The Bread of Life
Dear Friends,
Those of you who were in church last Sunday heard Dorothy preach a wonderful sermon on Jesus’ abundant feeding of the 5,000 as told in the Gospel of John. In our passage for this Sunday, our gospel writer continues the “Bread of Life” discourse with another image of Jesus’ abundant provision. Rather than turn a couple more fish and loaves into one more feast for the masses, he talks about his own being as bread: bread of God, bread of heaven, bread of life.
In the aftermath of last week’s spectacular feeding, we learn that the crowd hunts Jesus down, as if looking for seconds. When they catch up with him, Jesus tells them they are looking for him “not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes,” he cautions them, “but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
Jesus is clear in calling them to discern the difference between what fills the belly and what fills the soul. At the same time, he understands the ways that the hungers of the body and the hungers of the soul intertwine, and how both are at play when it comes to food. Over and over in the gospels, when Jesus wants to convey the essence of who he really is, he turns to food--to the gifts of the earth. Wheat. Bread. Wine. In his hands, food is more than food; it is an enduring symbol of, and gift from, the one who offers his very being to meet our deepest hunger and our keenest thirst. Yet it is food, nonetheless.
In 1943, the famed food writer M.F.K. Fisher wrote about how the body and soul, and the feeding of them, are bound together in her book The Gastronomical Me. When asked why she published a book about food she responded,
“The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it…and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied…and it is all one.”
As you reflect upon the relationship between your own hungers of body and soul, here are some questions I invite you to consider in the weeks ahead:
What are you hungry for these days? What does your relationship with food have to say about your relationship with God - and vice versa? Are there meals that hold memories of connection and communion? Do you have habits of eating, or not eating, that reveal a soul-hunger that needs God’s healing?
Whatever your answers may be, I pray that you let the Bread of Life, who knew the pleasures of the table, feed you well.
In Christ,
Amelie+
