REAL Hunger – Real Food

William Messenger     August 10,2003. 9 Pentecost Proper14.

Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, MA. John 6:37-51

  John 6: 37 - 51 (NRSV) 

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  37 Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38 for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day."

41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42 They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, "I have come down from heaven'?" 43 Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, "And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

 “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life.’ Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” I think I agree with the Jewish leaders — by the way, whenever John says “the Jews,” he means “the leaders of the Jews,” but that’s another story. Anyway, I think I agree with the Jewish leaders. I think it’s strange that food takes such a big role in the Christian story. The gospels are full of food, and this passage is a case in point. Even Christians’ main worship event — communion — is eating and drinking. This seems strange to me, primitive, almost irreverent, like the Jewish leaders are complaining about. I mean you would never come to church clutching your Burger King bag, and then eat your breakfast croissant during worship. Yet when you come right down to it, what Christians actually do at the height of our worship is to eat bread and drink wine. 

 Food is everywhere in the Christian scriptures and in Christian practices. Food is in what the feedings of the 5000 and the 4000 are all about. Food is in the parables of the leaven and the good yield of grain. When Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter, the first thing he said to the astounded parents was, “Give her something to eat” (Luke 8:55). Food is at the many dinner parties Jesus attended, the manna the Hebrews ate in the Sinai desert, the jar of wheat that was never empty for Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 1:8-16), and of course at the Last Supper. And when Jesus tries to explain who he is, the deepest words he has to offer are, “I am the bread of life.” What’s with all the food? 

 In the story today, Jesus says that by calling himself the bread of life, he is promising eternal life to everyone who takes him in. It reminds me of a story in Luke 24:36-48, when Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection and ate a fish in front of them. Luke tells you about this incident to convince you that Jesus was really resurrected as a real person. “A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have,” says Jesus. “Have you anything here to eat?” Then he eats a fish to prove he’s really alive again.  

 Of course today’s passage from John does not use food to prove that Jesus is alive again, because he isn’t even dead yet at this point. John’s point is not that Jesus will become alive again, but that you will become alive again if you follow Jesus. And the whole point of Christianity is to become alive again — or to become alive for the first time, considering how often you walk around feeling half-dead half the time. Let me say that again. The whole point of Christianity is to become alive again after you die, or better yet, to become alive before you die. That’s the Christian story. 

 The problem is, it’s hard to believe that story. That’s what I think. I think it’s hard to believe Jesus became really alive again. And I think it’s hard to believe I could become really alive, now and forever. And all this talk about Jesus being the bread of life, or Jesus eating fish to prove he was alive after being dead, doesn’t prove anything. It could all be made up, either by John and Luke, or by Jesus himself.  

True, all the food in the Bible doesn’t prove anything. But I think that Gospel stories about food can lead you to Jesus in a way that does make you more alive. Because food is powerful. I think that’s why God chose food as the basis for so much that happens in the Bible, including when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”    

 When I was a salesman for IBM, we used to have sales contests. Whoever sold the most of a certain model of computer in the second quarter, say, would get a prize. What amazed me was that of all prizes that were offered in these contests, the ones that really got salespeople motivated were food. If the prize were a TV, jewelry, a trip to Disney World, it did not spur us on to heroic sales efforts. But if the prize were food — a case of Black Angus steaks or the branch manager’s home-made kielbasa — we sales reps turned into gladiators, and we’d at nothing to win the case of steaks. 

 What were we so hungry for, that we thought 40 pounds of kielbasa would satisfy? Certainly not metabolic nourishment. None of us were starving. Same thing in the Bible. With a few exceptions, like the Israelites in the Sinai desert or Elijah and the widow, in most of the other food stories in the Bible, the people are not malnourished. Certainly here in the Gospel of John, nobody’s stomach is rumbling. They have some kind of hunger that physical food doesn’t satisfy. Some kind of spiritual desire that drives them to consume, just like hunger drives you to consume, as if consuming would satisfy their spiritual desire. 

 For many people, food hunger is still how spiritual hunger pops up. An incredible number of people cannot control the impulse to eat food, even though almost no one in our experience has to fear an actual lack of food. For other people the hunger could be for alcohol or sex. For me, work, is my obsession, not so much food, or alcohol, or sex. My unmet desire comes as an untamed appetite for work. Not an appetite for actually working hard – I’m kind of lazy really – but a craving for accomplishment through work. I have a hunger to accomplish something through my work. 

