Trinity 9
What does famine look like and how does hunger feel?
I will never forget being invited by some of the well-off members of my congregation back in the Philippines, a very successful sailor captain in his mid-fifties. The garden was set-up for guests to enjoy the beautiful scenery of their home. While loud music of dancing and merriment filled the space, suddenly a young girl out of nowhere appeared at the side of the glass window, asking and begging for a bit of food from those who were from the inside. I was dumbfounded when so many people acted as if the poor family did not exist. This situation might be new for all of us here, but in many parts of the world this is a reality.
The search for food and things that satisfies hunger was very common even in Jesus’s time. People, then and now, search for him exponentially because he not only provides food that satisfies hunger but also, he provides food that satisfies spiritual desire. He said “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” This is the core to every spiritual act of worship. The seal of approval that is set by God to those who have faith in his Son.
In our gospel today, people search for physical food, but Jesus insists that what they need is Spiritual nourishment. They are focussed on bread that keeps them alive, but Jesus speaks of food that makes life worth living. Brothers and sisters, there is a famine and hunger in the land of plenty. What do we lack? How are we malnourished? Jesus spoke to the crowd of spiritual hunger and thirst. This is not the same as this famine apparent within and all around us. I think we are experiencing a famine of civility. I think we have scarcity of understanding so driven to insist on our perspective that we rarely hesitate long enough to hear one another. I think we often lack the nourishment of community in a culture increasingly obsessed with a go it alone mentality and certainly there is a famine of physical kind in our world. Too many people are forced to go without or have very limited access to the basic necessities in the world, where there is more than enough to go around.
Then there is that persistent hunger for meaning, more difficult to describe and yet I hear about it all the time. Something missing I can’t quite put my finger on it, something that lacks passion or purpose. A hunger to feel the presence and love of the divine - like the crowds that followed Jesus, they come to seek something deeper that satisfies their hunger. Yet we should understand this, that as we struggle to follow Jesus, our paths are redirected to the road that leads to peace, to the sustenance that satisfies the desperate in their seeking. The seeking ends with Jesus in the sign of his own life, in which Jesus himself offered as bread to the starving world.
We experience a different famine and different hunger in our lives. The Letter to the Ephesians reminds us to be “completely bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace”. We are also reminded that we should not journey alone in our faith. We have company, look at your side, those that sit next to you are your company. We journey together as we discover the beauty of God and his holiness when he said, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
Only Jesus stays with us Jesus from one end to another. From where we are in this world, Jesus offers us this bread of life from eternity and beyond this physical world. It is true that we cannot find peace in our hearts and mind in this world, yet so often we attempt to fill our hunger with earthly things. Earthly things will not fill the void of our spiritual hunger and reason for this is that earthly things do not last, while Jesus who is the bread of life lasts forever. He is the unperishable sustenance for our soul, the eternal food from heaven. This is the goal of our searching, and the place where all our hungers and desires are filled.
Amen.
