Working Up An Appetite

"Working Up An Appetite"
Romans 8:18-28

"Working Up An Appetite"
Romans 8:18-28


Frederick Buechner, Presbyterian minister and author, once wrote about the time he was visiting Rome during Christmas.  He went to St. Peter's Cathedral on Christmas Eve to see Pope Pius XII celebrate mass.  Buechner described the huge crowd of pilgrims who were there, and the great anticipation that charged the air with holy electricity.  Then the Pope was carried in on his golden throne.

This is how Buechner describes his experience:
Through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face and into all the faces around me and behind me with a look so keen and so charged that I could not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone in particular.  He was not a potentate nodding and smiling to acknowledge the enthusiasm of the multitudes.  He was a man whose face seemed gray with waiting, whose eyes seemed huge and exhausted with searching, for someone, some one, who he thought might be there that night or any night, anywhere, but whom he had never found, and yet he kept looking.  Face after face he searched for the face that he knew he would know--was it this one?  was it this one?  or this one?--and then he passed on out of my sight.  It was a powerful moment for me..and I felt that I knew whom he was looking for...that in the teeming mystery of that place he was looking not just for the Christ in our faces but for the Christ himself...  (The Hungering Dark, page 115, 118)

I have known people whose gaze was equally intense, whose eyes were also large and worn with their looking.  There was a guy in my college dorm like that.  John something-or-other; I can't remember his last name.  He was a Jesus Freak of the first order.  It was the early 1970's.  John had been strung out so far on drugs, probably not too many people would have been surprised or concerned when the last thread broke.

But then John saw The Lord.  A meeting so powerful, so real, that it almost instantly, and miraculously, regenerated John's brain and his life.  He yearned to see The Lord again.  Everyday he yearned with deep moans.  One day he came up to me and with a mournful ache in his voice, said, "Steve, when's Jesus coming back; I want to see him so badly."
I said, "I don't know, John.  I just don't know."  He clapped me on the shoulder, nodding his head, and went on, looking--searching--like the Pope was searching for Jesus, for some visible sign of the Lord's presence.

I sometimes wonder what happened to John, and the few people I know like him who have been so anxious to see The Lord.  I wonder if they are still looking, if their eyes are still larger than life in their search for the holy.

There aren't too many people who I know, like John, who are so overt in their search.  Most people I know live as if there is nothing really holy in life.  Most are trying to avoid a face-to-face with Jesus.  Most people don't look for Christ himself as they pass their days.

Dwight L. Moody was once asked, "Why are you always talking about your need to be filled with the Holy Spirit?"
Moody replied, "Because I leak."

Most people, I know, leak.  They slowly--or quickly--lose their attentiveness to God and to the things of God.  There is so much that pokes holes in our attentiveness to God, that obscures our vision to God and to what God is doing.  Or there are those who try to redefine God's activity as something else:  politics, fate, social reform, psychology.

But the key is our attention--our appetite--for God and for what God is doing in the world.  It is in that driving urge to keep our eyes large in search of God and God's activity.  God and God's work is all around us.  It's happening in spite of us, whether we're paying attention or not.

There was a farmer who was visiting a friend in New York City.  As they were walking down one of the avenues, the farmer suddenly turned to his friend and said, "I hear a cricket."
"Oh, you're crazy," his friend replied.
"No; I hear a cricket.  I do!  I'm sure of it."
"It's the noon hour," his friend replied.  "There are wall-to-wall people, cars honking, taxi's squealing around corners, noises all over the place.  How can you say you hear a cricket in the midst of all this noise?"
"I'm sure I do."  He listened attentively and then walked to the corner, and listened a little more.  Finally, near by, he saw a shrub planted in a concrete planter.  He brushed at the leaves that had fallen, and there was a cricket.
His friend was astonished.  But the farmer said, "My ears are no different than yours.  It simply depends on what you are listening for.  Here, let me show you what I mean."  The farmer reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change--and dropped the coins on the sidewalk.  Nearly every head turned within a block.  "You see what I mean?" he said picking up his coins.  "It all depends on what you're listening for."

