ONE (John 6:24-35 / Eph 4: 1-16)
I made gazpacho soup this week. Tuesday morning, I went down to the outdoor Farmer’s Market at our Community Food Bank here in Tucson. That’s where one of our companeros, Melissa, does what she is called now to do. At the market, I bought tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, red and green peppers, and an onion, each one a unique flavor & each one necessary to create the desired outcome for my soup.
I spent several hours that night preparing the soup using one of those infomercial hand-operated vegetable slicer/crusher things. Now I realize I could have made the soup much faster and easier with an electric something-or-other, but I wanted to do justice to my vegetables and let each one play its part in the mix.
First, I chopped a few peppers, then I added some cucumbers, next the garlic. I tasted it, then chopped and mixed another pepper and some tomatoes. As each ingredient was added, I could see the progression of the soup and smell it throughout the house, all the different vegetables maturing into one wholly new thing, this summer soup.
As I mentioned, I spent several hours making the soup, so by the time we sat down to eat it, both Liz and I were starving. Yet that soup was worth every second of the wait. It had gone from a variety of vegetables, grown in different gardens and picked by different hands, slowly prepared into a wonderful supper. And when we ate it, it didn’t take much to fill us up.
Eating is an unusual necessity when you think about it. We make so much of how we prepare our food, when we have the time and the resources to do so. But for those without time and resources, the price is what might help make the decision on what’s for lunch. And still, for others, there is no choice to the food they eat at all. Tucson’s homeless can get free meals almost every day of the week, but it’s first come, first serve, and there is not choice on what’s for dinner. You take it as it comes.
So for that crowd in Capernaum, they took the loaves and the fish, and it says, they even eat their fill. But one meal is never enough to satisfy human hunger. This crowd we read about this morning, the one that went to Capernaum looking for Jesus was hungry again.
Hunger is a unique sensation, unlike other physical pains. Hunger builds, slowly effecting the body in an almost unrecognizable way, until at some point, it becomes truly painful, and yet, at the same time, leaves the person a sense that there is a hole right in the middle of the belly. The feeling like something is missing. It can be a dull ache, but left unattended, that dull ache can spread slowly across every function of the body. Hunger slows us down, dulls our senses, makes us think less clearly.
However, many of us in this modern age rushing around, skipping meals here and there, we promise to eat after do just one more thing. But then, because we’re already hungry to begin with, our minds aren’t working at full capacity so we forget we promised ourselves we would eat. And that untreated hunger worsens!
Our already-dulled senses prevents us from recognizing all that is happening around us, all the opportunities. Our thinking is not only less clear, we start jumping to conclusions. We start assuming… and we all know what kind of trouble we can get into when we start to assume! But still, without food, there’s that ache, that growing sense of emptiness. That hole (use hands to symbolize a hole, make a circle) in center of who we are.
Fed once by Jesus’ miracle, for a time that hole was filled for people in that crowd. But no one can survive upon one meal alone! So the crowd asked Jesus for more, not with words of respect and awe, praise on their lips, but like beggars, like immature children.
So when Jesus answered them, it is not only to awaken their senses to the fact that they missed his miraculous deed by feeding them so much from so little, but it is also to show them his love. He tells them there is so much more that he has to offer them than simply a bit of bread. And it’s not through trickery or deceitful scheming that Christ offers this satisfaction when he tells the people, “do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
But like any of us, they ask “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you going to perform?” With Jesus making such a grand statement, the people want to see him perform a show, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that his claim is true. They can’t just trust that this man is offering the gift of eternal life, and how “whoever comes to Jesus will never be hungry, and whoever believes in Jesus will never be thirsty.” His claim is not good enough. Belief in this idea is not strong enough. They ask him for proof.
They were fed through the power of the Holy Father, the One God of Israel. And what they were given for nourishment, what they were offered, brothers and sisters, was a meal of wholeness. The Bread of Life: the incarnation of the Word. They were given Christ! But because hunger still weighed upon them, many there were too dull to see it. Their ears were too cotton to hear it. Their thoughts were too focused upon their net meal to see the milagro standing before them! Jesus only said “come” and “believe,” but for many it didn’t connect.
Belief is a unique sensation, unlike other psychological states of mind. Especially when we are talking about believing in Christianity. Take the name of this church for example, Trinity Presbyterian Church: The name of our church pretty much sums up our theological viewpoint. We are a democratically-structured, community of faithful believers in a Triune God, a God of three forms. That is what we believe. That is complicated. We believe there is a God who exists outside of everything, because God made everything. And we believe Jesus is God incarnate, God in human form, with human pain and hunger. And then we even believe God is the Holy Spirit who exists in a very fluid way, within and throughout our lives. Three parts to one God.
So Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, explains to his brothers and sisters in the faith about this One God. He describes things for us like this. He hopes we can go through life, collecting humility, and gentleness, with patience. He throws in the suggestion that we bear with one another in love, making the effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Each of us, he explains, is called to something, given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gifts, an apostle, some prophets, some butchers, some bakers, come candlestick makers, each one offering her or his unique flavor & each one necessary to create the desired outcome for the Kingdom of God.
God has spent several billion-gazillion years preparing the Kingdom using “wisdom and understanding.” God could have made the Kingdom much faster and easier “through trickery or deceitful scheming,” but God has chosen to do justice to our gift of free will and let each one of us play our part in the mix for that “time when all things reach fulfillment.”
Humanity is starving for something that will fill that hole, and Jesus offers it to us. The church is our chance to help build up the body of Christ, one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one Faith & one baptism, until all of us come to the unity of faith, and the knowledge of the Son of Man. As we learn to pray, and to confess our need for the Bread of Life, and as we begin sharing the Word of Life, the Scriptures, and as we offer our thanksgiving, we will mature into that knowledge that Jesus is offering us. While we were yet hungry, the One God who is above all and though all and in all was preparing for us the table. When we eat from the Lord’s table, each part of our body, each part of our church body, is reenergized so that it may work property, that food helping to promote “the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”
There is a popular song that speaks to this learning. It’s about filling that hungry hole together, with each other – the lyrics go like so:
“One love, one blood, one life; You got to do what you should. One life with each other, Sisters, Brothers, One life. One life, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other. Carry each other. ONE LIFE. One.” (U2, 1992)
Speaking the truth in love, Jesus said to the crowd, “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” To this, we think we should say “Give us this bread always,” Amen!
