The Hunger Is the Food

JOHN 6:24-35

²⁴So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

²⁵When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" ²⁶Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal." ²⁸Then they said to him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" ²⁹Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." ³⁰So they said to him, "What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? ³¹Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" ³²Then Jesus said to 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. ³³For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." ³⁴They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."

³⁵Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

This passage brings out my inner snark. I’ll never  be hungry Jesus? Oh really? Really?  What are you going to do, Jesus, put in some spiritual feeding tube through my nose so I’ll always be full of your sweetness and light and inner contentedness? I just give my life to you, whatever that means, and suddenly I’ll never have those Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream binge nights or a sudden need for General Tso’s Chicken or the amazing pad thai from Smiling Banana Leaf on Bryant street in Highland Park? Suddenly I start channelling Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers in one of their “Really” skits. Really, Jesus? Oh Really?

‘Cause let me tell you something, Jesus. I’m hungry all. the. time. No. Not just when I’m pregnant, or hormonal or weepy after binge watching episodes of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

And not just for sweet cherries and grass-fed beef hamburgers or spicy shrimp tempura sushi. Hungry for all of it. For more time, and laughter and confidence and faith and hours at the park with my kids. I want more. More Decemberist concerts and more 50 minute hours with my therapist. More books and vacations and waves and sleepless nights with an infant and even more two-year old toddler assertions of independence. I’m hungry for more ministry and justice and equality and towns where people don’t get killed at traffic stops. 

I’m starving for more peace and more time and more trust that God is real. I’m hungry, Jesus. And in my 36 years of searching for you, you haven’t kept up your side of the bargain. You said I’d never be hungry again, and all I feel is hunger.

What gives? 

On a day when I really didn’t think I could believe in God for one more minute, I asked Dan, my husband and biblical-scholar-in-residence this question: “To what extent can we be sure that Jesus lived, that he loved people, that he believed in God, and that he changed the world?”  And Dan said, “well, with about as much certainty as we can believe anything that happened in ancient history.”

The Gospel of John loves to yank us around with metaphors that explain the signs and those signs that point to the truths which point to the koans which lead to the feedings that land us with more hunger. It’s my kinda gospel.

Once you think you’ve got a bubble of truth settled gently in your hand, it pops. Once you think you’ve pinned it down, it slides out from underneath your thumb. Once you feed five thousand people, they come back, hungry all over again.

I don’t think there’s an answer here. 

All I know is that there have been times in my life when I wasn’t hungry. When I didn’t want any more. When I was done. When pad thai tasted like sand and children’s laughter sounded like radio static. There was only disgust. No more sun or clouds or breeze or fascinating episodes of RadioLab. There was a time when I needed to be force fed more life through an emotional feeding tube and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. 

I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant when he said I’d never be hungry again.

There’s this comic that a friend showed me that I really get a kick out of. It’s a picture of what it would look like if Jesus tried to feed the five thousand today. He’s standing on a hill, holding out the bread and the fish, offering it to the crowd. And then dialogue bubbles hover over the crowd’s heads that say, “I can’t eat that, I’m vegan.” And “Do you have a gluten free option?” And “Has that fish been tested for mercury?” 

My son has this scheme he tries to pull right at bedtime. Suddenly, he’s starving. He’s so hungry. So we say, “Ok. If you’re really hungry, you can have some carrots.” “No!” he says. “I want crackers. I want fruit snacks. I want Ninja Turtle cherry blast yogurt in a tube.”

And we tell him he can have carrots. And then he gives up and goes to bed —because he wasn’t really hungry in the first place - or maybe just too stubborn to acknowledge his real hunger.

I think we’ve all lost our hunger. And because of that, we refuse to be fed. We refuse to acknowledge what we really need — Even when Jesus is standing right in front of us, offering to us with outstretched arms, the things that we are really hungry for.

I want Ben and Jerry’s and wonder bread and warm glazed donuts right before bed, but what I really need are carrots. What I really need is to be made hungry for those carrots. For that bread. For those  fish. 

What I really need is to hunger for Jesus. 

In my work at The Table, our community meal we serve twice a week at Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community, I usually start the evening with a real love for people. I make the coffee just the way they like it. I use gloves to wrap the silverware in an attempt to keep them healthy. I stop to ask how folks are doing and to check up on their cats and their landlords and their tendonitis. 

I start the night saying to myself, “I love people. I’m doing what Jesus asks me to do. And I’m loving people with their Jesusy faces and their adorable humanness.” But usually, by the end of the night, I’ve been brought to the brink of my patience, I’ve been heartbroken by the stories of hepatitis C and pregnant drug overdoses and how Lita is excited because she sleeps in the fort at the playground where she used to play as a child because that keeps the rats away, and how Edward’s crippling mental illness forces him to be medicated beyond oblivion, and when I’ve tried to break up another fight between two guys with PTSD. All I can say is, “I love Jesus.” That’s all I’ve got. That’s all that’s left of my idealism and my delusions of Mother Teresa-ness. 
I leave The Table broken, annoyed, discouraged, but hungry, with a renewed love for Jesus.

