Ephesians 6.10-20 / John 6.56-69
Today’s Gospel reading is rather complex and it has at its heart the theme of eating and drinking – the core sustenance of life.
It’s a theme that always causes much amusement in our household as both my children have what I would call a substantial food memory… “Do you remember”, I’ll ask, “when we went to that lovely place in Dorset called Corfe Castle? Where we met up with friends for the day and there was a festival?” Confused silence. “You know”, I’ll say, “the fabulous ruined castle we explored that was all very Enid Blyton and Famous Five.” The confused silence continues and then eventually one of them will say, “wait a minute – was that where we had that amazing lemon drizzle cake? I remember now! And the tea room made fabulous hot chocolate with lots of cream on top!”
Some people have family photo albums of their adventures in life. We seem to have a mental food map of the United Kingdom!
Laying our particular family quirks aside, food is so very much part of the landscape for all of us. We hold special meals to celebrate particular occasions – Christmas day wouldn’t somehow be complete without the traditional Christmas dinner; there is always cake on a birthday; meals with family and friends for anniversaries, weddings, reunions; picnics in the summer holidays. After this act of worship we’ll meet over refreshments in the Galilee Chapel, coffee and biscuits drawing us together in conversation one with another.
And it was no different in Jesus’ time – food was central to gatherings, to marking feast days, to demonstrating hospitality and welcome, to spending time together in fellowship around the table. Read the Gospels and you’ll find yourself bumping into a meal time and time again.
And so it is perhaps unsurprising to find Jesus talking about food in today’s Gospel reading - about the earthly bread which sustains life and nourishes us. Those gathering to listen would have found themselves nodding along in recognition.
But then Jesus began to talk about food in another way – he spoke of ‘heavenly bread’ in contrast to that which we consume on earth, and then he went even further and told of how those who would eat his flesh and blood would abide in him.
At this point the crowd recoiled with shock and we’re told that many were offended. The imagery was all too much. It didn’t have the easy Eucharistic resonance that we would associate it with today.
And the crowd in their confusion missed the key question that Jesus was asking. A question that is just as important to grapple with now as it was all those years ago.
The question was simply ‘What do you hunger for?’
And the answer had little to do with food in the way we usually think about it.
This was not a question about earthly sustenance, but about what nourishes and feeds the soul and gives us life.
There will be many responses to this. And you may be thinking already about that which nourishes you. It may be family and friends, a few quiet moments in the late summer sun with a good book and a glass of something nice; it may be a particular hobby or interest that you adore spending time on; it may be your work or a volunteering role you embrace.
And all of those responses would be correct.
And yet, and yet, Jesus is inviting those around him then and now to notice their need to be nourished and fed by God himself. For there, he says, is life in all its fullness and by not being attentive to that gift we are all somehow diminished.
Thomas Aquinas, one of the great theologians of the early church, put it rather wonderfully when he wrote “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you”.
Jesus was inviting those around him to notice their hunger for God and to respond to it.
To respond to it by being attentive to God in the silence, allowing ourselves to be renewed as we rest in his presence. To respond to it by bringing to God the deepest joys and sorrows of our hearts, being real before him, warts and all. To respond to it by meeting God in one another, in Word, in bread and wine. To allow God to truly nourish us, feed us, dwell in us.
For it is when we do so that God abides in us and we in him – and we learn to see the world through the eyes of the creator and not our own.
We learn to share the diving longing for peace, for reconciliation, for justice. We learn what it means to be sent to embody the love and hope of Christ. We learn what being a disciple, a pilgrim, is really all about.
And it begins with hunger. A hunger for God.
Today we are invited to be attentive to that hunger, to open our hearts and lives to the nourishment of God, and see where the joy of abundant life may take us.