Carbohydrate Overload

We are deep into week two of the "Bread of Life" discourse...week three if you count the feeding of the 5,000 and already I'm feeling overloaded on bread.
And it's a strange coincidence that we started in on the bread stuff as I began a new low-carbohydrate, high protein diet in order to get my blood sugar in check and my body feeling better. And so I've been doing a lot of thinking on this text, especially in the context of how a slight change in diet (white pasta and bread to wheat pasta and bread, etc) can make all the difference in the world. I have spent the past 12 years with a hypoglycemic type response to too many carbs and not enough protein. I have also spent the better part of the past 12 years constantly exhausted. That's kind of how I'm starting to feel about these texts, too. Too much bread...too abstract content...not enough protein.
We have this text for four weeks. There probably was not a mistake in this decision on the part of those who put together the lectionary. This is tough to hear. It is, in the words of Peter, "difficult to hear/accept" As we get into next week, it becomes downright offensive. Eating flesh and drinking blood???? What in the world is this about? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but can you imagine what ran through the heads of the people as they heard this? no wonder so many turn away and leave. Jesus teaches some pretty audacious and offensive stuff!!

But Jesus also tells us this, that whoever is coming toward him (erchomenos pros eme) will not be hungry and whoever is believing in him will never thirst. I think this traslation of the text better than the NRSV, and not because it's my own translation. I like it because there's continuous action involved, it's not an end goal. But after reading Brian Stoffregen I like it even more because Stoffregen suggests that the end of hunger and thirst will come later...both in the physical and spiritual sense. We live in a world that needs hunger and thirst...for justice, for love, for peace, for equality. We need to be hungry, our hearts need to be hungry for these things so that one day peoples bodys will no longer hunger for food or shelter or basic rights. If Jesus were to take away this hunger, we would become complacent and the cries of the disenfranchized and impoverished would go unanswered. But why are we hungry for these things? I have never experienced war or poverty first hand...but I hunger for peace and thirst for justice. I think that our hunger comes from God. I think that God teaches us the need for justice, whispers in our ear the need for peace and non-violent solutions to arguments. but then the question becomes, why then, are there so many people out there...many of whom call themselves Christians, that do not hunger for justice, who do not feed the poor, who do not love their neighbors, who spread hate? What is going on? If God is the one who pulls us towards Jesus, like either a fish in a net or a car being towed...why are there some who do not believe? why are there some who say they believe but do not act like people who believe? my list of questions can go on and on and on. And yet, it all comes back to Christ, the living bread from heaven. The one who feeds us with himself so that we can have strength for the journey. Jesus is our spiritual protein.

I'm preaching out in Topeka, KS this week, covering for the pastor at First Lutheran, who is recovering from an illness. Topeka is also the home of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist, which is located 1 mile away from where I will be preaching and leading worship. I am tempted to drive by there, stop and say a prayer that their hunger for the vengence and wrath of the Lord will be turned into a hunger for peace and love.