For What Do We Hunger?

In his week's Gospel we are given another slice, if you like, of the bread of life.

In fact for 5 weeks in a row we have slowly sliced our way through John 6. It began with the feeding of the 5000 followed by John's meditation on the life and mission of Jesus. In the process John used the metaphor of 'Bread', and in my recent Blogs we have been exploring the implications of Jesus being the 'Bread of Life'.

However – there is yet more! There are three more slices from the same loaf¹ waiting for us to sample as we continue our way through the readings set for August!

The repetition of bread as a metaphor of Jesus' life and ministry certainly raises interesting and contemporary questions – For example: 'What personal metaphor would we choose to describe our life's purpose?– What difference do our gifts and the vision for our life make in our life and the life of the wider community in which we live?

While you may spend time pondering those questions – I also came across a number of metaphors for Bread

• Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

• Louis Bromfield, American novelist (1896-1956) “Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.” 

• Sarah Josepha Hale, 'The Good Housekeeper' (1839): “Among those kinds of food which the good housekeeper should scrupulously banish from her table, is that of hot leavened bread....I believe it more often lays the foundation of diseases of the stomach, than any other kind of nourishment, used among us.” ( Maybe Bread has it's dark side as well!)

• And finally, The New World campaign featured a real estate agent who uses smell of fresh bread to sell a house

These brief comments remind us of the power and significance bread has even when used as a metaphor. Perhaps one reason for this is because people have used and relied on bread for more than fifty centuries and 'Every morning the world wakes up hungry' ² which is a reminder that to know the story of Bread also means to know also something of our world and its history and its ongoing progress. We find a very similar thing happening when we widen our focus and include the significance the bread when it is used as a metaphor as Jesus did:

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, 

and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

When Jesus used bread as a metaphor, he was quoting an ancient reference that has it roots in the early Jewish writings (or Midrash). For example:

• In the Jewish story of Moses, he is recorded as being given Manna (a miraculous edible substance that fell from heaven each day and sustained the Hebrew ancestors physically and also renewed their faith in God's presence and guidance during their slow 40 year journey through the wilderness.

• In the Jewish story of Elijah, when he needed renew hope and vision to continue his life of faith, he also received food (or Manna) from heaven to sustain him on his journey to meet with God.

• In a similar way, when composing his Gospel, John poetically used the historic Hebrew concept of Manna – which would be freely understood by his contemporary Jewish readers – to symbolized Jesus, as being “the living bread”– or “the bread of life” – sent by God from heaven – which we also need to receive so that our hope might be renewed and our faith be sustained through the struggles and disappointments we face in our life.

In his book 'How to Believe Again' , Helmut Thielicke (the Professor of Theology at Hamberg University), gave these answers when questioned on “What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?”

• When Jesus first called his disciples – there were no 4 Spiritual Laws the Disciples had to first memorize – Jesus simply invited them to “Come and learn from me” and in that way they began a shared life together.

• Or when a person came to Jesus with a genuine need, Jesus had no catechism of right answers they had to learn before he would listen to them or speak to them– because while their need may have helped them to start their journey of faith, in the end it was the person of Jesus that fulfilled their hunger – or as St Augustine of Hipo said many centuries later :

“We would not be able to seek God if God had not already found us”.

Surely that simple statement summarizes the whole message of the Jewish-Christian Faith!

Kia mau te rongo me te pai ki a koe i to haerenga

May you find peace and goodwill on your journey.

Phil

1John Chapter 4

2Barker, E.L., 1911, The story of bread, International Harvester Company, Chicago. http://dx.doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.25970