Is that what Jesus means? You’re not going to be hungry again because you’re going to be hungry for me. It is one of those Zen Koans, isn’t it?

If you hunger for me, then you’ll feed people and forgive yourself and march in that protest and believe in something greater than yourself and your despair. If you hunger for me, that hunger will feed you.

Simone Weil said, “The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”

Believe in the bread, or don’t believe in the bread. Believe in God, or don’t. To us puny humans and our fickleness and our pain and need, I really don’t think it matters. 

It’s the hunger that feeds you. The hunger is the food.

‘Cause when you stop hungering, that’s when you’re in trouble. That’s when you need medical attention and some support from Western Psych. That’s when you stuff yourself full of white pasta and bad tv and pain pills and the belief that if I just get one more raise, if I just make it until my kids get to college, if I just finally get that house or that vacation or that one person to finally love me the way I deserve to be loved, and then I’ll start loving Jesus,  and then I’ll be full, and then I won’t be hungry anymore. 

But with about as much certainty as we can know that Julius Caesar was assassinated, that Virgil wrote the Aeneid, and that there was a man named Socrates, we are fed with this: Jesus lived, he loved people, he believed in God. He changed the world. 

We know just enough to be hungry for more.  

Maybe I don’t have enough faith to believe in God. But I know I’m hungry for more Jesus. And Jesus believes for me. I’m hungry for more Jesus. And I want that to be enough. 

The hunger is the food.

If the crowd had been satisfied with the Jesus they’d gotten out there in the wilderness in the form of a bread and fish lunch, they wouldn’t have crossed that lake, they wouldn’t have tracked him down. They’d have gone home. They’d go back to their shepherding and farming and handcrafting and American Ninja Warrior and had a great story about that one time they forgot their lunch and someone shared theirs with them. 

But that’s not what happens. They hunt Jesus down. They want more Jesus. They’re hungry for more Jesus. It’s when they say, “Sir, give us this bread always” that they’re truly fed. When they hunger, that’s when the feeding begins. 

And it’s that hunger for Jesus that truly feeds us. It’s the fleshy, glutenous, messy, sticky life of Jesus that truly feeds us. The hunger is the food.

Let’s be filled with the hunger for more Christ. 

Sir. Give us this bread always.

The 1%

JOHN 6:1-15

¹After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. ²A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. ⁵When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" ⁶He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." ⁸One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, ⁹"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" ¹⁰Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. ¹¹Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. ¹²When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." ¹³So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. ¹⁴When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

¹⁵When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

I am a failed atheist.
I really think this is true. 
I have tried and tried to not believe in God.
It’d be so much easier for me if God just didn’t exist. No more thankless, less-than-minimum wage job. No more existential crisis. No more questions of theodicy. No more parsing out the trinity or the afterlife or slavery or the Holocaust.

On any given day, I can sit alone in my car at the bottom of the driveway and recite all the ways that I can’t believe in God. And certainly not in a God who is loving, personal, approachable.

I mean, can there be a God when John Stewart is retiring from The Daily Show and America’s Next Top Model is still on the air? When 80s fashion is coming back with the bedazzling and the tight rolling and the big hair? When McDonald’s has started selling kale salads? When pizza counts as a vegetable in our public schools?

How can there be a God when guns still get in to movie theaters? When beloved comedians turn out to be misogynists and sexual predators? 
Where’s God when children in Syria are being abducted and beheaded? When corporations are “people”? When you can get caught driving while black and then end up hanging in a jail cell?

We are so small. The galaxies are so big. The earth is this tiny blue marble swirling with pain and violence and car accidents. It’s full of brokenness and fear and drone strikes. It’s full of climate change and Walmarts and AK-47s.

If we’re keeping score, I’d say I’m 99% atheist.

There, I said it. Don’t tell the presbytery.

But 99% of me can’t imagine a God who loves, who creates, who lets there be depression, and hepatitis C, and methadone babies, and Donald Trump presidential campaigns.

This 99% can be so overwhelming. It covers everything. This godlessness is the very air we breathe. It’s the nitrogen and the oxygen of our atmosphere. Except. Except that pesky, persistent 1%. 1% of argon and carbon dioxide and those “other gasses.” That tiny speck of lint wandering the universe, hoping, searching, for God. 

It’s my tiny toe of faith that keeps me tripped up, stubbed, that pesky hang nail of an annoyance that, no matter how small or trivial, I can’t seem to ignore. 

I’ve got two small fish and five loaves of faith, and thousands of mouths to feed.

So. There’s this huge crowd following Jesus everywhere he goes. It’s full of poor, needy, weak, hacking and coughing, body-fluid-leaking, limping, DNA spewing people. They’ve heard that this Jesus guy can fix them, can make all this all better. And they want a piece of that.

And Jesus is up on the mountain with his friends, trying to get a little space to breathe, a little perspective, a moment with his friends. And he looks down at the crowds in the valley. He knows what they want. But then he tells the disciples to go give them what they need. They want a quick fix, an easy cure, a winning lottery ticket, a free pass, a cruise to the Bahamas, a new marriage and polite kids. 

