Our focus this Holy week is Bread for the Hungry, Bread for the Weary. After the Pandemic, amidst the cost of living crisis, we sure are weary. With competing crisis’ we might well see that there is a deepening crisis of faith. In fact, if polls are to be believed, the ‘nones’, those of no faith, are soon to be in the majority. The Church, regardless of denomination is murmuring, complaining that numbers are down, where is God when you need God?
If we look to the academics, Maslow’s hierarchy shows that our basic needs are water, food and the internet, ….sorry safety. I was reading the under 20’s hierarchy…
In our first reading (Exodus 16) we hear of the complaints from the people about their leaders : the clergy. If the clergy had only done this…we’d be ok by now. Do you remember when that minister, you remember… Bruce Almighty I think was their name, when they were in charge? It was different back then…but God responds to all.
In Exodus 7 there is the raining of hail, here we have raining of blessing –
Bread from heaven?
Do you know that there is a type of plant lice that punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and this excretes a yellowish-white flake? It could be referred to in Numbers 11:7-8. As the warmth of the sun strikes, it disintegrates, and in the evening, it congeals. It is carbohydrate rich, and can be baked into bread – called, you’ve guessed it, manna. But it decays quickly. It seems that God works with the ordinary beauty of creation which surrounds us.
The food seems to ‘rain down’, that same phrase we used back in the 1950s when food would rain down on Berlin, for example, in the air bridge. Food has been airdropped from cargo aircraft to starving people across the world.
Struggling Churches
The unleavened bread that the Israelites took with them on the Exodus may well have run out by the second month. The flocks that they took with them may have been considered an aspect of their wealth, and they were unprepared to sacrifice them for mere food. So much for their criticism.
Churches may well have struggled this past year. The increasing cost of electricity and gas, the diminishing income from groups or their congregation have caused tensions to rise. The Israelites complained : are we content to trust in God for our daily bread? We speak of it whenever we say the Lord’s Prayer… Give us the bread needed for this day. If others are truly struggling with food and energy, can we show that we are content with what we have?
3 fold need
In the Gospel of John, the onlooking crowds have just been physically fed, their tummies are full – but Jesus seeks to feed them spiritually…so they can feed others. Did we really think that what God provides for us is limited just for us? Do we care about spiritual food? At AA meetings, folk speak openly of their need for their physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. For folk who are openly atheists, they speak about a spiritual need – when do we hear of this in Church?
The people ask for signs: are we on the right path? Show us that we are the blessed ones. But whenever Jesus heals, it is to rectify a human need and to reveal more of God. Our own Lenten journey is one that helps us to grow closer to God, but also to allow others to see God in their lives. We can look to our clergy, but it wasn’t Moses who fed them, but God. Jesus didn’t provide the Fortnum and Mason’s food hamper to feed the 5000, it was God.
What Bread do we need?
When we make a lunch box it might well be with instant food. Fast food reigns today – you can get seemingly any sort of food delivered to your door at any time of the day or night. The bread that we eat is now refined – not posh like – but with ingredients which ensure a long shelf life.
I recall when living in Italy buying a load of bread from an Italian bakery, and soon after buying a loaf from an American military shop. After one day the Italian bread was lethal, literally : it could have been used as a weapon – it was hard as iron. The American processed loaf was still soft, squidgy and possibly edible. It lasted a whole week – I am still not sure what was in it. God provided for the day ahead, and the next day, and the next day. God was awake overnight to prepare lunch box for the Israelites on their perilous journey.
Easter is scary
Our journey towards Easter this year is a scary time. It doesn’t have a ‘happy ending’ – the Resurrection is not seen by the disciples as that, for certain. It’s part of our ongoing journey of faith. We continue to invite others to our community of faith – all denominations. But we don’t invite them for a particular form of worship, or for our political reasoning, to make Scotland a Christian country, to enlarge our mission work: that’s not the invitation. No, we offer Christ as spiritual food which lasts forever. Something which doesn’t change with our respective pastors or ministers – it is the DNA which runs through each member, and importantly is taken out to all whom we meet.
It is ours no matter what
Our churches are not given a resource that is limited, it is available to all. The God who we see in the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament may well have been seen as the old bearded man who has a habit of seeing you doing naughty things and hence fires off lightning bolts from the finger tips. You might recognise that image from Sunday School of old. I’d like you to know that if we wander far from the fold of God, or if we live in such a small way because we don’t trust that we are loved and worthy to be loved, know this: that all the forgiveness and mercy and reconciliation of God is already ours. It will not be taken away as a punishment and it will not be granted as a reward, it is ours no matter what.
When God sees us, God is filled with compassion. Even if we are still trying to get over something, even if we’re not ready to trust Jesus, even if we truly have turned a corner and started to become the person God intended us to be, even if we have never felt well-loved, even if we can’t forgive ourselves…even if we have never really told the whole truth. Even if we aren’t interested in it. All the love and mercy of God, the one crucified and resurrected, is running toward us, now. Like the bread of heaven, God’s love is with us, sustaining, allowing each one of us to flourish.
This Easter, don’t hoard but please tell others this good news!
I found the dialogue interesting and I enjoyed it