 Before I go on, let me say something about food, alcohol and sex for a minute, because this is serious stuff. I know I may have brought up a really difficult issue for you. If you suffer from an eating disorder, or a drinking disorder or a sex disorder, or a work disorder, or whatever, I know you can call Steve Bonsey for discrete, loving help. Because you are not alone, and because God does love you however you might feel. And Steve will love you, and I will too. 

 OK, back to the sermon. I call my desire for accomplishment a craving because it’s not rational. I don’t desire to accomplish things at work in order to make the money I need, or to attain job security, or to compassionately meet the needs of the people I work on behalf of. No, I crave the accomplishment itself. I hunger for accomplishment because I think it will make me feel worthy. 

 I know it’s a craving because it comes on strongest when I’m feeling insecure. When I give in to the craving, I can accomplish spectacular results. (The spectacle is important — I want people to notice my work!) Since my church work is not full time, I still do some business consulting. And I might produce something like an unassailable strategic plan for a consulting client, covering every market opportunity and risk, formatted perfectly in an attractive type face, bound in white ring binders, with color-coded tabs, distributed on the mahogany conference table, with personalized copies of the hardback edition In Search of Excellence. Which will impress a client – and hopefully, God. But it will mean not seeing your wife and kids for 5 straight days, including Saturday and Sunday. I’m speaking entirely hypothetically, of course. 

 Accomplishment on the job is my proof-text. The scripture of my desperate attempt to prove MY religious story, which is that I am so good and so worthy, that all my self-doubts must flee away, and everyone must love me. 

 Does it surprise you that my kind of proof through accomplishment does not prove my worthiness any more than the episode about Jesus’s eating proves his resurrection? I mean, even to myself my story is not truly convincing. Let me give you an example. For about 6 months in 1990, I was the most knowledgeable person on the planet about software pricing. Or at least I could convince myself that I was the most knowledgeable person in McKinsey about software pricing, and if I was the most knowledgeable in McKinsey, I must be the most knowledgeable person in the world. I had just finished a study of software pricing for Lotus, which was the number three software company in the world at the time, and I had solved a number of thorny problems that had baffled software marketers up till then. 

 Are you impressed? I was. Or at least I tried to be impressed with myself. It’s scary how good I thought it made me feel about myself. Although it didn’t get me any dates. 

 Giving in to your hunger can make you feel good for a while. That’s why addiction is addictive! It feels good. The problem is that accomplishment, or a sugar high, or an alcohol-induced haze, is not really what you’re hungry for. If you could face your hunger straight on, you would recognize that’s it’s really a hunger for the love of a person who should have loved you, but didn’t. Or a hunger from some lack in your childhood that can never be filled now. My grandfather had to skip 8^th grade because he didn’t have a real shirt to wear — just bits of rag stitched together. He told me that made him so obsessed with clothes, that throughout his working life he kept 31 pressed, starched white shirts in his closet, one for every day of the month. 

 Your hunger could be rooted in some other deep need – I don’t know what your hunger is. But whatever your hunger is, giving in to what you crave is not going to satisfy you. Because whatever the object of your craving is, your ultimate hunger is for God. Do you crave your father’s approval, or your mother’s attention? What you’re really hungry for is the love of someone who loves you perfectly: God. Do you crave your lost innocence, or the happy childhood you never had? What you’re really hungry for is the wide-awake innocence, the happiness, of life with God. 

 If you could have God’s approval, if you could have God’s presence, if you could have God’s love for real, your hunger would be satisfied for real. Satisfied, here and now, satisfied everywhere and forever. “Blessed are you who are hungry now,” said Jesus, “for you will be filled.” (Luke 6:21) 

 What would it take to see that your hunger is really a hunger for God? I said that today’s Gospel could lead you to Jesus’s aliveness in your life. What would it take to lead you to God? Would it take prophets full of wisdom, to tell you about God’s aliveness? Done. Read any book in the middle part of your Bible — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, all the way up through Malachi Or would it take God coming in person, to tell you God is alive? Done. That’s who Jesus is, God in person. Or would you like a taste, just a taste, just a nibble, of God’s reality, God’s presence, in your life to see if Jesus satisfies your true hunger? That could be done, too, right here, right now, when you come to receive Christ’s body and blood. 

 If you were willing to be led by the Gospel story, you could come to communion and see if the physical act of eating bread and wine, could open you up to receive Jesus’s aliveness in your life. I mean you could eat this bread and taste if Jesus is the bread of life. You might not feel much today when you receive communion, but you could let it could take you back to times in the past when you did feel Jesus’ presence, or you could let it carry you forward to times in the future, when you will experience Jesus’ aliveness completely. You could eat Jesus’s presence today, and it could satisfy your real hunger. 

 That’s what I think.

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