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THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Craving Life

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-25; John 6:24-35

 “Satisfy your craving!”

That was the message on the marquee of a fast food restaurant I passed this week.  My first thought was, “Gee, I didn’t know I had a craving for Wendy’s New Boneless Chicken Wings.”

Although blatantly stated by Wendy’s, this message – Satisfy your craving! – is the implicit message of every food chain, every restaurant and every retail store.  Every TV advertisement, every glossy magazine photo, every spam e-mail pushes this point in one way or another: There is something you desire, something you simply must have, (even if you don’t know it!) and we can provide it for you quickly and easily.

While we may not consciously go around trying to satisfy our cravings, there is an underlying truth here – as human beings, we naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  In many cases, it is a good thing.  But it is so much a part of our operating system that we are generally unconscious of it.   It is a truth about our lives of which we are rarely aware.

If we are aware of this truth and if we acknowledge it, then perhaps we will not be quite so quick to judge the people of Israel .  They have been freed from slavery in Egypt .  They been brought miraculously through the waters of the Red Sea, but they have not been delivered immediately to the Promised Land.  Moses leads them into the wilderness – not just for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, but for 40 years.  

It doesn’t take long for them to want to go back.  The scarcity of food in their new life seems a much greater burden to bear than the burden of slave work.  Life as a slave may have been tough, but they didn’t have to worry about where the next meal was going to come from.  Not so in the desert.  Out in the desert, the lack of food has brought them face-to-face with the prospect of death.  “Better to die with a full belly than an empty one!” they cry.

But God hasn’t brought them into the wilderness to die.  God has brought them into the wilderness to deepen their relationship with him. 

When they cry, God hears them.  God will provide meat in the evening, he says, and manna in the morning.  This manna, however, will be a special kind of bread.  It will spoil quickly.  It cannot be kept and stored away, stockpiled for the days ahead.  It must be gathered each day, just enough for that day.  In this way, the Israelites will grow in faith. In this way, they will live one day at a time.  In this way, they will learn to trust the providence of God.

For true freedom is not merely deliverance from external oppressors.  It is also deliverance from the tyranny of our own cravings.  True freedom grows out of relationship to God.

“Satisfy your craving!”

Jesus knew this temptation.  After his baptism, Jesus is driven by the Spirit out into the desert.  He is there for 40 days.  Afterwards, he is powerfully hungry.

So, the tempter says, “Jesus, you are the Son of God, after all.  Just say the word and you can turn that stone into a loaf of bread.” 

But that is not the word Jesus says.  Instead, he quotes the word of Moses.  “It takes more than bread to live the life God wants us to live.”

Jesus did not live by his own craving.  Perhaps that’s why John Ortberg says that, after Jesus had fasted for 40 days, he may have been weak with hunger, but he was strong in God.

But Jesus also did not live by the craving of the world.  Make no mistake – Jesus met human needs while he was here.  He taught the confused and healed the sick.  He tossed out demons and comforted the oppressed.  He even fed the hungry – thousands and thousands of people – with bread.  But Jesus was never reduced to meeting people’s needs.  He was never defined by that.  That’s not who he was.  That’s not why he came.  Jesus came for a much greater purpose.

This purpose is revealed to us when Jesus goes to the other side of the Sea of Galilee , as John reports.  He goes up on the mountain and sits down with his disciples.  But they are not alone.  The miracles that Jesus has been doing have started to attract a crowd. 

When the crowd approaches, Jesus says to Philip, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?”  He says this because he wants to teach the disciples something important.

“It would take more money than I will ever see to feed this bunch.”

Then Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, chimes in, “There’s a little boy with five barley loaves and two fish.  But that’s just a drop in the bucket with this crowd.”  

Jesus tells the disciples to have the crowd sit down.  There is a nice carpet of green grass.  He takes the bread and, after giving thanks, gives it to them to eat.  Then he does the same with the fish.

Then Jesus tells the disciples, “Gather the leftovers so that nothing is wasted.”  And from the five barely loaves they gather twelve baskets of bread.

The people know that God is working among them.  They say, “This is God’s Prophet, for sure!”  But Jesus slips away because he knows they don’t really want a prophet.  They want a king.  They want a king who will satisfy their craving for bread.

Jesus doesn’t get away for long.  The crowd tracks him down.  They say, “Jesus, where did you go?”

He says, “You came to find me, not because you saw God in my actions, but because you got your bellies full – for free!  Don’t spend all your energy striving for food that is going to spoil.  Work for the food that sticks with you, the food that really lasts.”

“How do we do this work then?” they say.

“Only by this – by believing in the one whom God has sent.”

“Can you give us some proof like Moses?  He fed the people in the wilderness so they didn’t die.”

“Moses didn’t give them that bread,” Jesus says.  “That bread came from God.  My Father is offering you bread right now, real bread, real bread from heaven that gives real life to the world.”

They look at Jesus and say, “You got any of this bread?”

“The bread is me,” he replies.  “I am the bread of life.”

Jesus is the Bread of Life.  He is the bread from heaven.  He is the Way to God.  But the way up is the same as the way down.  The way we get to God is the same way that God gets to us.  And the way God gets to us is through Jesus’ death and resurrection.  That is the way that brings real life. 

It is life that comes to us in our baptism, practiced daily.  It is life that comes to us through this meal, received regularly.  It is life that comes to us through the Word made flesh who is Jesus.

He is not just a temporary end to our craving.  He is lasting satisfaction.  He is true freedom.  He is eternal life.