August 4, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
John 6:24-35; Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
The Food that Endures
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
It’s been something of a riddle for me. I’ve turned it over in my mind for quite some time. Our bodies have been wired with certain default settings. Like our body temperature. We’re wired to maintain a temperature of around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Or our blood pressure. Our bodies strive to maintain a certain blood pressure.
But what about hunger? I'd always assumed that the "default” setting was full, but now I’m not so sure. I strive for fullness, for sure, but is that my default setting? You know what I mean. You can stuff yourself, like on Thanksgiving. You’re so full you can’t eat another bite. You push away from the table and collapse onto the sofa. But then, in like two hours, you’re hungry again!
We’re always moving towards hunger. Fullness only comes when we take active measures to put something in our stomachs, and it’s only temporary.
Hunger is never very far away. So maybe hunger is our default setting. What do we learn from emptiness?
Hunger factored into how people responded to Jesus. Last Sunday we heard how Jesus multiplied a snack of bread and fish to feed a crowd of 5000. Everyone ate their fill, with food left over, to boot.
Today we hear what happened next. Jesus and his disciples left that place and went to the other side of Lake Galilee. When the crowd realized that Jesus was gone, they went in search of him. When they found him, Jesus engaged them in a little discussion. He challenges them on why they’d followed him. “It wasn’t because you saw signs,” he said. “It wasn’t because you experienced the power of the divine. You followed me because you had a big meal and you want another one.”
Bingo. And this interchange resonates with another biblical story. After Jesus had been baptized, he went into the wilderness for 40 days. During that time, the Devil tempted Jesus. Jesus was hungry, and the devil proposed that Jesus turn the desert stones into loaves of bread.
It was something Jesus certainly had the capability of doing. But lurking behind the question was something bigger: what was his ultimate purpose? What is it he hopes to accomplish? Are his Messianic goals about this world and its aching problems, like hunger? Or does he reach for something greater still?
Jesus’ response to Satan’s suggestion hearkens back to an earlier situation involving bread in the wilderness. When Israel journeyed out of slavery from Egypt, God provided the heavenly bread from heaven, manna. It appeared every morning on the ground.
Moses reflected on the Israelites’ hunger in the wilderness and the heavenly bread they received. He said:
“God humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna … in order to make you understand that ONE DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT BY EVERY WORD THAT COMES FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD.”
“One does not live by bread alone.” Jesus repeated these words to Satan. He told Satan that the satisfaction of earthly hungers is not the be all and end all of human fulfillment.
Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes as a sign. He intended to point to something much greater than a simple free meal. He has no intention of repeating it now. Instead, he points them to another food, to a food that doesn’t perish. What he desires for them is the food that endures for eternal life. And that bread is himself.
Hunger is with us always. And when we look inwardly, we realize that we hunger after very many things besides just food. We hunger after material things – a nicer house, a new phone, the latest clothing styles. And the more we get, the more we want. The hunger doesn’t stop. We hunger after popularity. We hunger after power and status. We hunger for new and stimulating experiences.
Behind all of these varied hungers, there resides a deeper and more profound emptiness. And that, my friends, is the emptiness, the hunger we most yearn to fill. We try our best to fill it with all these other things which are within our grasp. But nothing can substitute for and satisfy this deeper hunger. Nothing else can fill its void.
The philosopher Blaise Pascal put his finger on it. He said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person. It cannot be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by the creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”
At the heart of each of us there is a God-shaped void. The only thing that can fill that empty hunger is God. St. Augustine put it this way: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
Jesus pointed the crowd to the bread that fully satisfies, the food that endures for eternal life. And that bread is himself.
Fasting is an enduring spiritual practice. The point of fasting is to face our hunger. Its purpose is to draw near to and ponder that empty void within. You might say that the goal of fasting is to befriend hunger. Rather than being something we avoid, in fasting we draw near to it. We contemplate all the ways in which we hunger. And in that fasting, we realize our dependence upon God’s hand to provide our daily bread. It facilitates emotional connections with the world’s poor and underfed. In this spiritual exercise of fasting, we feel what they face every day. And most significantly, fasting reminds us that we are more than our physical self with all its appetites. We become aware of the God-shaped vacuum.
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.”
