Exodus 16.2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78.23-29; John 6.24-35
+ Have you
seen those wonderful Snickers commercials from a couple of years ago? You know
the ones. One of my favorites is the one in we see Betty White playing football
with a bunch of young guys. At one point, poor Betty gets tackled. One of the guys
then comes up to Betty, and says, “Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out
there.” A young woman—Mike’s girlfriend, we presume— then comes over to Betty and gives her a
Snickers bar. She eats it and magically she turns back into—Mike. We then see
Abe Vigoda gets tackled.
I love that commercial! Actually my favorite one is the one with
Aretha Franklin and Liza Minella in which the punch line is, “Jeff, every times
you get hungry you turn into a diva.”
Been there, been that. Let me tell you.
Those commercials and that line
could very well have been used on some of the people in our scriptures readings
for today. Certainly today, we get some
complaining in our scripture readings.
In our reading from the Hebrew
Scriptures—from Exodus—we find the Israelites, in their hunger, complaining and
grumbling. In some translations, we find
the word “murmuring.” Over and over
again in the Exodus story they seem to complain and grumble and murmur. To be
fair, complaining and grumbling would be expected from people who are hungry.
But in their hunger, God provides
for them. God provides them this
mysterious manna—this strange bread from heaven. Nobody’s real clear what this
mysterious manna actually was. It’s
often described as flakes, or a dew-like substance. But it was miraculous.
Now, in our
Gospel, we find the same story of the Israelites and their hunger, but it has
been turned around entirely. As our
Liturgy of the Word for today begins with hunger and all the complaining and
murmuring and grumbling and craving that goes along with it, it ends with
fulfillment. We find that the hungers
now are the hungers and the cravings of our souls, of our hearts.
Now, this kind of spiritual hunger
is just as real and just as all-encompassing as physical hunger. It, like physical hunger, can gnaw at us. When
we are spiritually hungry we also are not “us.” We too crave after
spiritual fulfillment. We mumble and
complain and murmur when we are spiritually unfulfilled. We too feel that gaping emptiness within us
when we hunger from a place that no physical food or drink can quench. In a sense, we too are like the Israelites,
wandering about in our own wilderness—our own spiritual wilderness.
Most of us know what is like to be
out there—in that spiritual wasteland—grumbling and complaining, hungry, shaking
our fists at the skies and at God. We,
like them, cry and complain and lament. We
feel sorry for ourselves and for the predicaments we’re in. And we, like
them, say to ourselves and to God, “If only I hadn’t followed God out here—if
only I had stayed put or followed the easier route, I wouldn’t be here.”
We’ve all
been in that place. We’ve all been in
that desert, to that place we thought God had led us.
I know that in my case, I went so
self-assuredly. I went certain that this
was what God wanted for me. I was sure I
had read all the signs. I had listened
to that subtle voice of the Spirit within me. I had gauged my calling from God through the
discernment of others. And then,
suddenly, there I was. What began as a
concentrated stepping forward, had become an aimless wandering. And, in that
moment, I found myself questioning everything—I questioned myself, I questioned
the others who discerned my journey, I questioned the Spirit who I was so
certain spoke within me. And, in that
emptiness, in that frustration, I questioned God.
And guess what I did then? I turned
into Betty White. Actually I turned into Maria Callas. The Diva. I complained. And I lamented.
Lamenting is
a word that seems kind of outdated for most of us. We think of lamenting being some overly
dramatic complaining. Which is exactly
what it is. It was what we do when we
feel things like desolation.
Like hunger, few of us, again I
hope, have felt utter desolation. But when we do, we know, there is no real reason
to despair.
As followers of Jesus, we will find
our strength and consolation in the midst of that spiritual wilderness. We know that manna will come to us in that
spiritual desert. And that manna, for us, is the Eucharist. The Eucharist sustains us and holds us up
during those desolate times. All we have
to do, when we can’t seem to do anything else, is partake of the Eucharist. And when we do, we know that God’s presence in
this “bread of God” will be there for us.
This Bread
we share and the wine we drink is the very “bread of God.” This is what
Eucharist is all about. This is why the Eucharist is so important to us.
I have been recently downsizing a
bit at the Rectory. I have way too many books and, every so often, I have to
sort them out. This past week, as I was
going through my books, I came across a book I bought years ago and never read.
It was Jesus Wants to Save Christians
by Rob Bell.
Now, I love Rob Bell. So, I don’t know
why I never read this book. I think, for some reason, I just didn’t like the
title. But I was pleasantly surprised when
I started reading through the book, that it is about the Eucharist. And there was a wonderful passage Bell
shares. He posts several difficult questions, any one of which we have no doubt
asked at some point in our journey.
“Where was God when I tested positive?
Where was God when I was suffering?
Where was God when I lost my job?
Where was God when I was hungry?
Where was God when I was alone?”
“The Eucharist,” Bell says, “is the answer
to the questions.”
Where was God? God was right here.
Right here, with us. And continues to be. No longer can we accuse God of being distant. Because,
God has come to us. God came to us in
Jesus. And continues to come to us in this meal. Again and again.
Here, we truly do eat the Bread of
angels. Here, we do partake of the grain
of heaven. This is our manna in our
spiritual wilderness. In this Eucharist,
at this altar, we find God, present to us in just exactly the way we need God to
present to us.
In our hunger, God feeds us.
In our grumbling and complaining, God
quiets us. After all, when we are eating and drinking, we can’t complain and
grumble.
And unlike the food we eat day by
day, the food we eat at this altar will not perish.
When we are
hungry, we not really “us.” But in this meal—in this Eucharist—we truly do
become us. The real us. The us we are
meant to be.
In this Eucharist, in the Presence
of Jesus we find in this bread and this wine, we find that our grumbling and
murmuring and complaining have been silenced with that quiet but sure statement
that comes to us from that Presence we encounter here:
“I am the
bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and
whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
In the echo
of that statement, we are silenced. Our
grumbling spiritual stomachs are silenced. Our spiritual loneliness is vanquished. Our cravings are fulfilled. In the wake of those powerful words, we find
our emptiness fulfilled. We find the
strength to make our way out of the wilderness to the promised land Jesus
proclaims to us.
“I am the
bread of life,” he says to us.
This is the bread of life, here at
this altar. And, in turn, we become the bread of life to others because we
embody the One whom we follow.
“Whoever
comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty.”
So, let us
come to the bread of life Let the One we
encounter in this Bread and wine take from us our gnawing hunger and our
craving thirst. And when he does, he
will have given us what we have been truly craving all along.
Amen.
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