Complex Carbohydrates

Preached at Catonsville Presbyterian Church on August 11, 2024.

Scripture

Psalm 78:23-29

Yet he commanded the skies above
    and opened the doors of heaven;
he rained down on them manna to eat
    and gave them the grain of heaven.
Mortals ate of the bread of angels;
    he sent them food in abundance.
He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens,
    and by his power he led out the south wind;
he rained flesh upon them like dust,
    winged birds like the sand of the seas;
he let them fall within their camp,
    all around their dwellings.
And they ate and were well filled,
    for he gave them what they craved.

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Sermon

In 2018, a disability services organization called Helping Hands did a profile on one of their care recipients. The recipient of their disability services was named Brett, and he was a Southern man who lived most of his life able-bodied. But Brett’s life changed literally overnight, when he was heading home from work and involved in a near-fatal car accident.

Brett survived, but found himself living in an unfamiliar body. You see, he suffered a spinal cord injury. The goal was no longer to go back to the status quo; it was to find a path forward and a new way to live.

But Brett and his wife Kristen had a challenge ahead. How were they going to adapt to Brett’s new disabilities, especially with two young children?

If we were to guess, maybe they would hire home healthcare assistance. Or maybe they would move to a larger city with better accommodations. Or maybe it was moving homes, or getting some adaptive equipment.

The answer was a little more complicated. And a little more fun.

Helping Hands, the organization who profiled Brett, had a different name forty years ago. It was called Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled. And Brett was about to get a small Capuchin monkey named Sophie. When Brett and Kristen expected a service dog, God gave them a service monkey.

The answer that Brett found to his new set of needs didn’t come in the way he expected. It came in a really odd—but fun—answer. Sophie was trained to perform household tasks and lend a hand with small items. She was emotionally supportive, too.

It turns out that God’s grace in our lives isn’t always straightforward. The satisfaction we want is rarely the satisfaction we get, and the provisions we want are rarely the provisions we get. We’re hungry people, but what often gets in the way isn’t our circumstances. It’s our willingness to receive peace, love, and a feast of grace that Jesus extends to us day after day.

Jesus says that like manna, he has come “down from heaven,” to sustain us and bring unending life into this world. This story that Jesus references is a story similar to Brett and Kristen’s. The Israelites want a dog, so to speak, but God gives them a monkey.

The Israelites found themselves in the wilderness because they were once enslaved by Egypt. God, through Moses and Aaron, brought them out of oppression and onto a pilgrimage toward a better land. It takes signs and wonders, parting of the Red Sea, and a host of challenges, but the Israelites finally make it out into the wilderness.

But hunger sets in. The Israelites have no map, no clear direction, and they have pretty good reason to expect death because of their circumstances. As much as we blame them, they were pretty astute. It’s a pretty good bet to expect their sudden demise. Yet mysteriously, when they cry out to Moses and to God, God meets their hunger with manna.

This fine, flaky manna takes on a much larger symbolic significance. This is one of many incidents where the deepest hunger of the Israelites—whether literal or figurative—is met by God’s grace. It’s a sign of favor and love, a piece of hope for days that are hopeless. The story is taken as a sign that God will provide, and continue to provide.

At the same time, it was complicated.

Let’s start off with the most obvious. God could have provided any number of obvious answers to their plight. But instead of providing natural resources, or leading them to a hidden store of supplies, God takes the least obvious path: raining down bread from heaven, and sending quails to drop dead out of the sky. In fact, when this first happens, Exodus 16 tells us that the Israelites’ response was to ask the question: “What is it?” Moses has to explain it to them, because deliverance was so strange and unexpected.

The Israelites’ deliverance was also an affront to their independence and individualism. When manna is given, they were not allowed to collect more than was necessary. Any excess spoiled, except for that which was necessary for daily living and the Sabbath. God delivered them, but they couldn’t hoard it. God delivered them, but not on their schedules. At the end of the day, this deliverance didn’t protect them from the fragility of life; it only sustained them through it. It taught them to let go as often as they took up; to never forget their humanity and hunger, just as often as it was satisfied.

There’s something less obvious about God’s deliverance of the Israelites. By sustaining them, and giving them manna, they were stuck in the wilderness. If there had been no food, they would surely have retreated to more tolerable conditions. They may have gone back to oppression in Egypt, like they grumbled. The uncomfortable, frightening, inhospitable wilderness—and all of its transience and change and upheaval—was where God brought them. And God delivered them, sustaining them in that upheaval, even though it was the last place they wanted to be.

And yet, when the Israelites brought their hunger to God, God satisfied them. As an aside, the biblical text writes that manna tasted “sweet” and was pleasant to the taste.

As we return to Jesus’ own claim that he is the bread of life, we see similar complexity.

