Hunger

Will you pray with me? May the words of my heart and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our rock and our redeemer ?

Have you ever had an experience like this? You are standing in front of the refrigerator, looking for something to eat, wanting to find some goody which will make you feel better for a minute or two, and tide you over until the next meal? I have, many times.  I rummage through shelves, finding lettuce or carrots, mustard and jelly,  maybe some sliced cheese or cold cuts, nothing very appealing. Then I say to myself there is nothing really to good to eat, but still feel restless and find myself a few minutes later, back there, looking again.

Or, perhaps you can relate to another type of  experience in which you have a desire for a certain food and only that food will do. What runs through my mind at that point is, “ I want it I need it I have to have it.”  For me it is a certain brand of ice cream, just melted enough to be creamy and no one else around so I don’t have to share.

Neither of these experiences are really hunger. The first is a kind of aimless desire and the second is craving, but neither of these really touches on the stomach hunger that so many in our country and our world experience.

But if you have had one or another of these experiences, you know that often the motivation for that rummaging, looking for something good to eat or driving to the supermarket for that one food you do crave, both of these may in fact reflect a kind of inner hunger, which food only covers up but does not feed.

This inner hunger—for meaning, for community, for understanding, for love, does not find fulfillment through any of the ways we try to dull it. For although I have used food as my example of the substances we use to change our mood or our minds, we can substitute our substance of choice—beverages, mindless use of the computer, gambling, shopping, whatever hides the real feelings and allow us to muffle the deeper needs which we might despair of having fulfilled; inner hungers which linger long and long to be met and nourished and filled.

When Jesus meets the crowds, he finds them hungry for real food. They have been out following him and its lunchtime and the stomach grumbling has begun. He meets them where they are and responds to their needs. This story is so powerful that it is remembered by all the evangelists and is then transferred from community to community in the early church. Why? Perhaps because it evoked an eternal human need for food and nourishment.

It is a powerful story not only of the multiplication of the loaves of bread meeting physical needs but of the multiplication of meaning.  Jesus’ followers listened to  him because he answered their most important questions:   Does God love us ?  Are we important in God’s eyes even if we are poor people in a field, hungry for our next meal? Are we welcome in the realm of God? And they found their answers in the life and death and everlasting love of Christ: the answer was yes. God does love us, we are important in God’s eyes and we are welcome in the realm of God, no matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey.

 Jesus is telling us that God will nourish us more fully than we might hope. As much as we need bread, we do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And Jesus continues, “I am the bread of life, those who come to me shall not hunger.”

And so we can ask ourselves: What are we really hungry for? What is really most important in our lives? As we let ourselves ask these questions, as individuals and as a community, we learn through this story that our deepest hungers will be met and we will find the kind of nourishment that feeds our souls and hearts and minds. No one can take away from us.

And, as we are fed, by God’s love, we also begin to hear the call to feed others. Just as it is right and true that spiritual hunger is a permanent need of the human family, so is physical hunger. Most of us, blessedly, do not know the long term hunger of those who live only on food stamps or the WIC program or rely on soup kitchens for sustenance, although many of us may come from lineages of people who did know hunger. Hunger motivated many peoples to come to this country, from the time of the Pilgrims onward. And certainly in today’s world when we know that billions subsist on less than a dollar a day, we become aware that hunger is an ever present driver of human activity and drain on human flourishing.

As Christians we cannot be content to feed only the spirit, but also feed the body. Our incarnational faith understands the connections of body and soul and pays attention to both.

And through the virtuous circle of receiving and giving, our faith helps us to give to others. Faced with the enormity of human hungers it is very easy to get discouraged, and to turn away.    We need our faith to encourage and empower us. If not, we risk feeling burned out and then to say there is nothing that will really work so why bother? With faith and through community, we find ways to meet human needs knowing that we are called to do our part and not become overwhelmed. Because we know that others join with us, and we can be glad that God is using all of us and multiplying our efforts for the feeding of the world. By the way, this is exactly the sentiment expressed by Nick Appleby in today’s prelude, words written by him: “We can lift up the world when we know we stand together. Open our heart to all we can do.”

As our spiritual hungers are met, so too are we more inclined to give to others, to meet them in their need and to find enough bread in our basket so that we will turn to our neighbor and share –like the little boy who shared his lunch ,and found that bread of life, which feeds the body and the soul.

So at those moments, when we find ourselves hankering for something, to fill a craving, to respond to a vague restlessness, may we remember that true nourishment is spiritual and that our faith in God will feed us to fullness. And as we find ourselves fed, may we too feed others, in a graceful multiplication which brings life and love to our world.  Amen