I have noticed that, not too far from here, there is a restaurant called “Me-N-Ed’s” pizza. It was, in fact, the first thing I noticed when I came to Long Beach. On the day I met with the search committee a year and a half ago, I arrived early and drove around a little to see what the neighborhood was like. Ginger was with me, and I said to her, “Look! Look! There’s a Me-N-Ed’s!” But she just looked at me and said, “So?”
Later, I called up my brother-in-law. He asked about Long Beach, and I said, “Guess what? They have a Me-N-Ed’s!” His reaction was a little different than Ginger’s.
He said, “Really?”
I said, “Yes!”
He said, “Wow!”
It may surprise you when I tell you that, despite the passing of some 16 months, I have yet to visit our local Me-N-Ed’s. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I think I have a pretty good idea.
You see, when my brother-in-law and I were younger, we were in boy scouts together. We were just friends, then—I did not know that someday he would become my brother-in-law—and one of the things we did in scouts, every summer, was spend a week backpacking in some wonderful part of the Sierras.
At the beginning of the week, we’d lift our packs onto our backs, and oh, they were so heavy then, loaded up not only with tents and sleeping bags and clothes, but also all the food we would eat over the next seven or eight days. And early in the morning, with the meadows covered in dew, we’d set off on a trail through tall pine trees, all signs of civilization quickly disappearing behind us.
The food we ate on the trail was pretty good; no one ever went hungry. For the most part, we avoided the packaged, dehydrated meals that some backpackers take, in part because they were expensive, and in part because they really weren’t all that good…. We prided ourselves on how well we ate… But still….
Pizza just doesn’t work that well on a backpacking trip. As the week wore on, we began to develop a hunger; a hunger for something that wasn’t a variation of rice or pasta from a box, cooked in a large pot with something that looked like a meat or vegetable tossed in. We began to develop a thirst for something other than Crystal Light. Why we ruined that wonderful, fresh, delicious mountain spring water with Crystal Light, I have no idea.
In short, we began to develop a hunger and a thirst for pizza and soda, a hunger and thirst that we knew would be satisfied on our way home, at Me-N-Ed’s pizza parlor in the Central Valley town of Sanger.
However, at the beginning of the week, it was too early to start talking or even thinking about pizza and soda. We could feel the heavy weight of all that food in our packs, and we knew that we’d have to eat our way through it all before pizza could be ours.
By midweek, we could feel our packs starting to get lighter, and a few among us even began to have visions of pepperoni and cheese dancing in our heads. However, we still had half a week to go, and it was bad form to discuss such things out loud.
But by our last night on the trail, some of the younger scouts were openly talking of such things. We all knew that, tomorrow, we’d be eating pizza! The older scouts usually kept quiet, perhaps even laughing and scoffing at those tenderfoots and their talk of pizza. But the next morning, as we hiked back to civilization, it was the older scouts who hiked the fastest.
And when we got there—Oh! Pizza never tasted so good! They had a sign inside Me-N-Ed’s. It said: “Good food takes time to prepare; yours will be ready in seconds.” And that was just fine with us.
It’s been a long time since I hungered for pizza like that—and even longer since I thirsted for soda like that—which probably explains why I have yet to visit our local Me-N-Ed’s, just up the street. I just haven’t been hungry enough.
These days, I find that I hunger for other things. I talk to people, even people who love pizza, and discover that they, too, have a deeper hunger, a hunger that, for many of them, has not been satisfied for a long, long time.
It’s not a hunger for pizza. For some, it takes awhile to realize that this hunger is there, or to recognize exactly what sort of hunger it is. You see, some folks are carrying too much weight in their packs, and as long as they do, their hunger will never be satisfied or even acknowledged.
However, I’ve learned that what people are really hungering for is healing. They’re hungering for affirmation. They’re hungering for wholeness. They’re hungering for a loving community to which they can belong.
And they’re been hungering for these things for a very long time. They’ve been on the trail, carrying their heavy burdens for days, weeks, months, even years; and they’ve not been able to satisfy their hunger. They still have not found the satisfaction they desire. They still haven’t found what they’re looking for.
It just so happens that as they walk along that trail, they often come around a bend, and find someone standing there who says that they have just what is needed to satisfy this hunger. Usually it’s a Coyote, that old trickster. Coyote offers them what appears to be a hot, sizzling slice of pepperoni pizza, with the melted cheese drooping over the sides, steam rising from the slightly greasy top of the pizza, the smell of garlic and tomatoes filling the air.
