So, I think it is safe to say that the crowds that were following Jesus were fans. They had seen enough of Jesus to know that whatever he had, they wanted more of it. The Sea of Galilee is not a large body of water, but it is large enough. Yet the crowds follow Jesus across. Free bread may not be enough to do that. But Jesus had given them more than free bread. The bread that Jesus gave them wasn’t just free, it came out of nowhere. Like the Israelites and Moses, they had been in the wilderness. And like of old, they had received bread out of nowhere in the middle on nowhere.
Now they wanted more, or at least they wanted a repeat performance so that they could be sure they had seen what they thought they had seen. Because I think miracles don’t lead people to faith. They just cause people to say, ‘do it again,but slower.’” The people ask just that of Jesus.
And I think that we are all in search of food in a wilderness of our own today. People in our world are either desperate for food, any food, hungry each night and hoping for relief, or else we have all the food that we can eat with leftovers, yet our lives are curiously unfilled, or unfulfilled. The rich say to the poor, “How can you still be hungry? There is more than enough food for everyone in the world!” The poor say to the rich, “How can you still be hungry? You have so much already!”
And those words Jesus says to those chasing him across the sea those many years ago still have truth today. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.“ Our culture, in America, especially now in America, has a hard time hearing those words.
Growing up, I played a game with my friends, called “The Game of Life.” And it wasn’t about life really, but life as we were told it ought to be. You had choices along the way: go to college or not, get married, have a career (with the highest salary being the best). There were pitfalls and shortcuts to “retirement” which was the finish line. But the goal was not to finish first. Rather the goal was to finish with the most. Whoever had the biggest stack of cash at the end was the winner.
But here's the thing... after a winner was declared, the game would be put away. All the money just disappeared until the next game when pursuit of “bread” in the form of money would be start all over. It was some years later that I noticed the game didn’t count death as a part of life. The real end in “The Game of Life” is always a tie. Everyone ends up the same. Turns out, getting all that money was an illusion
You would think that with so many people “winning” the world’s game of life we would be a culture that is more satisfied than most as a whole, since we have more than most as a culture. Yet our hunger persists. The more we have, the hungrier we become, and the less satisfied we are. And those in our midst who are satisfied are termed “unambitious” and even “lazy.”
The manna lessons from the wilderness were important for the people of Israel. They learned that God would give them the things they needed. They also learned not to hoard their bread (it would spoil if you kept it for more than a day) and to share it with those who could not gather for themselves. It was the bread that God gave them as they were learning how to be the servant people they were called to be. In today’s Gospel, the chasers of Jesus remembered the manna, but not the lessons of the manna. So Jesus begins to teach them again about what the true bread from heaven does.
But then he says something amazing. He says, “I AM the bread of life.” He identifies himself with God, the great I AM. He identifies Yahweh as the bread of life for the world. And you just know this sets his followers back on their heels. How is Jesus the bread of life? How does Jesus satisfy hunger and thirst? How does Jesus provide life for the world?
I was watching a YouTube video about the religious imagery in my least favorite critter...spiders. Seems that while most spiders leave their eggs in a sac and wander off, one species does not leave them, but stays to protect them and find food for them. But when there is no food for the little spiders, the mother of this species will kill herself and give her young one last meal, herself. She dies and gives them life.
The film maker sees in the Christ of the Cross one who gives himself for the life of all. When we feast today at Christ’s table, it is his own life poured out for us that becomes our bread. It is in the giving of himself that he is most alive, even as he dies. And those of us who follow rather than chase Jesus learn the simple truth from this: that we are only filled full when we empty ourselves. Jesus is the bread of life not for what he puts into our stomachs, but rather for how he teaches us to live, really LIVE.
There is a hymn called The Hungry Feast. A couple of verses go like this:
We come to the hungry feasthungry for a world releasedfrom hungry folk of every kind,the poor in body, poor in mind.We come, we come to the hungry feast.
We come to the hungry feasthungry that the hunger cease,and knowing, though we eat our fill,the hunger will stay with us still.We come, we come to the hungry feast.”
The hunger that Jesus satisfies awakens in us other hungers, for peace, justice, loving kindness, and a humble walk with our God. No matter how often we feast at God’s table, these hungers never leave us. And because of that we offer ourselves into the service of the one who gives himself as food for us. We allow our lives to be reshaped by Christ into his own body for the world. We become bread like his bread. And all of this not by getting something, but by giving everything as Christ has given to us. So come to this table. Come hungry for life, leave hungry to give life, full of Jesus, the bread of life.