I am away from the parish and have the luxury of a “homily holiday!”  But I thought I would reach into the trove of homilies past and post something, hopefully, food for thought.

I recently [2012] saw the movie Hunger Games and thought it was an interesting saga.  If you haven’t seen the movie, the general situation is this: as punishment for a long-ago revolt of the outlying districts against the central government, there is an annual spectacle called the Hunger Games in which a young adult man and women from each district are required to fight to the death, while the entire nation watches.

The story line was compelling enough that I wanted to see how the author played out the story – so I downloaded the remaining novels in the series and read them while on vacation. I would love to regale you with details of the trials and tribulations of Katniss Everdeen and the others forced to participate in a gladiatorial spectacle for the capital city, but that would spoil your own read. At the end of the trilogy I was struck by the many layers and nuances of “hunger” that colored and shaped the narrative.

The people of the capital, cast as a vain and secular lot, are hungry for entertainment. They are hungry to fill the voids in their lives – voids they are not even aware of. The people of the districts are hungry for food and freedom – they starve for a future with the possibility of hope. The central government and its sinister president Snow is ravenous to maintain control and all that attends the vestiges of the power.  So many people – a world of people hungry – seeking to be filled up with what will give rest, peace, security. So much hunger. And so much tension in precarious balance.

What will it take to tip the balance for the people?  In the end, while Katniss and her friend Peeta survive, nothing changes, nothing resolves. There will be another Hunger Game next year.  Everyone is stuck in place, hunger unabated only quelled.

There is a deep hunger that laces so much of the Old Testament. We hear it in today’s psalm: “When I call, answer me, O my just God, you who relieve me when I am in distress; have pity on me, and hear my prayer!”  Since the time of King David and before, the Jewish people hunger for a long-promised Messiah – to know the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers.”  And yet their history is one of hesitation when God responds with gifts of freedom, manna in the desert, and the promise of an everlasting covenant. Just as the apostles did when it seemed that Jesus had died on Calvary and was buried.  Just as we do even today. Too often we are stuck in place, lurching forward only in half-steps. Do we not want the promise of our sins wiped away? Don’t we hunger for the peace and promise of everlasting life?

We are a People blessed and yet plagued with indecision, fear, doubts. Or simply plagued with new choices, unfamiliar choices, too many choices. People who hesitate, delay, or are frozen in our indecision – despite our hungers – or because of them.

The apostles are still hiding in the upper room when “The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread.”  This is too good to be true – that he is risen and he lives – and they hesitate – stuck there in the upper room. And Jesus appears among them: the one who would fill them up, satisfy their deepest hunger.

We hear the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles in which brave women and men struck out to the ends of the Earth to tell people “He is Risen.”  But I suspect there are far more stories of the people who remain stuck in place, hesitating – wanting to be filled up, not realizing that it is not filling up that will satisfy.  Paradoxically it is only by emptying one’s self that hunger can be satisfied.

This act of self-emptying (kenosis) is at the core of Jesus’ ministry.  “Not seeing divinity as something to be grasped at, rather he emptied himself and took on human nature….” Peter however haltingly, however in fits and starts, leaves behind hearth and home, family, and goes to the ends of the earth – in chains – to give up his very life that he might satisfy the hunger within.

In the Hunger Games, this kenosis is repeated as Katniss takes the place of her younger sister Prim, and in Peeta’s self sacrifices to save Katniss during the games. It is only through their willingness to lay down their very lives that Katniss and Peeta are saved.

What hunger burdens you? What keeps you frozen in place? Causes you to hesitate? Leads you to fill up with things that will not satisfy the deepest hunger within? What kenosis is needed in your life that you may fully recognize Jesus in the breaking of the Bread? For then, you will experience the foretaste of a life where your deepest hunger has been fully satisfied. You will know the fullness of love.