From Our Archives

Debie Thomas, Deep Hungers (2021); Debie Thomas, Bread of Heaven (2018).

This Week's Essay

Pink Floyd: "Encumbered forever by desire and ambition, // There's a hunger still unsatisfied." (High Hopes)

The gospel of John this week about Jesus the Bread of Life always reminds me of the provocative question that Isaiah asked 2,800 years ago: "Why do you spend money on what is not bread, / and your labor on what does not satisfy?"

Do not work for literal food that perishes, says Jesus in John 6:27. The 5,000 people who ate the miraculous bread earlier in chapter 6, with an abundance left over, were hungry again by morning. Rather, seek the spiritual food — true food, bread from heaven, bread of life, the bread of God, living bread, and what he calls real food — that he alone can give, and which will nourish us to eternal life. Psalm 78 for this week calls the manna from heaven "the bread of angels." In a mysterious paradox that scandalized his listeners, Jesus says that this spiritual food comes to us in his literal body.

And yet Isaiah's question persists. Misguided attempts to fulfill legitimate human desires seem to be our perennial temptation. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal is probably the source of the idea that we all have a "God-shaped vacuum" that only the Divine can fill. He compared our disordered desires to an abyss that we fill with all sorts of substitutes.

David sends for Bathsheba, the Maciejowski Bible, c. 1250.

"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in us a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This we try in vain to fill with everything around us, seeking in things that are not there the help we cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself." (Pensees, 148/428).

Consider 2 Samuel 11 and Psalm 51 for this week about king David, a famous story about sexual obsession. After Israel anointed David as king, he crushed his enemies and conquered Jerusalem. He renovated the city and renamed it after himself. He built elaborate public memorials in his own honor, and constructed a palace for himself. He forged political treaties and economic agreements with Hiram, king of Tyre.

He took more and more concubines for himself. He took more and more wives, and fathered more and more children. David had at least eight wives and ten concubines. The Bible lists at least twenty-one sons by name, and one daughter, Tamar, who was raped by her half-brother Amnon. 1 Chronicles 3:9 suggests that he had even more unnamed children by his concubines.

When all that wasn't enough he took one more woman, Bathsheba, and murdered her husband Uriah. More and more was never enough to satisfy David's appetites and impulses. Given that ancient peoples often divinized their kings and sanitized their faults, it makes you wonder why the narrator included this unsavory story. In the parallel version in 1 Chronicles 20, the author omits David's adultery. 

Or consider a favorite scene from my all-time favorite novel, Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace. About half of the novel takes place at the Enfield Tennis Academy, an expensive boarding school where kids hone their skills in the hopes of making it to The Show — the professional circuit.  At the ETA, accepting a mere tennis scholarship to college is an admission of failure.

One of the kids, LaMont Chu, develops an obsession with tennis fame at the tender age of 14. He imagines pictures of himself in tennis magazines, television announcers analyzing his stroke in hushed tones, and corporations paying him to wear their logos. He's so obsessed that he can't eat, sleep, or even pee. His performance is suffering. Ambition is eating him alive, and so he goes to Lyle, the ETA guru.

LaMont admits his rabid ambition to Lyle. He's ashamed of his hunger for hype. He feels lost and lonely.

Lyle is the perfect listener: "the supplicant feels both nakedly revealed and sheltered, somehow, from all possible judgment." Lyle never condescends, but he also never candy coats the truth.

"Trust me," he tells LaMont, "the pros whom you envy do not feel what you burn for. They are trapped, just as you are."

David and Bathsheba, the Maciejowski Bible, c. 1250.

"Is this supposed to be good news?" asks LaMont. "This is awful news."

"LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true? The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You burn with hunger for food that does not exist."

"This is good news?"

"It is the truth."

"The burning doesn't go away?"

"What fire dies when you feed it?"

"Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn't make me feel very much better at all?"

"LaMont, you suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of the oldest lies in the world. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage."

"So I'm stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There's no way out."

"You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage."

All of us have a deep hunger and thirst for the divine, says the Psalmist (63:1), a palpable longing for nourishment that no amount of power or money, no prestigious job, nor any gorgeous home in an upscale neighborhood can satisfy. My anxieties won't disappear by winning the lottery. A new lover will not bring true love. An insatiable craving, a psychic abyss, unsatisfied desire and desires, something like the deep longing for a far away land — all these point to and find fulfillment in God alone, despite our many failed experiments with all sorts of substitutes. Money, sex, war, fame, and power are only a few of the ways that we try to fulfill the deepest desires of human nature.            

In John's gospel Jesus describes himself with seven "I am" sayings. These sound like intentional literary allusions to Yahweh himself, who reveals himself to Moses as "I am" (Exodus 3:14, John 8:58). The reading this week about the bread of life is the first of these seven sayings. He also compares himself to light in darkness (8:12), a gate or door to a safe pasture (10:9), a good shepherd who sacrifices himself for his sheep (10:11), the resurrection and the life who conquers death (11:25), the way, the truth and the life (14:6), and the true vine who fulfills Israel's destiny (15:1, Isaiah 5). 

Jesus further compared himself to "living water" that quenches our parched souls (John 4). He satisfies our deepest hungers: "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." (6:35). The ancient Hebrews ate miraculous manna from heaven in the desert (Exodus 16), says Jesus, but they nevertheless died. Jesus, in contrast, says that "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If a man eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (6:51).

Nathan rebukes David, the Maciejowski Bible, c. 1250.

Whether you read this as a sacramental story about a physical presence of Christ in the eucharist, like Catholic and Orthodox believers, or as a figure of speech like the other "I am" sayings, per Protestants, the ultimate meaning is the same — the real presence of Jesus nourishes our deepest needs like nothing else can.

If this sounds scandalous to our modern ears, we can console ourselves that it scandalized the original audience two thousand years ago. "Does this offend you?" asked Jesus. There seem to be at least three layers to this question. The Jews "argued sharply among themselves" about comparing himself to God; wasn't he just the son of Joseph, "whose father and mother we know? How can he say such things?"

Then, as this story takes place in the synagogue in Capernaum, conscientious Jews understandably took offense at the repulsive idea of "eating flesh and drinking blood," which was strictly prohibited. There's little doubt that this passage, and the eucharistic practices of early Christians, led to the scurrilous charges that they practiced ritual cannibalism. These charges sound crazy, but they were common enough that some second century writers felt constrained to refute them. 

Third, and perhaps most revealing, even some of his own disciples questioned Jesus's claim as a "hard saying." Who can accept this, they protested? From that time on, "many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him."

I began with Isaiah's provocative question. I close with his invitation: "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live."

Weekly Prayer

Augustine's Confessions

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee....Turn us, O God of Hosts, show us Thy countenance, and we shall be whole. For wherever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it is riveted upon sorrows, even though it is riveted upon things beautiful.”

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net 

Image credits: (1) Hyperallergic.com; (2) Pinimg.com; and (3) PhotoBucket.com.