The Rev. Keri T. Aubert       

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont        

August 9, 2009 

Proper 14, Year B, RCL           

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

Psalm 130

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

I love bread. Almost any kind of bread. White, wheat, rye, sourdough, you name it. The Atkins diet was never for me. One bonus of being here at All Saints is its close proximity to Klinger’s Vermont Maple Walnut Oat Bread, Pecan Cranberry Bread, and Four Seed Sourdough Bread. In the global community in which we live, and as an American with money in my pocket, I have access to an international variety of breads, from Mexican tortillas to Indian naan to and Ethiopian injera. As an American with money in my pocket, I have access to more tortillas, naan, and injera than do many people in Mexico, India, and Ethiopia. I am fortunate in that I have never truly known hunger, and I have never even faced the fear of hunger. I can afford all the food I need, and then some.

This is a blessing not shared by a staggering proportion of the world’s population. According to the Christian organization Bread for the World: more than one billion people worldwide—that’s more than one in seven—are hungry; every day, almost 16,000 children die of hunger—that’s about one child every five seconds; and poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or to have disabilities.[i] Access to clean water is also a problem: nearly one billion people worldwide use unsafe drinking water sources.[ii]

Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” As human beings, our most essential and basic needs are for food and water. By satisfying our physical hunger and thirst, food and water make life possible. Jesus claims to also satisfy hunger and thirst, and thereby to make life possible. But what is the hunger and thirst that Jesus satisfies, and what is the life he promises? I think we can begin to answer those questions by first asking, What is the yearning at the core of our existence?

In today’s passage from John, Jesus goes on to make two claims: first, we have eternal life because we believe in Jesus; and second, we came to Jesus because God called us to do so. From this we might conclude that the hunger and thirst that Jesus satisfies is our yearning for eternal life. But I suspect that the quest for eternal life is really about eternal love, about our deep human desire to know that individual existence arcs not toward emptiness, but rather toward everlasting rest in an infinitely encompassing love. This is perhaps our most bottomless hunger and our most urgent thirst. And if it is a natural human desire, then it came with the package when God created us. In giving us this desire, God has called us to Jesus, who in turn guides us to God, with whom we ultimately find our everlasting rest.

God has called us to the banquet table over which Jesus presides, the only banquet table that can truly sustain us. But if we are sustained by communion, then we were commissioned at baptism. Most of us were baptized when we were too young to say no. Our families paraded us to the font, handed us to the priest, and gave us over to God. In baptism, every parent admits that the life of their child, the most precious item they will ever be given to care for, belongs not to them, but to Christ. In baptism, every parent admits that the thing they most want for their child—love, love, and more love—can come in its fullness not from them, but from God. And of course, when adults come forward for baptism, they are admitting these things as well. Whether we offer up our child or our selves, we accept our vulnerability and our limitations, and we acknowledge the deep hunger that resides inside us. We ask God to satisfy that hunger through Jesus, and we ask the Christian community to support us in our journey to know God’s love.

Jesus does give us hope that our individual existence arcs not toward emptiness, but rather toward everlasting rest in an infinitely encompassing love. It’s important for us to realize that such a love leaves no one behind. It does not leave us behind, and we must leave no one behind. We have the opportunity to move toward that love right now and in all that we do. Our journey is centered right here, in this Christian community. But this Christian community does not exist in isolation. It exists in relationship with this town, this county, this state, this country, and this globe.

When the words, “I am the bread of life” are spoken, some of the people who hear them are surely literally, physically hungry. As we spiritualize this claim, it’s important that we don’t dismiss the reality or importance of literal hunger. By using physical metaphors, Jesus honors physical reality. By using physical metaphors, Jesus gathers those who suffer and joins them to the spiritual communion he shares with God. In short, Jesus’ words remind us of our responsibility to care for those who suffer. Lest we be discouraged by the size of the job, we might remember something Mother Teresa said: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.”[iii]

We consume the bread that is the body of Christ at this communion table every Sunday. Jesus is our sustenance, but we are not to take that sustenance for granted. Because the old adage that “you are what you eat” is absolutely true, scientists studying our evolutionary ancestors learn about their diets by analyzing the carbon isotopes in their teeth.[iv] I like to imagine the atoms that are in our communion bread roaming around our bodies and taking up residence in our eyes, our hands, our brains, our hearts. In consuming the body of Christ we become the body of Christ. Because everything we have belongs to God, we might go so far as to say that all the bread we eat is the body of Christ. White, wheat, rye, and sourdough. I hope we eat heartily and love boldly.