In verse 35, Jesus uses two parallel phrases: “Come to me,” and never be hungry; “Believe in me,” and never be thirsty. The verbs are important. The latter verb, pisteuo, is more akin to close, loving trust. It’s not about having the right things stuffed into your brain, or learning things the right way. It’s trust; just as the Israelites had to trust in the wilderness. And the Gospel puts this trust parallel to Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me.”

This isn’t an invitation to feed ourselves, it’s to bring Jesus our hunger. To trust Jesus with our greatest hunger; not superficial frustrations or knee-deep longings. It’s to let our hunger meet the bread of life; It’s to bring our frailty and joys and pain of living to God. In this passage, the challenge isn’t “being fed.” It’s bringing our hunger to God, and letting it be satisfied and changed. To open ourselves to grace and peace and joy and satisfaction when it doesn’t look like what we wanted.

Jesus doesn’t really let us feed ourselves. Jesus doesn’t ask us to “stop being hungry” or “get rid of hunger.” Instead, Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” It’s God who satisfies us.

…

This far, hunger has been the bad guy. It might seem like our goal is to be a little less human, and minimize our humanity. But that can’t be further from the truth. Let’s reframe hunger, borrowing language from elsewhere.

Those who live with some sort of mental health condition usually go on a long journey. On average, it takes six years for someone with bipolar disorder to receive an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan. And for family members—regardless of someone’s psychiatric condition—there’s a temptation to think the goal is “curing” someone’s mental health. But one of the important developments in psychiatry is moving the target from “curing” to “managing.” When I served as a chaplain, I didn’t pray that patients would have their diagnoses wiped away; I prayed that they would know God’s presence in it. To know that God is right beside them.

The same is true in our faith journeys. The target isn’t perfect holiness or being “cured” of our hunger and humanity; the target is to be met in our hunger by a deep and sustaining connection with God. Jesus asks us to bring our hunger to God so that we can be met by God within it. To be fed continually by God. To find God in the midst of our hunger. To know that God is right beside us, too.

Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Come to me.”

…

After Jesus identifies himself as the bread of life, the people around him immediately begin taking offense. And it’s reasonable; they’re asking for a dog, but Jesus is giving them a monkey. There is grumbling, questioning, confusion, uncertainty. Though many encountered the bread of life—redemption and deliverance in their midst—Jesus was met with hate and ultimately crucifixion.

For us, it begs the question: when we are hungry, and presented with the bread of life, we often forget to recognize it as such. Do we really want this bread of life? When it doesn’t look like what we expected? Or when it’s complicated, or when it’s inconvenient?

…

I want to tell you a story about inconvenient bread. Literal bread, that is.

In the mid-fifteenth century C.E., a man named Guru Nanak was born in Punjab, South Asia. [1] Guru Nanak was a spiritual teacher influenced by Hindu and Islamic tradition. In his 20s, he decided to leave his family and travel across India, Tibet, and Arabia on a great pilgrimage. Nearly thirty years later, he returned to the Punjab as the father of Sikhism [2].

Guru Nanak hated the caste system, and anything that divided humanity, whether it was status or gender or ideology. When people came to listen to him teach, they often made offerings to him. And Guru Nanak, in his love for community service, would immediately share those offerings with the poor. Along with giving these offerings to the poor, he hosted a community meal. In the Sikh tradition, this free, community meal is called a langar. [3]

Guru Nanak had only one condition for each langar: for you to partake, you must partake without regard for caste. The higher castes could only eat if they did it with the lowest castes, and men could only eat if they ate with women. It was radical and transgressive – an insult to the social order.

…

This is what being fed by God demands. This is why the bread of life—Jesus Christ—was crucified. Because bringing our hunger to God, and being changed by it, will never let us go back to the status quo. Finding satisfaction in Christ isn’t going to let us hoard manna, retreat to Egypt, or give up. Once we eat of the bread of life, we will come back again and again and again—because we know that there is a well of grace and love and joy and hope that never runs dry, a bread that never runs out, a Sustainer that never lets go. Once we go to God’s wide table, we’ll never be able to leave.

Because nothing will ever compare.

…

Will you be fed by the bread of life, even when God challenges you by it?

Are you willing to bring your hunger to God, to risk being satisfied with joy and grace and love and peace, when it will challenge your narrative and story and sense of identity?

Will you open yourself to deliverance and satisfaction that doesn’t look the way you want it to?

You don’t have to fix yourself or your humanity first. Just come. Bring your hunger. Let go of your presuppositions and rightness and certainty. Let yourself be challenged. Because you will never go away from God hungry.

Sources

[1] “History,” Sikh Coalition, https://www.sikhcoalition.org/about-sikhs/history/

[2] “Sikhism: Guru Nanak”, BBC Religion, https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/sikhism/people/nanak

[3] “The significance of langar,” San Jose Gudwara, https://sanjosegurdwara.org/documents/The_Significance_of_Langar.pdf