Coyote offers them a slice of this pizza, and they take a bite, but as soon as they do, they are surprised to taste not pepperoni pizza, but a saltine cracker—dry, tasteless, boring… and not satisfying at all.
Has that ever happened to you? You finally get what you think it is that you’re looking for, something full of promise, but when you get it, you realize that the promise is empty, that you’ve been tricked?
I know people who scour catalogs and ads to find the products they just have to have, something like a new pair of jeans, for example. They see the jeans in the ad, modeled by some good-looking man or woman whose body seems to have been chiseled by Michaelangelo himself—but more likely, sculpted by the chisels of Photoshop—and suddenly they feel the intensity of that deep, deep hunger. So off to the store they go, because those ads have promised to provide the satisfaction to one’s hunger.
Or maybe it’s the good-looking models themselves who stir that hunger. On the trail, Coyote says that, in order to have a body like that, you need an expensive membership to a gym. Finding absolutely no satisfaction in their own bodies, their only question to Coyote is, “Where do I sign?”
Eventually they get the jeans they want, and maybe even the body they want; but they are surprised to discover that the hunger is still there. The pizza promised to them has turned into a saltine cracker. They still can’t get no satisfaction.
Perhaps next, aware of their lingering hunger, they begin to confuse it with a hunger for manna, a hunger for actual food. So they begin to eat and eat and eat, thinking that this will get rid of their hunger. Soon, their sexy bodies are no more. The jeans no longer fit. Their bellies are full, but still the hunger remains.
Perhaps, they think, more wealth is what they need. They’ve tried the jeans, they’ve tried getting the sexy body, they’ve tried eating, and now Coyote appears and says that it’s really all about money, and that he knows how to make them rich. What Coyote doesn’t tell them is that the rich are just as hungry as the poor.
As their hunger grows, they begin to withdraw. So far they’ve received no affirmation, no healing or wholeness, and they haven’t found a community to which they can belong. Maybe they try to find this community through the TV or the internet, which Coyote says is better than the real thing anyway. Maybe they try to satisfy their hunger through drugs or alcohol—Coyote’s a dealer, conveniently enough. Maybe they try to satisfy their hunger through promiscuity or risky behavior. Yes, Coyote can arrange things for you there, too.
So many people are trying to fill the emptiness in their lives, but they’re trying to fill it with the wrong things. It’s like putting square pegs into round holes. So many people are hungry, and they eat, but the hunger is never satisfied. They eat some more, but the hunger only grows.
Don’t get me wrong; pizza has its place. A new pair of jeans can be a nice thing to have. A healthy body is certainly beneficial to life. TV and the internet can be helpful and used for good. Financial wealth can be used to accomplish good things. Drugs and alcohol, when used properly, responsibly, and legally, have their place.
But, no matter what Coyote says, by themselves, these things will not satisfy that deep hunger. Consuming an over-abundance of these things will not bring satisfaction. They are like the manna that the Israelites ate in the desert—sufficient for certain physical needs one may have, but not sufficient for a life of wholeness. Manna is just manna, after all. Pizza is just pizza. A pair of jeans is just tightly woven cotton. None of this is the bread of life, the bread of healing and wholeness and affirmation.
For that, people need Jesus in their lives. They need his words in their hearts, his teachings. They need to follow him on the trail through the wilderness; only he will lead them to what truly satisfies the hunger.
Followers of Jesus live lives of love, generosity, and kindness. Instead of living for themselves, they live for God. They seek to glorify God and do God’s will in every aspect of their lives. They seek peace when others call for war. They build unity when others call for division. They work for justice when others call for revenge.
Followers of Jesus know that the things they hunger for—healing, wholeness, and affirmation—will come to them only as they work to bring healing, wholeness, and affirmation to others.
Followers of Jesus know that everything they have contributes to their satisfaction only to the extent that they are willing to share it with others. It is a strange yet profound truth that they have discovered, that life blessings become more abundant for oneself through generosity and giving. Healing and wholeness come to them as they live and care for others.
The psalmist invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Isaiah tells us to “eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” Jesus says, “I am the bread of life, the true food and the true drink.”
This is what truly satisfies. This is what ends the hunger, and quenches the thirst.
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