The Hungry
Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; September 7, 2025
Readings: Matthew 25:31-46; Secrets of Heaven §4955
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In the teachings of the New Church we’re told that we’re not born for our own sake, but for the sake of others; that is, we’re not born to live for ourselves alone, but for others (TCR §406). That is a clear message. A challenging message, at times—because everybody sometimes wants life to be all about themselves. But the truth of this teaching is self-evident.
And of course, this teaching is an exact echo of what the Lord said in the reading from Matthew 25: that He wants us to serve His people, and that those who choose not to serve have chosen the path of unhappiness. So if we’re serious about living a Godly life, the question isn’t whether or not we’ll serve somebody other than ourselves; the question is how will we serve?
We’re told that the Lord’s kingdom is a kingdom of uses,[1] and also that the variety in His kingdom is endless.[2] It follows that the uses we can serve—or the ways that we can choose to answer the Lord’s call—are pretty much endless. In other words, you get to decide for yourself how you’re going to answer that call: the church and the priesthood aren’t here to tell you how to serve. The thing that will unite those who worship here and make them one church isn’t serving the same uses but going to the Lord together, asking for wisdom and the strength to serve.
But there are principles from the Word that should lead and shape all of our efforts to serve. One of those principles is that the Lord really wants us to minister to our neighbors’ spiritual needs as well as to their natural needs. If you look at what the teachings of the New Church have to say about that story from Matthew 25, that principle comes up over and over again. The conditions that the Lord names, the needs that He asks us to meet, are real, visible needs that people have; and these words that the Lord says also have a deeper meaning, and on that deeper level He’s teaching us how we can minister to people’s interior needs, with the goal of supporting them on a journey towards heaven. This deeper level is very much something that we should bear in mind when we go to the Lord, to ask Him what He’s calling us to do.
With all that said, we’ll turn to the reading that’s on the back of the worship handout, which is taken from the book Secrets of Heaven. This reading is all about the levels of meaning within the acts of service that the Lord names in Matthew 25. We read: [from §4955.] Something to be clear on, at this point, is that this passage is not saying that the Lord wants us to serve in deeper ways instead of ministering to people’s physical needs. The point is simply that there are layers to what the Lord says to us. To really listen to Him is to listen to all the layers of His commandments. The reading continues: [conclude reading].
So all of the different needs named in the Word describe an external need, and they symbolize an internal need. And understanding those internal needs, and how they’re different from one another, and how they’re related to the physical needs that represent them, is really useful—because, as the reading says, then we know “what to do for one person, and what for another.” A hungry person and a person who lacks clothing are alike, in that they both need something; but the things they need are different, and if we want to be helpful we need to understand that difference. You can’t eat clothing and you can’t wear food.
Internal needs work the same way. Loneliness and ignorance need to be addressed differently. Everybody knows that you don’t want advice when all you want is a hug, and vice versa. If we’re willing to pay attention to what the Lord says about these internal needs, then we can enter this arena equipped with wisdom—and wisdom gives us an ability to really help people. It should go without saying that ministering to people’s internal needs can have a profound effect on their happiness. The world sometimes speaks as though external needs are all that matter. External needs do matter—it’s hard to feel truly happy if you’re starving. But it’s also true that people can have all of their external needs met, they can lead physically comfortable lives, and still be unhappy. And when all’s said and done, happiness comes from within. Internal peace can triumph over a bad external situation, but that isn’t true the other way around. So, again, the point is that ministering to people’s hearts and minds and spirits is powerful. The point is that because we have the Word we have the opportunity to learn how to minister that way, and that opportunity is worth some thought.
Today’s sermon is the first in a series of six sermons on the “classes of the neighbor” that the Lord names in Matthew 25: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. Each sermon is going to focus on one of these needs, and on what it means in its deeper sense, and on what we can do to minister to that need.