But Jesus wants them to have what they need - something to eat, something that takes time to digest, to nourish them to their very cells.

And Philip, thinking just like the crowd, thinking only in terms of fixes, and “enough,” and economies, says, “we’d never have enough money even if we used six months’ wages to even give them a little, to even offer them 1% of what they need.”

“Well, there is this boy,” Andrew says, “He’s brought his lunch. But that’s it. That’s all we’ve got. I don’t even know why I mentioned him.”

But I wonder what made Andrew mention the boy? Why mention to Jesus that there is this little boy with two fish and five loaves of bread? Was there 1% of faith deep in his marrow - so deep he didn’t even know what he was saying? 

And he quickly backtracks on his 1% of faith. “But what are these loaves and fish among so many people?” What’s the point of this measly 1%? 

“Someone else feed them,” Philip says. 

But I think Jesus wants to pull out the 1% hidden deep inside of the disciples. To get them to see that that a tiny toenail of faith is there. “Go to the town and buy some bread.” he tells them. Maybe "testing" isn't the right word here. Maybe he's helping them see what he knows is already there. 

There are crowds and crowds and they’ve been waiting and listening and aching for some attention. And now they’re hungry. They’ve come to be cured, to be fixed and healed and fed and they won’t give in until they’re satisfied. They want Jesus. They want what he has to give them. The mob is getting hungry and the disciples are getting nervous, and before they plow him down to touch the hem of his garment and to hear him say the words that they have been healed, they need to eat.  And Jesus says to his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” You do it. What have you got?

Nothing. We’ve got nothing, they say. 

“But there’s this boy.” But that’s pretty much nothing. 

“Nothing but about 1% of what we need,” they say.

1% of the fish.

1% of the bread.

1% of  what we need to feed this whole crowd.

“There’s this boy who’s got a tiny bit. I don’t know why we mentioned him, but that’s all we’ve got. It’s so little. So very little. It’s not nearly enough. It’s almost nothing among such a crowd. Among such doubt. Among such hopelessness and fear and despair. Why even bother? It’s so much nothing.”

It’s just 1%

And what does Jesus say? Does he say, “buck up, believe harder, and more fish and bread will appear”? Does he say, “you’re right, that’s not enough, let’s go home and eat our tv dinners and  sit alone and watch America’s Next Top Model”? 

Nope. He says, “Have them sit down.” 

And they sat down. They didn’t go fishing or plucking for grain. They didn’t raid the marketplace and hoard all the fish and bread for themselves. They didn’t flaunt how they came to the mountain prepared with their sack lunches. They didn’t show off or tell the crowd that if they just believed more, harder, just 2%, 3%, 25% more, then they, too, would get lunch.

No. They sat down. 

And Jesus makes the 1% enough. Somehow. The 1% was enough. More than enough. 

Gather up the fragments so that nothing may be lost. So that nothing may be lost. Even the fragments of 1% are important. Are vital. The tiny leftovers of the 1% are still more than enough.

Every morsel counts. Every percent. Every half a percent. Every tiny speck of dust of faith in the galaxy. Even your tiny speck. They gathered up the fragments and they filled the galaxy.

But like a speck of dust that mixes with gas and explodes into star, the 1% of fish, of bread, of faith, is only great if you let it go. 1% is only enough if you don’t hoard it in your freezer and heat it in single servings in your microwave while you watch Wheel of Fortune. 1% is only enough if you don’t tie it down and call it king.

And that’s what the crowd does with their 1%. They hoard it. Then they chase after more. They want more - not more of Jesus, not really - but just more of what Jesus can do for them. They want more miracle cures and magic lotions and low interest rates and cheap clothes made in Singapore and a king who will fix it all for them. They’ve filled their bellies and then insisted that what they’ve received isn’t enough. They’ve bought the lie that 1% isn’t enough.

When we tie it down, that 1% of faith or hope or love or Jesus, when we tie it down and try to make it what it’s not - a religion, a dogma, a set of rules, a code of conduct, a way to vote, a line that is drawn, a community of ins and outs, then it will definitely look as though Jesus has withdrawn again to a mountain by himself. 

But 1% is enough if we let Jesus be big enough to make it so. It’s Jesus’ faith in us that saves us. Not a measuring tape or a graduated cylinder or a tire gauge to measure how much faith we have in Jesus. 

Here ya go, Jesus. Five loaves. Two fish. That’s all I’ve got. And I know it’s nowhere near enough.

But for Jesus, 1% is enough. It’s enough. If we let it go. If we let it breathe. If we let it expand into the atmosphere. 1% is enough, unless we try to hogtie it into something that it’s not. 

But even when it feels like Jesus has withdrawn again to a mountain by himself, even when it feels empty and alone and like the 99% of this world has plowed us under, somewhere, there is a little boy with five loaves and two fish, waiting for Jesus to make it more.

Oh, please Jesus, let it be so. Jesus, feed us.

Thanks be to God.