Session 4: Hunger

Welcome to session 4. In the last session the Israelites were rescued by God and crossed the Red Sea. It must have felt like all their problems were over. Sadly many testing times were to come. And today we focus on one of them. Because the theme of this session is hunger.

I am feeling pretty hungry right now on this chilly day in North Lancashire, and so I have come to a place where the hungry are fed. This is Morecambe Food Pantry, an initiative of Morecambe Parish Church. There’s some amazing stuff going on here. There’s this café where we will soon be filling our boots. And round the back there is a food pantry where those who are struggling to make ends meet can access good food for what they can afford to donate. The whole place is run with oodles of love and generosity and hospitality by volunteers, mostly Christians from local churches.

What for me is so special about places like this is that there is a double feeding going on. Yes there’s physical, tangible food to fill people’s stomachs and sustain them through the winter. But in a place that is so clear about its Christian character, there is another food on offer here, food for the soul, the living bread we find in Jesus.

And that makes it a great place to be as we think about the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus. Because hunger has triggered a moment of severe crisis for the Israelites and their leaders. The thing about wildernesses is that, almost by definition, there is not a great deal to eat. And there were an awful lot of Israelites, a huge number of mouths to feed. They may have escaped Pharaoh’s chariots. They cannot escape their basic human needs. The people are desperately hungry.

And it’s a double hunger. They are hungry first and foremost for food. They think back to the days in Egypt when, even though they were slaves, they at least had food for their bellies; bread, cucumbers, meat. Now they have nothing. They are in danger of dying in the wilderness.

But that physical hunger pointed to a much deeper and much more dangerous spiritual hunger. The Israelites have lost their trust in Moses and likewise they have lost their trust in God. Why did God lead them out into the wilderness? Was it just to kill them? What was the point of all those great miracles, that mighty rescue, if all that is going to come of it is a sad and miserable death in the dessert of Sinai? Where is God?

But God does not abandon his people. He hears their cries of hunger and he feeds them. First of all he feeds them with physical food. Bread rains down from heaven. So let’s think about that first of all because the precise way in which God physically feeds the people matters. Let me pick out three features of it.

First God feeds them with justice. When the bread arrives, some people simply gather enough. Others rush around taking as much as they can find and storing it up for the future. But there is no reward for their greed, because the following day that extra food is rotten and ridden with worms. Today we live in a world of inequality where some people have vast savings and massive wealth they do not need whilst others starve or struggle to make ends meet. That is not God’s way. When he feeds the people, all are fed but none can hoard more than they need.

Second God feeds them enough. There is an omer of bread per person. No more, no less. Because that is what a person needs. Today we are destroying this planet with untrammelled consumption and crazy greed. We are never satisfied with enough. We crave more and more and more, even when our greed means that others suffer. That’s not God’s way either.

And third, God feeds such that they have space to honour him. One day a week God provides double the bread that is required. That means that they have enough for the Sabbath. They are allowed a day of rest, a day where there is no need for work and so a day that can be offered to God. Today that balance is hard to find. For many, Sunday is just like any other day. Others have to work crazy hours or drive themselves so hard in the workplace that they endanger relationships and lose the joy of being human. That is not God’s way. He wants our lives to be balanced so that we have space for him and space for the people he has given us.

So that’s the first thing that happens. God feeds the people physically with food for their stomachs. But that food points beyond itself to a double feeding. God has provided. God has fed his people. God has fulfilled his promises. They have not been abandoned by God to starve in the desert. He is still with them and they can after all trust him. So the people are fed spiritually at the same time as they are fed physically. Physical food carries the memory of the God who will provide for them always and never let them down. Bread in the wilderness demonstrates that God will indeed lead them to the promised land, that land that flows with milk and honey. That’s the double feeding.

Again and again as we have studied Exodus we have seen the stories we read there fulfilled in the person of Jesus. And it is just the same here. Fast forward to John Chapter 6 because there we meet another hungry crowd. More than 5000 are gathered in a lonely place to hear the words of Jesus and when they grow hungry, there is alarm. But a boy offers his tiny packed lunch of five loaves and two fish, and from that an entire crowd is physically fed with plenty left over.

