Where to Get Bread?
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (B), August 1, 2021.
John 6:24-35
Anyone who has ever been responsible for a baby, particularly a newborn, knows, the first few weeks of life are consumed by what is most basic. Hunger at the top of the list.
How do you tell if your baby is hungry? How do you tell if they are too full? How do you tell if they are getting too little nourishment or too much?
As it turns out, hunger, while basic, is not all that straightforward.
Consider my Godson, born just this week. Because of some relatively minor complications, he spent a few days in the NICU where he was given food through a small tube. After several days of that, he showed little interest in feeding in any other way – at least at first. Why? Because before he would eat, before he wanted to eat, he had to learn what hunger was – how would he know, after all. He’d never experienced it.
Now, maybe that makes perfect sense to you, but my mind was blown. I’d just never thought about it before –about the fact that it was possible to feel perfectly full – not too little, not too much, but just right – perfectly satisfied and without any living, breathing experience of physical hunger – and not just for a moment, or a day, but for all days, always.
[Granted, he’s only a few days old, but I think this means that my Godson is probably exceedingly special and, perhaps, spiritually gifted. Time will tell.]
We are in a five week stretch of the Gospel of John, a stretch that begs us to consider hunger –what is meant by emptiness and fullness, starvation and sustenance, bread and Jesus. In the words of Debie Thomas:
We’re asked to contemplate Jesus’s self-description as “the bread of life,” or “the bread which comes down from heaven.” We watch as he feeds people. We listen as their scarcity mindset drives them to clamor for more. And we hear the challenge of his words when he invites the grasping crowds to probe the hungers beneath their hungers. The unspoken deprivations that fuel their desires. The needs they carry in secret places. [1]
Last Sunday, Shearon spoke of loaves and fishes, fishes and loaves –and how in the hands of Jesus there is abundance of life. Today, we pick up right where we left off –all have eaten and are physically full. And yet they follow Jesus still. They are hungry and long to be fed. But Jesus suggests that there is something more to their hunger than meets the eye. There is a scarcity that hints at the possibility of fullness. A want that reveals a need. A hunger which will only be satisfied by Him.
Are you hungry? Am I? What are we hungry for? When was the last time we were blessedly, contentedly full? Was there a time? Can you remember? In what ways do we seek to quell our hunger? In what ways do we seek to ignore it?
And even if we recognize our hunger, allow ourselves to go there, to remember it, and to feel it, what then?
Where to get bread?
This is the opening line of a poem by Ayodeji Malcom Guite, poet, priest, academic, and songwriter.
Where to get bread? [he writes] An ever-pressing question
That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers,
Bread for their families, bread for all these others;
A whole world on the margin of exhaustion.
And where that hunger has been satisfied
Where to get bread? The question still returns
In our abundance something starves and yearns
We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied.
Where to get bread?
And 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 (John 6:35).
I am the bread of life.
Bread. Simple. Basic. Elemental. Sustenance. This is what we seek and this is what God offers by way of His Son, Jesus Christ. Abundant simplicity.
And yet, in the words of Christian Wiman, “How does one [even] remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one’s life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life?” [2]
We must first hunger to know that we are in need of bread -only then can we remember, reach for, and realize God in the midst of our lives.
Barbara Brown Taylor has long talked about our situation as one of famine. We are in the midst of famine.
I know it sounds odd to speak of famine in the land of plenty, [she writes] especially when there is so much apparent evidence that God’s harvest is as rich as ever. Perhaps there is no proof a famine exists except for the fact that people are hungry. In the land of plenty, the source of that hunger can be difficult to diagnose. It is often not until we discover by process of elimination our hunger for God. Our problem is not too few rations, but too many.
It is only when we search our hearts and offer them up to God that we begin to desire the type of fullness that only God can provide. It is only when we remember having been fed soul-food, that we become discontent with everything else. It is only when we truly taste and see that the Lord is good, that our eyes are opened to what is not.
Guite’s poem ends:
And then comes One who speaks into our needs
Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish
Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish
Who words unfold in us like living seeds
Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete,
I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.
It is one thing to chase bread, it’s quite another to let it catch you. To trust that Jesus is the perfect satisfaction of all our hungers.
Our hunger to be seen. Hunger to belong. To be safe and secure. Hunger for connection. Purpose. Meaning. Hunger for joy. Happiness. Peace. Hunger for healing. Forgiveness. Love.
Are you hungry? I am.
And yet trusting that Jesus will heal this hurt, feed these hungers, will satisfy them truly –well, it’s just not that straightforward. Life can be overwhelming, too full of distractions and demands to allow hunger to be identified, to surface, and to lead us towards love.
How do you tell if you are hungry? How do you tell if you are too full? How do you tell if you are getting too little nourishment or too much?
One theologian argues that “If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” [3]
We have too long nibbled at the table of the world. We have too long accepted the food of scarcity, a poor substitute for divine abundance. We have too long evaded intimacy with God by filling ourselves with other things.
And we share this truth with every other broken, hungry, incomplete human being in the world and we have shared it for too long. But here’s the Good News. Jesus calls to us.
Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete,
I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.
Jesus gave bread to the hungry, yes. But that wasn’t the point. Jesus didn’t come to give bread; Jesus came to be bread. To be The Bread. Jesus did not come to fulfill our desires, to meet the needs that we think we have. No. Jesus came to teach us, to show us, to plant within us a holy desire for Him.
The Bread of Life.
Amen.
*Art is “Manna from Heaven” an illustration in the Crusader’s Bible, France, 1240; wikicommons
[1] Debie Thomas, “Deep Hungers,” Journey with Jesus, 25 July 2021, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay.
[2] “How Does One Remember God? Christian Wiman,” On Being with Krista Tippett, 12 April 2012, https://onbeing.org/programs/christian-wiman-how-does-one-remember-god-jan2018 (last updated 4 Jan 2018).
[3] John Piper, A Hunger for God.