So we are going to spend a little bit of time today talking specifically about the hungry, but not that much time—partly because we don’t have that much time, and partly because hunger is probably the easiest of these needs to understand on a deeper level. We kind of already know what spiritual hunger is: in everyday speech we already talk about being hungry for affection. The teachings of the New Church say that spiritual food is love and charity, [3] and the hungry, in the spiritual sense, are those who want spiritual food. Secrets of Heaven says that the hungry mean “those led by affection to desire good” (§4956). The hungry are people who want goodness, and goodness is love and charity. It’s worth noting that people sometimes want to be loved in unhealthy ways: they want to be put first, or they want to be validated whether they do right or wrong. Those are hungers, but not hungers that we’re called to feed. They’re like cravings for junk food, or maybe even cravings for addictive substances. The Lord wants us to feed people with things that are good for them. One teaching says, “To hunger and thirst therefore signifies to hunger and thirst for such things as pertain to eternal life or give that life, and these, in general, have reference to the good of love and the truth of faith” (AE §386.27). Good spiritual food is food that leads or contributes in some way to eternal life. It’s food that sustains a person on the road to eternal life.
How to meet the needs of the hungry is, for the most part, something that we already know—or at least know the basics of. The only thing to say about feeding those who are physically hungry is that it’s important, even though in this sermon we’re focusing on spiritual hunger. This is most obvious if you imagine telling someone who’s physically starving, “I love you, but you can’t have any of my food.” That doesn’t ring true. Physical hunger is a real need, and it is present in our neighborhoods, and if you feel called to minister to that need the pastors will gladly direct you to some resources. There are lots of organizations out there doing good work.
When it comes to ministering to spiritual hunger, again we already know the basics of what we need to do: those who need love should be loved. And if the Lord is with us, loving people is something we can do. It does take wisdom to figure out the best way to love somebody in a specific situation: Does this person want my friendship? Do they want to be comforted? Do they just want to be treated with respect? But it’s also generally true that making an effort to show somebody that you care about them is a good thing to do, even if you don’t get the details just right. It is important to bear in mind that good spiritual food is food that sustains a person on the road to eternal life. How do we make sure that that’s the kind of food we’re sharing? Here are three more observations about feeding the hungry:
1. We can’t expect the love that we show people to sustain them forever. It’s the same as it is with feeding physical hunger: giving a physically hungry person a meal won’t keep them full forever. It won’t fix all of their problems. But it’s still a good thing to do.
2. The second observation is closely related to the first: we can’t feed everybody. Sometimes giving food to a needy person can kick off a little crisis of conscience, because we immediately becomes aware of all the other needy people that we aren’t ministering to. But if you follow that thought, what comes to light is that there are way more hungry people in this world than we could ever feed. Even if you spent every cent you have on food and gave it all away, hunger would still exist. What this means is that it can’t be our job to feed everybody. We can’t do everything, but we need to do something. God will be the one who holds everything; we need to serve somehow. It’s okay to focus on a specific ministry; we can’t dedicate our lives to every good cause. But we should keep our eyes open, because sometimes the Lord will put people in our paths and call us to serve them in ways that take us outside our comfort zone.
3. The third observation is that if we want to feed those who are spiritually hungry, one of the best things we can do is work through the process of repentance. Repentance is all about uprooting selfishness and getting rid of it, so that love from the Lord can flow in. How can we share good love if we aren’t receiving good love? To repent is to go over the shelves in our spirits and clean out all of the expired food, all the moldy vegetables. Then the Lord can stock our shelves with good things.
After we sing our next hymn, the sacrament of the Lord’s Holy Supper will be celebrated. All adults here are invited to participate in the sacrament, if they feel called to do so. We’ve been talking about feeding the hungry, and that’s exactly what the Holy Supper is all about. The bread and the wine of the sacrament symbolize the Lord’s love and wisdom, or His willingness and His ability to save. If we want to become useful servants of the Lord, then going to Him and asking Him to save us from the evils that we find within, and to feed us with heavenly food, is perhaps the most powerful thing that we can do. Ultimately, the bread that sustains on the road to heaven is His alone to give. He says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).
Amen.
[1] E.g. SH §997; HH §387; DP §26
[2] E.g. SH §§3744, 7236, 9002; ML §35
[3] E.g. SH §§680, 3478, 4217