, art, fitness, connecting with friends, word games.

I am seeking to be curious about what has bubbled up while I was away.

I’m trying to really listen to what the Spirit is doing among us instead of immediately hurrying in with an agenda. These are apocalyptic times, meaning one world and way of being is ending and another is being birthed. Exploring new models (or restoring ancient models) of being church is vital to our well-being and responsive to these times in which we live.

I am drawn to something called the “Wild Church” movement, which is about gathering outside and restoring relationship with the more-than-human-world. Time at Holden Village and Wilderness Canoe Base has also reminded me to draw strength and inspiration from faith communities that challenge our dominant culture.

I am feeling so much wonder about the companions with whom we share this planet. We are learning to recognize, for instance, that plants are intelligent and maybe even conscious. They think, feel and hear; they communicate with each other and with us.

I also continue to be very interested in the ways of mushrooms.

I’ve always wondered if having professional clergy has, overall, kept the church from being who we ought to be. I need to take that conviction seriously even if I don’t know where it leads. I want to continue to reframe the role of pastor. I see myself as a coach of sorts, here to support and equip the ministry of this entire body. Celebrating and nurturing unique individual gifts and weaving them together into an interconnected whole is an antidote to the individualism that drives us to run in a million different directions, all the while feeling alone, overwhelmed and exhausted. The tools of community organizing can help us be the flesh of Jesus that feeds the world.

Friends, it is normal and necessary for us to grow hungry, thirsty and exhausted, to move through times of depletion, scarcity, confusion, fear and despair. Will you join me, especially in those times, in listening for divine invitations to return to our rest? Will you let the promise of harmony and enough for the journey nourish you deep inside? And will you allow the presence and power of our sustaining God to reframe how you show up in life and ministry? Amen.