So after the Christmas Eve service, I
came home and I was pretty tired. It had been a long day – a great day, but a
long day. I was tired and I was hungry. I polished off some cookies and milk
that I saw sitting out…there was some note next to them but I just ignored
that. The next day, Christmas day, Holly cooked up a beautiful turkey with all
the trimmings. We had a huge meal. That night I ate a giant plate of the
leftovers. The next day we had a Christmas to go to and I ate some more. This
went on and on until the end of December, at which point it was time to
celebrate New Years and I ate even more.
New Years day I finally stopped gorging myself, and I thought, “You
know, I haven’t been hungry since Christmas Eve.” And I’ve got to be honest, it
wasn’t until about the middle of this week until I got an appetite back, when I
was finally hungry again. Every time it came to a meal time and someone would
say, “What do you want to eat?” I could have honestly said, “Nothing. I’m still
going off what I ate over Christmas.”
But you know in this country there are
very few of us who can honestly say that we know what true hunger really is. We
only think we know what it means to be hungry. I’ve said it before, our bodies
are spoiled brats. When 6 pm rolls around, your stomach starts telling you it
wants fed, whether it needs it or not. I’ll never forget as a teenager I took a
trip to
And we don’t. And we should be
thankful that we don’t. Because being hungry is terrible. What we call hunger
is really just an inconvenience. Real hunger is dangerous. Real hunger kills.
Real hunger causes people to do some crazy things to try to get food. People
steal. They dive through garbage cans and dumpsters. They eat things that, if
given the choice, they would never put in their mouths otherwise. And wherever
there is food they flock to it and they are willing to injure others just to
get their hands on a little bit of food. Have you ever seen when the
I want you to imagine a scene like
that as we look back at chapter 6 in the book of John, which was read for us
earlier. There is an enormous crowd of people following Jesus. He’s next to the
Like I said, hungry people do crazy
things, and they decided that since Jesus was able to produce food for them,
they would take him by force and make him the king over the land so that they
would always have food. Instead, Jesus withdrew, and he and his disciples went
across the sea to
And Jesus said, “You didn’t come
looking for me because you wanted me to teach you, but because I gave you food
and you want some more. Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food
that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
Jesus has kind of begun this metaphor.
When you are hungry, what does it feel like? You have this deep emptiness in
the pit of your stomach, right? It’s empty. And you have a one-track mind: fill
the stomach. Eat something. Do whatever it takes to make this empty feeling go
away. And that’s when you start doing the crazy things if you have to, like
digging through the trash or stealing or hurting others just to get to some
food.
Wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it
solve a lot of the world’s problems, if there was a food that you could eat
that would make it so that you are never hungry again? You are permanently
full, permanently fulfilled. That empty feeling in your stomach never returns.
You don’t have to do anything crazy to get food. You don’t even have to work
for it. You just eat it the one time and you are full forever. Now, for those
of us who live in a nation that eats for pleasure, maybe we don’t think that’s
so great. But the crowd that Jesus was speaking to, and the majority of the
world’s population, would think that’s a wonderful thing.
So Jesus says, “You know, that bread I
gave you was fine enough, but look, the next day you are hungry again. You
should be searching for the bread that keeps you full forever. Wouldn’t that be
wonderful? It’s the bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to
the world!” And the crowd loves that idea! They say, “Sir, give us this bread
always! Bring it on! That’s what we want!”
And Jesus says to them, “I AM…the
bread of life. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be
hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Now obviously Jesus was no longer
talking about their physical hunger. He was saying, “Look, I can meet your
physical hunger, but you are working so hard on that, and after you eat you
just get hungry again. But I know you are hungering in more ways than one. I
know the empty feeling in your stomach isn’t the only hunger that you have. You
have an empty place…here (heart). I am the bread of life that can fill that
hunger, and if you come to me, you’ll never have that hunger again.”
I think we’ve all experienced that
kind of hunger; that spiritual, emotional hunger. That feeling of emptiness
inside. Have you been there? Felt like something is just missing inside? Just
like we hunger down here for food, we all have that place in our hearts where
we can get hungry, that place that needs filled with…something.
And we try to fill it with all sorts
of stuff, we’ll do anything to make that feeling go away. Just like people will
eat out of dumpsters and steal food and hurt others to make that pain of hunger
go away in their stomachs, people will do crazy things to try to make that
empty feeling here (heart) go away. We do crazy things. People get involved
with drugs or alcohol, because for a brief moment, that pain seems to stop, or
at least you don’t notice it as much. We try to fill that void with
relationships, and we do unhealthy things to stay in those relationships
because sometimes that person seems to fill, or at least make you forget about
that hole in your life. We buy stuff, all sorts of crazy things bigger cars and
toys. There’s nothing inherently wrong with stuff like that, things you buy,
but if you are buying them to fill your heart’s hunger, it just won’t work. All
of those things might make you forget about the hunger you have inside for a
while, they may even fill you for a while, but they are temporary things. And
in the end your heart is hungry again, even hungrier than before. The pain
comes back stronger. And so we do more dumb stuff, more crazy stuff and take it
to extremes trying to fill that hunger in our hearts. It’s like our bodies are
panicking, right? Just like people panic when they are so hungry or so thirsty
they are on the verge of death, you can be so spiritually hungry that you start
to panic and do things that no normal person would do, but you are willing to
do whatever it takes to fill that void in your life, even if it is something
that is eventually destructive to your physical being.
