Ephesians 3.14-21, John 6.1-15
The Eighth Sunday after Trinity, 25 July 2021, Austwick, Keasden
He has given us so much - that we want him to give us more.
They couldn’t get enough of Jesus. The crowds who constantly pursued him, hanging on his every word, watching his every move, craving his attention, wanting to be close to him, be fed by him. Like fans surrounding an Olympic sports star outside a Tokyo hotel, the Galilean crowds hemmed Jesus in. He taught them, and they wanted more. He healed them, and they wanted more. He had no time to himself, even to eat, and they wouldn’t leave him be. Jesus tried to escape them to recuperate. They kept on looking for him until they found him again.
That’s what we, the masses, do: we convey greatness on those who stand out from the crowd, and then follow them everywhere for a taste of, and a share in, their greatness. Crowds crave to turn gifted or original people into heroes, put otherwise ordinary people onto pedestals, whether they’re sportsmen and women, or show-business icons, or political or religious figureheads: that’s an undercurrent of so many of today’s news stories around our Olympic athletes. Our craving for them is insatiable: Tom Daley, Adam Peaty, Laura Kenny, Dina Asher-Smith: they have given us so much - that we want them to give us more.
We know that Jesus 'was moved with pity’ for the crowds ‘because they were as sheep without a shepherd’, [2] and they just couldn't get enough of him; they had an unlimited appetite for Jesus; they were addicted. He’d started as their teacher, then became their healer; they began to call him a prophet, and now, after eating their fill of the miraculous loaves and fishes, they wanted even more from him: they wanted to make him their king. This endless urge of unrequited desire is an aspect of human nature which theologian Gil Bailie calls a ‘famished craving’. [3]
The famished craving describes that urge within our societies to be always craving something new. It describes our desire for the attention of others, and what they can give us, a hunger which is always unfulfilled.
The Galilean crowds desired to make Jesus a king, this figure who fascinated them for a while. Like celebrities, kings are really sacrificial victims with a suspended sentence, ones who fascinate us for a time, until our famished craving devours them. Those we elevate we eventually turn our backs on. Poor old Mo Farah - we elevated him to a knight of the realm and now we’ve relegated him to the twilight zone of reality TV show appearances. And similarly, the Galilean crowd who had earlier wanted to make Jesus a king, rejected him at Calvary, chanting Barabbas’ name instead. [4]
At those moments when our country is in the grip of an Olympic obsession, or a Wimbledon obsession, or a Gareth Southgate or a Prince William obsession - is that a famished craving? Or our current urgent drive to get back out into the shops, to crowd together into restaurants and theatres and concert halls - is that a famished craving? Or the booming desire for more novelty in our diet, spurring-on an ever-expanding global market in food, an underlying cause of the rise in viral catastrophes and pandemics - might we call that a famished craving? Our addiction to social media and our smartphones - is that a famished craving? Or the astonishing boom in production and sales of every kind of consumer item over the past four decades, exponentially higher than ever before, at the very same time we have known more clearly than ever how our rapacity is destroying the planet - is this the ultimate famished craving of all?
Our hunger for others to feed us, physically and emotionally, is insatiable. We have received so much - that we want to have more … and more … and more…
The pleasure in such things is intense, but fleeting; and in this pandemic, and in this end-time of global overheating, we’re more aware than ever of the added physical risks posed by our unbounded appetites. And yet how quickly we will turn on our leaders and on each other when we come up against the finite limits of our ability to fulfil our, and each others, desires.
But - in this world of famished cravings, notice how the compassionate Jesus doesn’t give the crowds what they want or think they need: he refuses to feed into and off their obsession with him. Rather, he simply sees that they are hungry and feeds them loaves and fish. With a little boy’s help he shares a gift to release these masses from their world of craving - and to invite them to simply trust in his provision instead. The miracle of course - the ridiculous overspilling of food he produces for them - shows just how superabundant his provision is.
In a finite world where our cravings will never stop famishing us, Jesus invites us to receive instead of his abundance - where there is no limit at all on how much our compassionate God can do for us. Some Christians have understood this and lived joyful celebratory lives craving nothing in this world except, in the words of Paul to the Ephesians, ‘to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, [to] be filled with all the fullness of God.’
One of the happiest, most fulfilled people I’ve ever known was a Franciscan brother who I used to visit at his communal home just off the teeming Whitechapel Road in east London, a townhouse which was a haven of peace and contentment. In his tiny room Bernard’s worldly possessions amounted to little more than a change of clothes, a couple of books and some writing materials. And yet he craved nothing else, for he had learned to trust alone in God’s abundance, and to receive from it every day.
Now the ascetic lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but we can each make Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians our own: that setting aside our famished cravings we may find health and healing by looking to God hour by hour - so that ‘we may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are rooted and grounded in love’. In today’s parlance, this is about cultivating good mental health, spiritual well-being.
Paul’s prayer speaks explicitly to us, today’s crowds with all our famished cravings. He announces the good news of Jesus’ world of abundance. His prayer is ‘that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’
May we make this our prayer for ourselves, to learn to leave that world of restless craving behind and to focus all our desires on God, who provides for us profusely. So that we can join in Paul’s wonderful affirmation:
[That] to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Notes
[1] This is a rewrite of The famished craving: He has given us so much - that we want him to give us more, preached in Somerset in 2015, which was in turn based on John 6: The famished craving, a sermon I first preached at the time of the 2012 London Olympics.
[2] Mark 6.34
[3] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 13B, especially the section referencing Gil Bailie's audio tape series, ‘The Famished Craving: The Attention of Others, the Fascination for the Famous, and the Need for Faith’. Bailie draws on a line in T.S. Eliot's poem Gerontion, ‘And what [History] gives, gives with such supple confusions / That the giving famishes the craving….’
[4] Nuechterlein on Bailie, op. cit.
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