That is a famous story, but let’s look at what happens next. This is a hunger culture, a time when most of people’s lives would have been spent with the back breaking work of scrabbling together enough to eat and here is a man who can produce plenty at the drop of hat. So the crowd are amazed at what Jesus has done, so amazed that they want him to do the miracle again. They want more free food. They follow him around as if he were a free kebab van.

But Jesus challenges them. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, he says. What does that mean? The bread that Moses gave the Israelites in the wilderness was great but it perished. Jesus offers a better bread than that, the living bread that is himself and which offers eternal life. Again Jesus uses physical food to point beyond itself to that eternal and living food which is relationship with him.

Today we too live in a time of hunger. Sadly with an ongoing cost of living crisis and a fragile global economy, many people today hunger for bread. Nearly a million people will use a foodbank this year. Most of those are in work, in fact many have several jobs but still struggle to pay the bills and feed their children. Many more are just about managing and it would only take one or two problems to force them into destitution.

But even more people hunger for another sort of food. They hunger for something to make sense of their lives. They hunger for answers to their big questions. They hunger for a purpose to their lives that is worth living for. They hunger for love and for relationships that can satisfy. They hunger for forgiveness or for a fresh start. Named or unnamed they hunger for Jesus, the living bread in whom every single human hunger finds its satisfaction.

We who feed on Jesus are sent to feed the world. A hungry world gives us responsibility, in fact a double responsibility. The first responsibility is to try and satisfy people’s physical hunger, because only when stomachs are filled will hearts be opened up to the mystery of Jesus.

Remember those three ways in which God fed the people in the wilderness? I think that’s how we are called to feed a hungry people.

First, God fed them with justice. Inequality is not part of God’s plan. It does tremendous social and physical damage to people’s lives. It lies behind so many of the problems we face as a nation. As Christians we need to be a voice for justice, calling out unfair structures that entrap people in poverty and prevent them from taking control of their own lives. Even as we meet human need we need to go upstream and ask the bigger questions. Why is the world’s fifth largest economy not able to feed its children? Why are there homeless people on the streets? Why are there workplaces where pay is so low that staff are still dependent on benefits and food handouts? 

Second, God fed them enough. Where we see people who are hungry we have a duty to do something. So yes, we are a voice for justice, but we also need to act practically. That’s where food pantries like this one, and food banks, and events where hospitality is offered, and warm spaces and groups and clubs for older people are all so important. We’re not just meeting a human need. We are pointing to the God who wants everyone to have enough.

Third, God fed them so that they had space to honour him. Rest is a fundamental part of being human. Where people feel driven to work so hard that there is no space for family and no space for God, something of the dignity of human life is lost. That’s why Sunday really matters as a day of rest and day of worship.

So as God fed the people in the wilderness, as Jesus fed the crowd on the hillside, so as Christians today we are called to feed those who are physically hungry. That the beginning, but it’s not enough. Remember the point of the physical food in Exodus and again in John. It carried the memory of the living god. It pointed beyond itself to the God who provides.

In this food pantry, one night a week there is more on offer than physical food. The people here run Alpha, a course which helps people to explore deeper and get to know the God who provides. The physical food on offer in this place is therefore pointing beyond itself to Jesus the living bread, who gives us the food that endures for eternal life.

As Christians we are terrific at service, at meeting the needs of our communities. The challenge is this. How can we combine our service with proclamation? How can we feed people in such a way that the food we give them points beyond itself to that living bread which is life in Christ? A double hunger requires a double feeding. We feed people with food for their stomachs. We feed them also with the living bread which is relationship with Jesus.

For Christians, the events in the wilderness in Exodus 16 and the miracle on the hillside in John 6 lead us to our worship and in particular to the Eucharist. There we take physical food, real bread and real wine. And we eat it and drink so that it becomes physically part of us. That’s because we have a God who provides and who feeds the hungry.

But that bread and wine points beyond itself. It carries the memory of Jesus. In that bread and wine the incarnate God is with us, sharing our life that we might share his life. In that bread and wine the power of the once-offered sacrifice on Calvary is made contemporary and we who feed on his body and blood and are saved for ever. In the Eucharist we meet the Christ who feeds us with the living bread that endures for eternity.

In Christ every human hunger is satisfied. Let’s feast on him, the living bread. And then go out to feed a hungry world.