And all the while Jesus is standing by
with a soft, calm voice saying, “I AM…the bread of life. I am the only one who
can fill that hunger in your heart. And if you come to me, you’ll never be
hungry again.” Now…calling himself “The Bread of Life” would have rang pretty
true with that particular crowd. But I’m not sure we get the whole picture of
what Jesus was trying to say about himself by calling him “The Bread of Life.”
Let me put it in terms that I think we can understand a little bit better:
Jesus is the Thanksgiving Dinner of life. Jesus is smorgasbord of life. Jesus
is the all-you-can-eat buffet of life. He doesn’t just make it so you aren’t
spiritually hungry anymore. He fills you up to the top. He stuffs you to the
point you can’t eat anymore. When Jesus fills you up, if your heart had a belt,
you’d have to loosen it a few notches. OK? Do you get the picture? Jesus wants
to stuff your heart! To the point that you will never EVER hunger again!
You know, people ask all the time,
“What makes Christians different from other people?” Or they say, “He has
something, and I want it to. What does he have that makes him so different? So
happy and joyful?” The answer is pretty simple: Christians are different
because they are stuffed. They’re full! They have been spiritually filled by
Christ. Think about it, it makes perfect sense. When you are hungry, physically
hungry, you need to eat something…do you get a little bit on edge? Are you a
little crabby? Sure! That natural. Think about your family get togethers. All
the fights happen before the meal, right? Because everyone is hungry! Everyone
is grouchy. After you eat, everybody is happy and sleeping on the couch and
life is good. It’s a pretty basic rule of life: people who are full have a
tendency to be happier than people who are hungry.
And it works the same way with your
heart, with your spiritual life. People who have been spiritually filled have a
tendency to be happier than people who are spiritually hungry.
I mean, this makes sense, right? I’m
not longer out doing crazy things trying to fill that void in my life, because
I’m happy, I’m full. Christ has come in and stuffed my heart to overflowing. So
why in the world would anyone not do this? Why would anyone ignore this offer?
This food that will fill your heart and you’ll never be hungry again?
You know, I don’t know, maybe people
like having control over their lives so much that they just aren’t willing to
give it up. Maybe they see Christians and think, “Yeah, it seems like a good
deal. But then I lose control over my life. I lose control over what I use to
fill that void in my life. I like that control too much.” That’s like someone
offering to feed you for free every day and keep you full, but you say, “Yeah,
but I don’t know what you are going to feed me. What if I don’t like it? What
if it doesn’t taste good? I’d rather just stick with the dumpster I’ve been
getting my food from, because at least then I control what I eat and I know
what it will taste like. It won’t be good, but at least I control it and I know
how it tastes.”
Is that it? Is that what people are
thinking? “I know alcohol won’t fill me inside, but at least I can forget about
how empty I feel for a while. I don’t know what living for Jesus is like. It
seems good, but what if I don’t like it?” Or, “I know this relationship I’m in
is unhealthy. I know he beats me. I know it’s dangerous. But every now and then
it’s not so bad, and at least the pain I feel with him is something. If I go to
Jesus, I’ll have to give him up. And what if I don’t like what it’s like to
follow Christ? Then I’ll be all alone. No, I’ll just stay where I am. It’s not
good, but at least I control it. I don’t know what it’s like to follow Jesus, I
don’t know if I’ll like it.”
I don’t know, is that the thinking out
there? Is that why people stick with lives that are so unfulfilling and
downright painful? I mean, people recognize that Christians are generally happy
people. We’re not perfect, and our lives get messed up, too, but that void in
our lives is gone. People see that there is something different, a good
different, right? That Christ has made us full. Is that the argument out there:
“I don’t know if I’ll like it. I don’t know. What if I give up control…and it
isn’t good?”
If that is your thinking today…if
you’re thinking, “I’m just not sure…it seems good enough, but I just don’t
know…” I want you to hear this verse. This is from Psalm 34 verse 8, and it
says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge
in him.” Taste and see that the Lord is good. Just try it. I promise you, life
with Christ tastes good. And what’s better, it fills you up.
Jesus is the bread of life, the bread
that fills you and you are never hungry again. As we come to the part in our
service where we participate in communion together, I invite you to taste and
see that the Lord is good. If you have never made that decision, if you are
still trying to fill that void in your life with other stuff, I invite you to
try the bread of life. Try Jesus. Taste and see that he is good. Just say to
him, “Jesus, I’m tired of trying to fill my life with things that don’t fill me
up. I want you to fill my life. I want you to come in and sustain me. I want
you to be my God and my savior.”
If you have already made that
decision, as we take communion together and as you take the bread, say a
special thank you to the one who has sustained your life, the one who has
filled you to overflowing. Remember the one who, on the night before his death…
Holy
Communion
We’re
going to do something slightly different today as we take communion. You’ll
notice in your bulletin the words for our last hymn are written out. They are to
the tune of the doxology and we are going to sing as we participate in
communion. Sally is going to play it through for us, and then we will sing, and
we’ll just repeat it like that, with her playing the verse and then us singing
the verse until everyone has gone through. Let’s sing with reverence and
worship in the name of the bread of life who has filled our hearts to
overflowing.
Van Buren United
Pastor Dan Metzger