August 20, 2006
(Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 15)

The Food that Lasts

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Proverbs 9:1-6  •  Psalm 147 or 34:9-14  •  Ephesians 5:15-20  •  John 6:53-59
(From The Lectionary Page)

Maybe some of you can connect with the scenario: It’s 8:30 at night at the end of a long day. You’re vegging out in front of the television, channel flipping or, as we like to call it in our house, “watching what else is on.” Gradually, you become aware of a sensation that you interpret as hunger. Your head tells you that it can’t be hunger. You’ve had a nice meal just a few hours earlier, the food isn’t even out of your stomach yet, and still that rich, fudgy brownie is calling to you. (Feel free, by the way, to insert your own confection of choice in this scenario). The gravitational pull of this brownie is one of the strongest forces in the universe. Resistance is futile. And so you wander into the kitchen and snarf that thing down. Sensation is sated, if just for the moment. Unfortunately, there’s still 9:00 to get through, and 9:30 and so on. Okay, maybe for you it isn’t chocolate. Maybe it’s a tasty beverage or another go at computer solitaire or opening your briefcase and extending your workday, making one more phone call. Maybe it’s obsessing about what didn’t go right for you that day or that week, and engaging in some trash talk with a sympathetic friend.

Whatever the case, I daresay that most of us are familiar with some iteration of this disease – a vague emptiness within us that calls to be filled – either with food or a beverage we don’t need, or with some activity that fills empty hours but does not satisfy. Even as our higher consciousness lectures us to stop being ridiculous, we find ourselves succumbing to baser instincts.

Welcome to the human race. How refreshing to find that our texts this morning, written several millennia ago, address a human condition out of which most of us, apparently, have not yet evolved. Certainly the writers of the Book of Proverbs and the Letter to the Ephesians seem all too aware of our human tendency toward indulging our foolish human appetites, and counsel instead the way of wisdom. Wisdom -- personified as she is in much of Proverbs -- as Sophia, counsels the hearer to lay aside immaturity and live and walk in the way of insight, while the writer of Ephesians puts it even clearer: Do not be foolish, he writes, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

If only. If only the controlling of our foolish physical, emotional, economic, and political appetites were a matter of personal willpower and self-discipline. If only every one of us carrying 20 or more extra pounds simply ate less and exercised more every day for the rest of our lives. If only Americans would give up our love affair with the automobile and return to the days of mass transit. If only nations would cease their insane quest for political domination. If only the surplus corn and soybeans from America’s heartland could directly go to the victims of famine in sub-Saharan Africa. We know better. We know that our complex contemporary world is shaped upon a foundation of human appetites, foolish as they are. We know that for every sensible decision to be made, there are a thousand political and economic roadblocks in the way.

Our world, in many ways, is very different from first century Palestine. Capernaum and Kansas City, apart from hot, humid summers, don’t seem to have much in common. And yet, the words that Jesus speaks to his followers transcend the particularity of time and geography. This is the sixth chapter of John. It opens with the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 in the wilderness with five loaves and two fish. The crowd is amazed, enthralled, and confused. They see in this miracle echoes of the manna that their ancestors ate in the wilderness. “Cool!” they think. “This must be another Moses, ready to give us whatever our appetites crave.”

Hmmm. Well, be careful what you ask for. Or, as my Grandma Lemmon was fond of pointing out, it isn’t what you want, it’s what you get that does you good. Jesus has no interest in being little more than the quartermaster in the wilderness, and so he clarifies his actions for the crowd. As Deacon Bryan reminded us last week, Jesus isn’t the bread provider, he is the bread himself. He came, as one writer put it, so that hungry and thirsty people could finally be filled. Jesus does not deny the reality of our human appetites. After all, he had them too. Like every human being, Jesus, son of Mary, was born hungry. However, what he does do in the verses that follow the feeding of the 5,000 is to call his followers to a redirection of appetites. What Christ tries to get his followers to understand is that our best hope for being filled is to be filled with him. Instead of filling our selves, our souls, and our bodies with things that are not ultimate, that cannot provide lasting fulfillment, Jesus would have us, instead, fill up on him. In other words, Jesus was saying, "I AM the incarnate love of God. The loving providential God who invited a covenant with his Chosen People is the God who dwells in me. What I want, what God wants, is for you to sink your teeth in to THAT relationship. What I want, what God wants, is for you to feast on this relationship with all the eagerness with which you just ate that bread I gave you."

The good news for us appetite-driven folk is that Jesus does not counsel a kind of righteousness that’s all about an exercise of will. Rather, he calls us to surrender to a relationship with God wherein we invite God to feed us with the food that lasts. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Jesus certainly pulled no punches in his choice of words. The image is gruesome and the Greek is even more so. Nothing abstract, theoretical, or disembodied about this invitation. To encounter Jesus is to take him into our lives so that the whole of our being reflects his nourishing presence. It's the best reason I can think of for celebrating the sacrament of Holy Eucharist week in and week out. It gets us out of our heads and requires only an appetite. An appetite for eternal life.