Trinity Eight

It seems we are bombarded week in week out, about the type of food we eat and also the quantity.  We are told the Mediterranean diet of plenty of fresh vegetables, salads, fish and olive oil is the most beneficial for our health and long life.  Cooking programmes seem to take up a large proportion of main time television, and the TV chefs have become celebrities in their own rights. 

Some months ago I was amazed when Jamie Oliver was trying to get schoolchildren to eat more healthily, and was in a secondary school in the North getting the school cooks to change the menu from chips with everything to salads and healthy foods, some mothers were going to the chip shop and pushing burgers, chips and everything cooked in fat through the school railings to feed the kids, as if they were in a prison camp.

This week an argument has blown up over the report that says organic Food is no better than ordinary food, even though it costs far more.  I have often wondered whether some people buy organic food because its trendy to do so and because they can, rather than it supposedly being better for us. Well I suppose in this country, like other Western, affluent countries, we can make that choice. In the two thirds of the world that exist on a dollar a day, people are lucky if they have enough food to feed themselves and their families. While, because of stupid food regulations our supermarkets throw away millions of pounds of edible food every week which have reached their sell by date. They even have to put padlocks on the rubbish skips to ensure no one takes the food.

 A few weeks ago a local bakers in Stafford telephoned me and asked if I knew of any charity, old people’s home, night shelter for homeless people who would like the bread and cakes left over each night, as they have to throw it all away. Sadly I had to answer no. These organisations are no longer allowed to accept this kind of donation. Sometimes there seems no sense in what we do!!

We can respond to fads, especially with food, and spend vast amounts on the current in-food because Nigella, or Anthony Worrall Thompson or Delia Smith has told us to in some television programme.  Fannie and Jonnie Craddock seemed from a more gentler age.

We are living in a fast food age, when the experts tell us a quarter of our children are overweight and obese, and there is a massive increase in type 2 diabetes.  It would seem we are overfed but undernourished by eating the wrong foods.  A walk around Disneyland in Florida confirms the Americans are even worse than we are. Now you are probably sitting there thinking how dare he say we are overweight and obese, he isn’t exactly slim himself, and of course you are right, but actually I’m not overweight, I should be 4 inches taller that’s all!!

However, there is something even more harmful than physical junk food, and that’s spiritual junk food.  Just as our bodies need proper nutrition, so we need the forgiveness of sin and that new life with God, Jesus tells us about. When need the spiritual nourishment provided by God’s word.

Jesus told the devil, while he was being tempted in the wilderness to make the stones into loaves of bread, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”.

God knows we need physical food to survive, as well as clothing and other necessities, but he knows only too well that all the riches of this world will do us not good if we do not live our lives according to God’s word, and let him into our lives.  If we are not being nourished by God’s word we will live our lives separated from our heavenly Father, and live shallow, selfish, unrewarding lives.

Last week we heard the story about Jesus feeding the 5000, with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish, and now the crowds are following him across the lake to Capernaum. Jesus tells those who had been fed and now were following him, that he is the bread of life, and the true bread comes from God.  Why were they following him, because they truly believed that Jesus was God’s Son, or thought if they followed him they wouldn’t have to shop at Tesco’s again? 

Jesus challenges them with this by telling them they were looking for him not because they believe who he is, but because he has filled their stomachs.  He is telling them very clearly that they have missed the whole point of his miracles.  His miracles were not meant to be an end in themselves, but as signs that Jesus is God’s Son, the Word made Flesh as John describes him.

But the people, the crowds that were following Jesus didn’t want to hear about repentance, forgiveness of sins, and the promise of eternal life.  They wanted a Jesus who would give them what they wanted, healthy bodies, plenty of food, and all the riches of this world.

But we dare not judge them too harshly, because we are all guilty of the same mistake.  All too often we think that Jesus exists to solve our earthly problems.  We beg Jesus to heal us when we are sick, to take away our concerns, our worries, to provide for us, and protect us from all the dangers and traumas this world throws at us, and then turn our back on him when everything seems to be going well for us, when we think we can do without him in our lives.

We are more concerned about the gifts we expect from God, and ignore the giver. We forget that all the health, wealth and prosperity in the world will do us no good at all if we turn away from God’s love for us, if we don’t have a right relationship with God to sustain us. It is so easy to forget that having all the riches in the world does not guarantee or buy happiness, and when we come to the end of this earthly life we move onto our new life without any of the material things we have gathered around us.

The Egyptian Kings may have surrounded themselves with everything necessary, including dead servants, for the afterlife, but the truth is that we leave all this behind when we die.  At Aristole Onasis’ funeral someone asked how much he had left, and the reply came, ‘everything, he left everything’.

That’s why Jesus tells us ‘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’.

Our physical needs are important, of course they are, we cannot live without food and water, that’s why God provides all we need in the abundance of the harvest he creates for us, that’s why God provided the Isrealites, the people he had made the Covenant with, manna from heaven as they struggled on their journey to the promised land. Of course, the crowds flocking round Jesus thought that Moses had given them this manna from heaven because in their tradition manna would be produced again when the Messiah came.  They didn’t think that feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish had anything to do with God’s abundance for us.  If Jesus was the Messiah where was the manna from heaven?

Jesus told them Moses didn’t produce the manna, it came from God, it was God’s work. And more importantly this manna wasn’t the bread of God, it was the symbol of God. The Bread of God was standing there in front of them in the person of Jesus, who gives us life.

Jesus taught us to pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. But Jesus also told us we cannot live by bread alone.  We need the spiritual food that comes from the word of God and from being in relationship with God to nourish us and allow us to grow in his love.

That’s why Jesus taught us ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’. Forgiveness of sin and new life with god is our greatest need, our greatest hunger.  That’s why Jesus came into the world, and died on the Cross, so that through his sacrifice we might be forgiven and live in God’s love.

God shows his love for us by giving us food, clothing, a home, family, friends, health and may other things, all the things we need. But these physical blessings which we enjoy eventually fade away and only the spiritual blessings we receive in and through Jesus remain always.

Because of Jesus, the Bread of Life, we have our sins forgiven, the assurance of God’s unconditional love, even if we turn our backs on it and reject it, and the certain hope of eternal life with God, these are the spiritual food that remain ours.

So don’t feed on spiritual junk food, instead, feed on Jesus, the true Bread of Life, the word of God made flesh, who feeds us with his Body and Blood today so that we might know we are forgiven and live as God’s children. Amen.