Ephesians 4.1-16, John 6.24-35
Tenth Sunday after Trinity, 5 August 2018
Eldroth, Keasden
Sometimes we just can’t get enough of wanting a thing and then when we get it - we find we don’t want it any more.
You know the feeling - when for ages you’ve been obsessing about getting yourself something that you’ve seen other people have, that you’re convinced you really really need - whether that's a book or a bottle of wine, or a new variety of hair restorer, or of hair remover, or a car or a pet rabbit… whatever, there’s always that odd moment, often just a short time after the card reader has pinged your transaction at the till, or the package arrives in the post, that odd moment when, holding that item in your hands, you feel deflated - as you realise that what you’ve just got you don’t want any more because you’ve seen someone with something else that looks better. And so it goes on.
This driven desire to shop for that one item which will satisfy us - and having purchased that, to find ourselves hungry all of a sudden to shop for something else: there’s a phrase to describe this relentless hunger: it is ‘a famished craving’.
It’s not just about objects either - it can be about people. Consider our celebrity obsession. There’s that drivenness which crowds have to look for the next celebrity, to celebrate them, to elevate them, to consecrate them, and then, after a while to grow bored with them, to drop them, and move on to another.
One summer our country is in the grip of an Olympic obsession, and the next it’s a World Cup. A Welshman we never heard of before wins the Tour de France and suddenly we’re all flying the dragon. Who's next? A prince marries a actress, which makes her a princess, but that’s always where the fairytale ends and the trouble begins for a woman suddenly in the full glare of the public eye. Our relentless hunger for celebrity, our ‘famished craving’ for role models who might save us - it’s part of who we are. [1]
Then there is our own insatiable hunger to be fed, physically and emotionally, by gaining the attention of others. Those close to us who we rely on to help us feel fulfilled, those who we unhealthily depend on to do things for us, and who we then find ourselves asking to do even more. Or those who we keep doing things for in an endless cycle of hoping that will get us noticed and loved. Why else are we constantly checking our smartphones for messages, why else do we love getting ‘likes’ on Facebook, followers on Twitter, why else would we feel a frisson of delight when that famous playwright returns our greetings at the Street Fair? [2]
And so we find the crowds following Jesus wavering between being impressed with Jesus and getting bored, craving a new sign. They’d seen him heal the sick; but that wasn’t enough. They were among the five thousand he fed, in an astonishing miracle, but still they wanted more. They revelled in reports of him having walked on the water of the lake. But still they kept coming, looking for another sign.
The crowd with its famished craving wants more and more feeding with healings and miracles and food. They want a sign like the manna in the wilderness to keep them fed until the hunger rises again. But Jesus wants them to understand that the bread that he gives is the bread that satisfies.
Jesus said to [the crowds], 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ [3] The only food which will cure our famished craving is the food he offers. Jesus invites us to consider that to become fully human, fulfilled in our life, we need to find our fullness in him. What truly enables us to be fully formed, mature people is this: having faith in the One who is the ground of our Being.
In his letter to the Ephesians Paul entreats us to become mature Christians - for that is how we we become fully human in Christ. Training ourselves to be rooted in an understanding that in God we can be truly who we are meant to be. Learning more and more about what that means through the practice of prayer, and study of the scriptures, so that we need no longer be ‘tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by other people's trickery and scheming’. [4] Practicing how to resist our famished cravings and instead to feed ourselves with the bread of life, learning to focus our desires on Jesus and on him alone, for only in him can we be satisfied.
The mature Christian is one who has moved away from unhealthy dependencies into healthy relationships with self and others based on a wholesome self-understanding and a confidence born from a healthy relationship with God, a relationship rooted in prayer, in Bible reading, in worship and in fellowship, and in acts of service and witness. This relationship we can help each other to develop - and if you are minded to want to do more in the way of prayer, study, witness and worship together in our fellowship here, then I’m keen to hear from you.
Some time back I visited Chester Zoo and put 20-pence into a set of scales which then told me that I weighed the same as a small dolphin. It could have been worse - at least it wasn’t a beached whale - but it was a wake-up call to get fit. And an analogy of my inner life too. I know that all too often my spiritual diet is unedifying, and that if only I could eat more of the bread of life I'd be filled, I'd be fulfilled, my cravings would fade and faith would make me whole. The bread of life is no fad diet - it’s all the nutrition we’ll ever need.
God help us all - whatever our maturity in years - to keep growing in our maturity in Christ, and to enjoy all that goes with it. God help us to keep encouraging each other in our growth to maturity in Christ.
Notes
Different versions of this sermon were previously preached in Devon, 2012 and Liverpool, 2009.
The ‘famished craving’ meme and the ‘bread of life’ discussion is adapted from Paul Nuechterlein's Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, PROPER 13, YEAR B which reference Gil Bailie's audio tape series, ‘The Famished Craving: The Attention of Others, the Fascination for the Famous, and the Need for Faith’. This in turn reflects on T.S. Eliot's poem ‘Gerontion’, in which which the poet writes, ‘And what [History] gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving….’
[1] Plans to celebrate tour [de France] win by Geraint Thomas in Wales. BBC News, 30 July 2018. MEG-A JEALOUS This is Meghan Markle’s new official ‘occupation’… and we’re a bit jealous. The Sun, 24th May 2018.
[2] Alan Bennett has a home in Clapham, and yes, I admit I was chuffed when he spoke to me at the Clapham Street Fair the Saturday prior to this sermon being preached.
[3] John 6.35.
[4] Ephesians 4.13-14.
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