8-2-21 - No Hunger, No Thirst

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

When Jesus says that he is the bread of life, he also makes a big claim: “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Is he only speaking figuratively? On the face of it, it would seem so. Many people believe and yet experience hunger or thirst on a regular basis, physical and emotional as well as spiritual. We have not received all that we need so that we have no wants. Or have we?

The realm of God is an already/not yet place. Often we focus too much on the not-yet, when Jesus’ message in word and action was “It’s already here, folks! This God who loves you is near, is here, with power to heal and to provide.” The healings and the miracle of the loaves and fish were yet more ways to show that this Good News has implications in our material lives here and now, not only in our spirits. Even in the face of persecution, Jesus taught, God provides. How hard it is to trust that! Those trust muscles need to be developed and then exercised.

If anyone had reason to be thirsty, it was Rosie, a woman I met at a nursing home where I used to do a monthly service. She often added to my homilies, conveying my point better and more eloquently than I did. She lived semi-reclined in a wheelchair, and looked to me to be in her mid-40s. And she was radiant, always smiling, grateful. One time I had spoken about the living water of Christ always within us, and she said, “I know about that living water. Before I knew Jesus I had this emptiness inside me, nothing could fill it. But the moment I learned about him and said yes to faith, I felt full. Now I always feel full of God, all the time, no matter what.”

Rosie’s “no matter what” is particularly challenging, living in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair. I’m sure she had other plans for her life. But her joy is palpable. That living water of Holy Spirit life truly runs in her and causes her to be focused on other people, on spreading God's joy and peace.

St. Paul put it well: “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

We have received the bread of life; we renew that awareness around the communion table. We have received the water of life; Jesus promises it is like a stream welling up within us to eternity. As Rosie knows, eternity has already begun. Be fed, be quenched, be blessed. God-Life is already!

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7-28-21 - The Bread That Gives Life

You can listen to this reflection here.

I love bread. I love bread so much, I gave it up for Lent one year. If my metabolism allowed, I would start every day with a basket of French rolls, butter and jam, and work bread into lunch and dinner too. (But I’d soon look like a French roll.) Bread is the staff of life, but not the Life Jesus invites us into.

In this week’s story, the people looking for Jesus want bread from heaven, and they think Jesus might just have access. But they want a guarantee before they trust him. So when he says they are to believe in him as sent by God, they reply, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

You’d think the miracle of the loaves and fishes would have been sign enough, but they wanted God to do what God had done before. It’s often our tendency, when we’ve been blessed, to look for blessing in the last place we found it, and in the same form. In my experience, God rarely goes back over the same ground. The trajectory of the Life of God is forward, to new life.

So Jesus tells them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

They were more interested in the temporal bread than the eternal. In fairness, having enough to eat is an urgent matter for an occupied, oppressed, over-taxed populace. Yet feeding the hungry was not what Jesus was up to. He told his followers to do that. He came to nourish souls starved for the presence of the Living God. He came to invite everyone to God’s banqueting table, and to clear the obstacles that kept people away. His priority was to proclaim the reign of God in which generosity and justice flourish so broadly, everyone will be welcome at the table and fed in abundance.

We too are called to proclaim the bread that gives life. It's great that so many churches are involved in the sharing of food with those who hunger; that is part of the Gospel life. Yet the invitation to us as Christ followers is to be as much or more involved in sharing Jesus, who called himself the Bread of Life – introducing people to Jesus as we know him, feeding thirsty spirits and broken hearts, inviting people to feast on him in Word and sacrament. Who can you think of who is hungry for the bread of Life? How might you offer it to that person?

That is the bread we will feast on in eternity. It will never run out, and it will never make us fat, only full.

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