Proper 14 Year B (RCL lectionary) Sermon

I Kings 19:4-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35,41-51

JUST WHAT ARE WE REALLY HUNGRY FOR?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

The other night I was watching TV after dinner with my wife when something funny happened. There we sat on the sofa, full of this really excellent curry dish she’d made, when a commercial came on. It was a commercial for pizza; you know the kind, the ones in which the camera pans low over the surface of what looks like acres of bubbling cheese and pepperoni, like the surface of some sort of edible, delicious planet. I saw that commercial, and I wanted that pizza. I wanted that pizza so badly that, for a second, I forgot that I’d just eaten—It didn’t even occur to me that I was already full. I even wanted that pizza so much that, for a split-second after that did occur to me, I wished I hadn’t already eaten, so I could have it instead.

What was I doing, drooling after that pizza on television? I wasn’t even hungry. Why did I want it so badly?

Well, from an advertiser’s point of view, the answer is simple enough: I wanted that pizza because the advertisers wanted me to want that pizza. We’re constantly fed messages about what we want, what we need, what we’re hungry for. Commercials subtly promise that their product will fill that nagging void we feel. This promise is often implicit, subtle, or perhaps slightly ironic in a hip, Post-modern way, but the promise is there nevertheless: Buy this and you’ll be happy.

In commercials, our happiness is always tantalizingly within reach: If I whiten my teeth with new Whitening strips, I’ll have a brighter smile and more friends. If I buy a new car, I’ll be fulfilled. My life can be as young and hip and sexy as a beer commercial. And what a veritable horn-of-plenty is promised in fast-food ads: I can Supersize my happiness for only 99c!

Don’t get me wrong: the things advertised in commercials may be good or useful or helpful. But the fulfillment and happiness they seem to promise doesn’t actually come in the box along with them. It’s why big purchases sometimes feel so much like a bait-and-switch. You fork over the money for the glossy, picture-perfect life you saw in the magazine, and all you get is the clothes those models were wearing. You get the computer home, and after a few weeks you realize that you’d heard that guy in the Dell commercials wrong: You thought he’d said: “Dude, you’re getting a brand-new awesome life!” Turns out all he’d said was, “Dude, it’s just a computer.”

Companies don’t want us to stay fulfilled, don’t want that thrill of finally having our needs and hopes satisfied to last. While the satisfaction that commercials promise is always within reach, it’s always just out of reach too, receding to the next purchase, the next manufactured need. It’s like the Greek myth of Tantalus, who would reach out for the grapes he was starving for, only to have them recede just beyond his grasp.

The truth is, we are hungry for something. There is a hunger, a thirst, deep inside of us that yearns to be filled. There is something basic in our nature that needs to be satisfied for us to be truly nourished. But not just anything will satisfy this need. We try anyway; sometimes with drugs or too much alcohol. It’s pretty natural to try to plug this hole with food; I’m not the only one who finds myself overeating when I’m depressed. Food advertisers already have that working in their favor; other advertisers have to work a little harder to get us to displace our soul’s innermost yearning to their products.

In Isaiah 55, God calls:
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Here, God is calling Israel to a metaphorical banquet, where what they truly hunger and thirst for will be provided for them. This spiritual “food and drink” is “without money and without price” – that is, both priceless and free. God encourages the Israelites to stop chasing after what doesn’t really satisfy, or throwing money away on what doesn’t really sustain. As Saint Augustine said, “Our souls are restless until they find their rest in God.”

[PAUSE]

I went to college in Santa Fe, and I used to drive all the way across Texas on my way home to New Orleans. On the highway, through the driest, hottest parts of Texas, water would appear far off down the road, only to disappear as I got closer. The promise of true, lasting happiness from any worldy thing is like a mirage; it evaporates when we approach it.

I’m sure all of us, at one time or another, have dreamed of eating, only to wake up still hungry. The opposite thing happen to Elijah! He dreams of a call to eat and drink, and wakes up to real food-- hot cakes and jars of water! More importantly, God has not just fed his physical hunger and thirst; God has responded to the despair that led Elijah to pray, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”
Elijah laid down ready to die;
he woke refreshed and ready to go on.
He went to sleep soul-weary and full of doubt and despair.
He got up full of strength and confidence in God.
God fed his spirit as well as his body, giving him strength to get up and journey on to Mount Horeb, where he would encounter God in the “still small voice” after the storm.

Just before our reading from the Gospel, Jesus has been talking with the Jews about Moses and feeding the Israelites with Manna in the wilderness. The crowds had followed Jesus, in fact, because he had fed the five thousand in the wilderness. Jesus says that the Manna-bread that God gave the Israelites sustained them for a while, but in the end they still died. Jesus tells them about better bread:
“For the bread of God is that-which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
The Greek of this sentence could also mean “the bread of God is he-who comes down from heaven.” The crowds respond, “Sir, give us this bread always.” (6:33-34)
They’re hoping, perhaps, for a repeat performance of the feeding of the five thousand. But the situation is completely different: the five thousand came out to the wilderness to be near Jesus, to hear him teach. While they’re there, Jesus decides to feed them. These people, by contrast, have set out intentionally to get a free meal out of Jesus.
Their request— “Sir, give us this bread always”— sets up Jesus’ startling self-revelation: “I am the bread of life.” Jesus is the very bread that the crowds have requested. They already have what they have asked for, right before them!

In the synoptic Gospels, Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread. This temptation worked on two levels: one on level, it was merely a temptation to satisfy his own physical hunger, but on another, Satan was tempting Jesus to make himself a popular leader by bribing the masses, to make himself a “bread king.” Jesus’ response to this temptation is worth quoting here, when he is approached by a crowd hoping for the very same thing—a miraculous feeding, a bread magic show. He quotes Moses from the book of Deuteronomy (8:3):

God humbled you by letting you hunger, then feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, 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.

As the Gospel of John has already made clear, Jesus himself is the Logos, the Word, that came from God. We are nourished by Jesus in a way that mere manna never could.

The manna met the Israelite’s immediate physical hunger, but those who ate it ultimately died. The bread from heaven, Jesus Christ, satisfies our ultimate human needs and satisfies us on another level. Jesus answers our human need at the most basic, most fundamental level, even more central to the core of who we are than (physical) hunger. On some level, bread alone—even manna—leaves us un-nourished. Christ nourishes us at that level—at the very core of our being

It was once thought that the Gospel of John was the least Eucharistic of the four Gospels. It does not have an account of the Last Supper as the other gospels do, or recount Jesus’ words over the bread and the wine. However, New Testament scholars now recognize that Eucharistic theology is woven throughout the entire Gospel in a diffuse way. In the turning of water to wine at the Wedding at Cana, in the feeding of the five thousand, and in the “Bread of Life” discussions in chapter six, the Eucharist permeates all of John’s Gospel throughout, rather than in discrete events as in the other Gospels.

As the food God sent to Elijah strengthened him to go on with his ministry, the Eucharist feeds us and nourishes us for the work God has given us to do. In Eucharistic Prayer C, we pray: “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”

In this feast, we are sustained at our most fundamental level, becoming more fully who and what we truly are. As we prepare to receive communion together this morning, ask yourself: What is my deepest need? What is my true heart’s desire? What is my soul thirsting for?

It probably isn’t a new car, a Dell computer-- or even a pizza. Whatever your truest need, it is fed in the Bread of Life. And may we pray, understanding better what we say than the crowds from John’s Gospel, “Lord, give us this bread always.” AMEN.