How do we listen for God?  How do we keep our attention for God from leaking out?  How do we keep from being distracted by so many other things?  How do we keep our eyes large with anticipation, looking for the face of Christ in the many people we see each day?  How do we keep our eyesight clear so we know what we are seeing when we see it:  the face of Christ at work in our lives and in our world?  How do we keep looking and not give up?

The apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians that the answer to those kinds of questions was the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, according to Paul, arouses our appetite for God.  The Holy Spirit makes our souls growl with deep hunger for the things of God.  When that appetite becomes distracted, or we try to satisfy it with other things, the Holy Spirit keeps the hunger alive.

Have you ever been really thirsty, and it seems you are drinking every kind of liquid refreshment you can think of, but still your thirst persists?  Or, when hungry, you stuff yourself with a lot of junk food, and then feel bloated, but you still feel hungry?  In fact, if you kept eating the empty calories you'd literally starve to death.

Spiritually, we stuff or drown our God-appetite with that which is not God.  We misread the source of our deep hunger.  That's why the Holy Spirit is so important--the Holy Spirit keeps us in touch with where our hunger really lies, that it is a hunger for God.  It is the role of the Holy Spirit to make us feel our hunger pains for God over and over, until that pain drives us to true satisfaction.  The Holy Spirit makes us realize how starved we are, driving us back to the pantry of God's presence.

Hunger pains can hurt when you are really starving.  We ache for deliverance from such pains.  But we can't be delivered until we realize the folly of our predicament.  We can't take care of the cause of the pains until we gain the knowledge of how we wittingly or unwittingly have been starving ourselves of God.  The Holy Spirit not only creates the hunger pains, but then gives the knowledge of our folly and then the direction for how to satisfy our hunger for God.


There is one more role that the Holy Spirit takes on, as mentioned by Paul in this chapter of his letter to the Roman Christians.  It is the flip side of what I have just been saying.  This role of the Holy Spirit has to do with prayer.  Paul says that the Holy Spirit interprets our prayers to God, and even when we don't exactly know what to say, the Holy Spirit prays for us.

Probably one of the most troubling disciplines of being a Christian is prayer.  How am I supposed to pray?  How long should I pray?  What should I say?  When should I pray?  What is prayer, anyway?  These kinds of questions seem to have arisen ever since people discovered communication with God was possible--even expected.  Paul certainly must have heard such questions from converts in the churches he was establishing.

His response to those questions?  "Don't worry about it."  Paul saw that that was one of the great roles of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.

A grandfather was passing his granddaughter's room one night and overheard her repeating the alphabet in a very reverent way.  "What on earth are you doing?" he asked her.
"I'm saying my prayers," explained the little girl.  "But I can't think of exactly the right words tonight, so I'm just saying all the letters.  God will put them together for me, because God knows what I'm trying to say."

That little girl, whether she knew it or not, was taking Paul's teaching to heart.  "Don't worry about it; the Holy Spirit puts all the letters together and makes it come out just right before God."

Even our groans and sighs are turned into prayer by the Holy Spirit.  Did you ever imagine how holy those noises are:  **nasal sigh**; **deep breath**; **sigh**; **groan**.  All those are prayers!  Noises (or individual letters) transformed into prayers by the Holy Spirit.

In this way, the Holy Spirit is keeping us present to God.  Our prayers, fashioned by the Holy Spirit to reflect our true selves and needs, are made known to God--brought into the very presence of God.


Now remember I said that this activity of the Holy Spirit is the flip side of the first role?  In the first activity of the Holy Spirit, we are having out attention--our appetite--for God, heightened and directed to God.  The Holy Spirit is keeping us looking for God and attentive to God.

In the second role, the Holy Spirit is keeping God attentive to us.  God is being made to pay attention to us through our prayers that are being brought into God's presence by the Holy Spirit.  It's a two way street, and the Holy Spirit is in charge of keeping the traffic of that communication going both ways.