Hunger

 A Sermon based on John 6: 1-21

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When I was about six years old, my dad, who at the time was a musician, played a gig on the 4th of July in the Northlands of Kansas City. We didn't often get to go to the movies, so while my dad rehearsed, stayed cool in a theater. My younger brother, who must have been about three, found the movie, an early screening of “Honey I Blew Up the Kid” terrifying, and I ended up chasing him up the aisle several times while he tried to run out of the theater because my mom was holding my baby sister, who was sleeping. Later, we rode the escalator in the fancy theater over and over, and then finally, it was time to head down to the river front where we would eat snacks, hear my dad play, and then get to see fireworks. You might think this sounds like a fun childhood memory. You would be wrong.

Here are a few important pieces of information that slightly color how I remember this. First, I am one of four kids, so my oldest brother was nine, I was around six, my younger brother was three, and my youngest sister was barely one. Why my parents thought it was a good idea to bring us out for this I have absolutely no idea. Two, we were very poor, so the movie was the treat of our year. I am not sure how we even got tickets for this movie, because it was a pre-release, and I don't think we paid for it at this fancy theater, but I know that we did not get snacks or drinks. In fact, we did not buy any food all day. My mom packed food, and Diet Coke to drink. Fact number three, when I was a kid I could not drink soda. The bubbles burned my nose. Fact number four, we were having a minor heat wave in Kansas City that summer, and it was 91 degrees that day. You can see where this is going. 

There we were, hunkered down in the grass on the banks of the Missouri River, waiting to watch fireworks, and as much as I reach back into my memory of that evening, I cannot remember anything about the music or the fireworks. All I remember was the excruciating, agonizing thirst I experienced, and the availability of my most hated nemesis, Diet Coke. I remember my mom begging and pleading with me to just take a few sips, and me steadfastly refusing it. Because we were only there to see fireworks and not Jesus, unfortunately, nobody passed around a miraculously refilling pitcher of Juicy Juice. It was the longest night of my life to that point.

Granted, the biblical story isn't entirely parallel to mine. But in a way, the people were out to see some fireworks. It was getting close to Passover, which for the Jewish community is a time of remembering God's liberating power. The Jews were again living under the government of Rome, and people had been talking about Jesus, and wondering if maybe he was the one who had been foretold. Hoping to get a glimpse of him, a crowd of people had gathered and followed Jesus and the disciples. And Jesus, recognizing that the time of revelation was drawing near, took the opportunity to test the disciples, and draw a parallel to another story of salvation—the feeding of the children of Israel in the wilderness. Jesus asks his disciples what to do, and Andrew suggests that there is a little bit of food, a boy with some loaves and fishes. Jesus instructs the disciples to have the people sit, and then he takes the meager portion, gives thanks to God for it, and begins to distribute it to the people. Can you imagine the looks on the disciples' faces as they start passing out bread and fish, expecting that one row would get a few bites, and instead this tiny lunch for one person is suddenly just... not ending?

This link to the story of the Israelites is no accident. It's Passover, and Jesus is to be the new “paschal lamb.” Following the events of the first Passover, where the children of Israel fled Egypt to the wilderness, manna, or bread, fell daily from heaven, and quail obediently landed on their doorsteps, a promise of provision even during a time of wandering and separation from the promised land. Jesus, foreshadowing his own death, becomes the source of the manna and fish, a promise of abundance in the midst of our hunger. It's a beautiful metaphor, and one that is completely lost on the people in front of him. Rather than understanding that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb, the people gather up the leftovers and immediately mobilize to try to forcibly install him as a king to overthrow the government. Recognizing that the people are still thinking about earthly things, Jesus returns to the mountain alone.

I'm a priest, but my daytime gig is as a chaplain supporting paramedics and EMTs, police officers, and emergency dispatchers. Recently, I was chatting with a young man about an accident that he worked on in the course of his job. Although he felt good about his own role in the situation, he found himself struggling with bigger questions about suffering in the world. Why did terrible things happen to innocent people? Why was it that, in his line of work, so often the people that walk away from the terrible accidents and tragedies were the ones who had caused them or bore responsibility, while those who were catastrophically injured or even killed, were innocent bystanders? I could see the hunger for answers in his eyes as he looked at me. Hunger for understanding, hunger for comfort, and safety, and assurance, and most of all, for peace.

This is the hunger we all have burning inside of us. The same parched feeling as a kid on a record-breaking July day with only fizzy, yucky diet coke to drink. The same hunger as a crowd of people chasing Jesus on a long afternoon with no goldfish crackers and Go Go Squeeze applesauce pouches in their bags. The same longing as a first responder witnessing the worst that humanity has to offer day in, day out. We all long for these things. Life can be pretty ugly sometimes. From a contentious divorce, to a scary diagnosis, to a long dark tunnel of mental illness, or a world at war, this is our reality. We hunger and thirst for a God who can hear us, answer us, fill us, heal us. We hear about something that might be able to satisfy that hunger, and we chase it down. Sometimes it fills us for a little while—alcohol, or relationships, or social media, or stuff, or busy-ness. But in the end we come up hungry again, always waiting for the next meal, never quite satisfied. The crowds even did it with Jesus.

They had the real deal right in front of them, and instead of understanding that Jesus was the sacrifice, they took in the miracle that he had given them, and then they tried to forcibly crown him their earthly king, thinking that a political revolution was what they needed and wanted. And sure, maybe sometimes that is what the calling is. But the kingdom of heaven, the bread of heaven, encompasses so much more than our earthly selves and our earthly lives. It is, as the writer of Ephesians wrote, being filled so that we become rooted and grounded in love. It isn't being fed just today, but like the Israelites, being fed every day, abundantly, with baskets overflowing. It is becoming so full of the love of God that bit by bit every nook and cranny and crevice inside of us begins to fill up with this love, and then finally, with nowhere else to go, it floods beyond our bodies and beyond our walls in a tidal wave of love and mercy and justice bearing witness for all the world to see and know who Christ is.

Jesus tells us who he is in the last part of this story when he transports his disciples from the storm, evoking imagery of salvation from a body of water like the parting of the Red Sea. The translation we have here has Jesus saying “it is I,” but what the Greek says “ἐγώ εἰμί” or “I AM.” Jesus is “I AM.” The same I AM who was and is and is to come. The same I AM who spoke the world into being and who breathed into us life and who could create with a word and who is the Word. Jesus is that same I AM. How small-minded for the people chasing Jesus to think that he could ever be only a king over Israel, when he came to be the King, and priest, and prophet for all the universe, past, present, and future. We hunger and thirst, and God didn't give us a sip of Diet Coke or a bite of Ritz Crackers. We hungered and we thirsted, and God gave us a banquet, and a deluge of God's own self poured into our reality. That's abundance.

And so. When we come to the table in a little while, and when we receive the body and blood together, I want you to remember that what we are receiving isn't just a portion of the Holy Spirit. It isn't just a polite little dribble of God's self into this moment. It is all of God, all at once, for you. For us. Forever. Amen.