Readings
Exodus 16:2-4,9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
My mom was a great cook. She was from Virginia, and she excelled at all of those wonderful southern dishes that taste so good, even if they aren’t the healthiest of choices. She wasn’t afraid to use fat, or salt, or sugar if it improved the flavor. I loved my mother’s cooking.
As I grew older I made a conscious choice to eat in a more healthy way, but there were a few dishes that my mom would make that I could never resist. One of them was her barbecue baked beans. Oh my, were they delicious. Sweet and tangy, with a strong taste of smoked bacon.
When my mom died I was bereft in so many ways. As you know, when someone of significance dies there is a hole left in your life that never quite gets filled. Even so, in the years that followed, I discovered something that helped ease the ache and fill the void.
You see, about six months before she died, I got my mom to give up the secret to her baked beans. In fact, I got her to teach me how to make them. Now simply being able to make her beans was a gift in itself. Even now, when I eat them I am transported back to my times with her and have a sense of her presence.
But the secret I discovered, came when I began to share my mom’s beans with others. At almost every barbecue or appropriate potluck I went to, I began to take my mom’s beans. And when people raved about them and asked me about how I made them, I would tell them about my mom. I wouldn’t just share the food; I would share a little bit of her too. In doing so I would be reminded of her and of the love that we shared for one another.
Today, in the Gospel, we pick up the story right after the feeding of the 5000 from last week. Jesus is, once again, followed by the crowds who are looking for him to feed them again. But Jesus chides them saying “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” What follows next is a debate that really is an attempt to trap Jesus into doing his feeding miracle again, but Jesus responds by saying that the real bread that gives life to the world comes from God and that ultimately he is the real bread.
So, what’s going on in this story? Well, it is about hunger. The first and most obvious hunger was physical. The crowds were fed to their fill and the next day they went looking for their next meal. But there’s another kind of hunger at work in this story, what we might refer to as existential hunger. The people were following Jesus looking for more, they were looking for the transcendent; they were looking for a way to make sense out of the world they lived in; and, more intimately, they were looking for a sense of meaning and purpose for their own lives.
Jesus first fed their physical hunger. Then he offered them the opportunity for their existential hunger to be fed. He used their obsession with his miraculous abilities to usher them into a deeper conversation. By shifting the focus to God as the source of the bread they received, he invited them to imagine a different kind of nourishment. He began to make explicit that the existential hunger they were feeling could be met as well; and, that he was the path to the transcendent; he was the path to making sense out of the world; he was the path to meaning and purpose.
We often interpret the final line of this Gospel passage as some sort of revelation of Jesus’ divine identity. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and who ever believes in me will never be thirsty.” When taken literally there are a number of ways of interpreting it, but none of them are particularly helpful in day to day living.
But you know what? Jesus most often spoke in parables and metaphors. Perhaps this is such a time. If so, another way of looking at his final declaration is that it is an invitation into his way of living and thinking. It’s a call to make an act of radical solidarity with Jesus and his worldview.
Taken in this way, today’s Gospel, is an invitation for us to imagine the world in a different way. It’s an opportunity to enter into the world of abundance that last week’s story expressed so well.
But if it is an invitation to be like Jesus, to live as he lived and act as he acted, then we like the crowds that followed him can’t be satisfied with a spirituality divorced from the realities of this life.
We are being called to be people of compassion to those in need, doing more than simply charity but actively transforming the lives of the needy, the homeless, and the uncared for.
We are being called to be people of justice who work for a world in which the basic dignity of every human being is restored and forgiveness trumps retribution.
We are being called to be people of peace who seek to repair the breaches between both individuals and communities, and work to eliminate the individual and systemic causes of those breaches.
Our response to this call need not be gargantuan or miraculous. Like the story of me sharing something of my mom through her baked beans, it can take expression in small ways that are nonetheless transformative. What is required is a willingness to respond to the call.
If we respond to that call, then perhaps we will find the transcendent. Perhaps we will find a way to make sense out of the world. Perhaps we will find meaning and purpose for our lives. Perhaps, just perhaps, we will be fed by the bread of life again and again.