John 6:35, 47-51a
I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad lately and remembering so many things about him that I had forgotten. One of the things that I’ve thought about was the tender care that he gave to my mom over the course of the five years of her cancer before she passed away. He took her to many of her appointments and treatments. He planned trips to visit relatives and took her on her greatest dream vacation to see the Grand Canyon. He did all that he could to make her comfortable and happy, from buying the cable package that included every channel available, so that she wouldn’t get bored having to stay home so much of the time, to cooking multiple meals at night until she finally found one that tasted good. The chemo drugs interfered with her sense of taste, and she sometimes had a craving for something, but when she took the first bite it wouldn’t taste right, and she couldn’t eat it.
I remember one period of time when all my mom wanted to eat was watermelon. It was the only thing that tasted good to her. The only problem was, it wasn’t the season for watermelon in South Carolina. So my dad went from grocery store to grocery store, buying up watermelon where he could. And when the grocery stores no longer carried it, he discovered that the buffet at the Quincy’s steak house had watermelon. So he would pay the full price for the buffet – about $10 at that time – and fill the entire container with watermelon! Love expresses itself in so many ways.
We all know what it’s like to crave a certain food. Maybe it’s a restaurant’s house specialty or our grandmother’s devil’s food cake. Maybe it’s a particular fast food. Or a brand of barbecue sauce or a local shop’s ice cream. I crave Southern barbecue and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. But whatever it is, we’re not really satisfied with anything else.
I want to suggest that just like we have cravings for food for our bodies, we also have cravings for food for our souls, for spiritual food. And those cravings can be just as specific sometimes as the cravings we have for physical food. And those cravings can be satisfied only by the bread of heaven, our Savior Jesus Christ.
We need spiritual nourishment, spiritual food. It is as necessary to a healthy life as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When we don’t get fed spiritually, our spirits dry up and we become hollow shells inside. We find that we don’t have spiritual energy or strength to get us through the ups and downs of life. We feel that we are losing our connection to God through the Holy Spirit. We become stagnant and stale in our faith and in our discipleship. And when we look deep within, we know what it is that we need. We feel it in our spirits and even in our bodies. We know what we are hungry for.
I know that for me, right now, what I am hungry for, what I am craving in my soul, is comfort. I am grieving for my dad and for several other losses that I experienced this spring. My heart is filled with sadness and there are broken places in me that need to be made whole again. The only one who can do that is Jesus. Through him I will feel the comforting love of God, who is also my Father. The empty places can be filled, but not by me and not by my partner and not by anyone or anything else in this world, only by God’s love and compassion.
Maybe there are some of you who are hungry for peace. Our country is so torn apart right now by anger and polarization and fear. Even our own families are divided politically and otherwise. We don’t know how to have conversations with our own parents or children or siblings without getting into arguments. And so there is no meaningful conversation at all. We need someone to bring peace, harmony, healing, unity of the spirit. We can disagree, but we don’t have to be disagreeable. We need to relearn the art of diversity within unity, tolerance and acceptance of one another. We need the Prince of Peace for that to occur. We need to feed our souls with peace.
And there may be others whose souls are longing for forgiveness. There may be something that you have done or left undone that has become a barrier between you and God. You have left it unconfessed and unrepented of, and so it has festered. Or perhaps you have confessed and left it with God but have not been able to forgive yourself. You think that it is something so wrong or so bad that it is unforgivable. But the grace of God is big enough to encompass whatever it is that has left a blot on your conscience. If you have acknowledged it, turned away from it, and asked God to forgive you, then you can let it go and move on. God has forgiven you, and it is time that you forgave yourself. Feed on God’s grace and mercy.
Is anyone here hungry for wisdom? Sometimes life is so complicated, and we don’t know what to do, how to decide, whom to trust for advice. But we have the option of prayer available to us. We can pray for wisdom and the God who created the entire universe is listening. The God who gave Solomon wisdom can and does offer his wisdom to us when we ask. Jesus – the mind of Christ – will feed us, will nourish us, as we study the gospels and as we grow in our own understanding of what it means to follow him. So feed on the wisdom of God in Jesus.
Perhaps there are people whose souls are longing for a sense of safety. There are events that go on in our world and in our nation that can make us feel insecure and afraid. We wonder what things will be like in a year or in five years or ten years. Others think about whether they will be secure financially in their retirement. And still others are afraid because of their health issues and aren’t sure how they will handle things going forward. Jesus will care for all of you, will gather you into his arms and reassure you. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” We don’t need to worry about the future; we know who holds the future and we know that he will be there in the future with us. Whatever may come our way, we will not be alone. Jesus feeds us with the promise of his presence.
And what about those whose spirits long for courage? I believe that Jesus feeds us with boldness. There are times when followers of Jesus are called on to take a stand for what is right. And Jesus promised his disciples that when the time came for them to speak, they should not worry because the Holy Spirit would guide them as to what they would say. There are many serious problems in our country, issues of social justice, poverty, addiction, homelessness, gun violence, and food insecurity. It isn’t enough to just put band-aids on the problem; we’ve got to address the root causes. And simply making it illegal for a homeless person to sleep on the streets of a city does not make the problem of homelessness go away. For Christians to speak up and demand something better from our elected leaders requires courage and boldness. Jesus will feed us with that courage.
I know that Jesus is the bread of life, the bread that feeds my soul. Whatever my soul longs for, Jesus can fill that need. But only if I ask; only if I go to him. And I also know that Jesus is the bread of life in the sense of giving me eternal life. A part of the comfort that is feeding my soul right now is the knowledge that my dad is in heaven and has found that eternal life now. He lived and believed in Christ and did his best to follow in the way of Jesus, and the fact that he rests with Jesus now is the greatest source of comfort that I have. We all can be fed with the hope of eternal life through Christ, who is indeed the bread of life, the bread of heaven that feeds us till we want no more.
