The Divine Universe

“Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:35) Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if the church were able to feed all the starving millions in the poorest regions of the world? Reading about the feeding of the five thousand (every Gospel reports it), one suspects that it could actually be possible. But I rather think we would mean the Kingdom of God rather than just the church. If the Kingdom of God were established on earth there would indeed be no starving people. There are potentially stacks of food and other resources to provide everything necessary for the world’s population, but it gets tangled up in complex international finance, and much of it is wasted or generates obesity in rich countries. And we are not about to share our resources in a way that we superstitiously imagine might threaten our own standard of living. 

In John’s account of the feeding of five thousand (6:1-14), a small boy brings his own packed lunch to the disciples. Jesus accepted this generous gift and told the disciples to begin offering it around. Suddenly something quite unexpected happened and everyone was well fed. In fact twelve of the people’s picnic baskets were filled with the leftovers. Perhaps the disciples spent hours pulling bread and fish from their sleeves like conjurers as they spent hours feeding five thousand families. But perhaps the boy’s, and then the disciples’ example of sharing had a seminal effect. Generosity is infectious.

The next day, when the crowd followed Jesus across the lake of Galilee, He said something very enigmatic: “I am the bread of life.” For me this reverberates with John’s astonishing statement in the introduction of his Gospel that everything that exists does so in and through Christ, or “The Word”, to use John’s title (John 1:1-4). It follows that all food is part of the body of Christ, the incarnation, the embodiment of God. Jesus pointed to this fact in his symbolic act of sharing at the last supper.

About 4½ billion years ago the universe generated and has since sustained living organisms, at least on this planet and probably on millions of others also. Our planet has continued to sustain life ever since, and not only to sustain it in the primitive bacterial form that first emerged, but to develop and grow increasingly amazing organisms. Following John’s way of thinking, it seems that Christ was already the bread of life 4½ billion years ago.

But I think that, when Jesus goes on to speak of hunger and thirst, he doesn’t only mean physical hunger but also spiritual hunger. Belief in Christ is no guarantee against starvation, but spiritual hunger is not peculiar to the extremely poor; it affects the affluent also. Their spiritual hunger may be hidden because they feed on the junk food of wealth and status, but it is nevertheless very real.

What is spiritual hunger? Do you have it? Many people wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, but my own spiritual hunger consists of deep desires that I know I cannot possibly fulfil. My religion tells me that Christ can satisfy all those desires, even now. But I haven’t got there yet. Jesus said, puzzlingly, that by eating him my hunger and thirst will be satisfied.

What does Jesus mean by ‘eating’ him? I think he means much more than making your communion at the Eucharist. It must mean taking Christ into yourself in a wider sense. According to John, Christ is everything, so I suppose it must mean opening yourself to everything around you: people included.

We lay great emphasis today on our individuality. Opening yourself up, physically, mentally, emotionally to the outside world, to other people, tends to ‘dilute’, so to speak, your individuality. You begin to merge with the greater whole of which you are a part. That can feel threatening.

I personally think that individuality is overvalued. Perhaps it is an illusion that will eventually disappear. I have an idea that, in the risen life, our individuality will disappear gradually, and with our consent. We shall merge with the cosmic whole that is the body of Christ.

Jesus gave a hint of that when he said that, inasmuch as we do something to anyone, we do it to him. As we advance spiritually we should feel more and more identified with others, both those who suffer and those who enjoy life. In other religions, the idea of merging into the totality of being is even more prominent than it is in Christianity. Take Buddhism, Hinduism and Aboriginal spirituality for example.

I suggest that, if we examine our spiritual hunger more closely, we will find that the desire to enter in, to merge, to give ourselves and to receive the other, is very strong, physically, emotionally, spiritually. We get it in our erotic feelings as well as in deeper areas of ourselves. Sexual desire is an emotional experience of our deeper spiritual desire to give ourselves and to receive the other: to merge, in other words. And, by the way, we must not separate our spiritual nature from our physical, mental and emotional nature. There is no separate soul. Human nature is one.

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” We cannot come to Jesus in the way that John was able to do: face-to-face. We can come to church and share in the Eucharist and other sacraments, but coming to Jesus is also a mental exercise, probably involving the imagination.

To come to Christ we sometimes need to withdraw into solitude and silence. That can help us to recognise Christ in the world around us. When we begin to do that, our spiritual hunger begins to be satisfied. We can be actively giving and receiving in a huge diversity of ways. A sense of merging can be found in personal prayer and meditation, but, importantly, also in activity in the home and outside where we are relating to others.

Jesus urges us to believe in him. Believing is an act of the will rather than our rational faculty. It is not always easy. Like the disciples we have, if we are honest, ambivalent feelings towards this outrageously demanding and challenging man. Belief has no place for doubt, but faith does. Faith is more flexible and inclusive than belief. So I have faith that includes unanswered questions; I have faith that Jesus will eventually satisfy my spiritual hunger.