Give us Today Our Daily Bread, Lead us Not into Temptation, Deliver us from Evil
The Bread of Life readings that we ponder during the month of August take us to the heart of lived experience: hunger, choice, and error. They form three pivotal phrases in the prayer Jesus taught us. They touch on themes of exodus, longing, and how we reweave our broken lives into wholeness.
In her book Eucharist and the Hunger of the World, author Monika Hellwig reminds us that hunger can be a brutal thing. When we are hungry, starving hungry, our bodies are in a state of actual dissolution. We are devouring ourselves. We will literally kill others to steal their food. All cultures of consumption play variations upon the theme hunger and the dissolution of self. We will not want that new car, computer, driveway, refrigerator, outfit, haircolor, or remodel if we are content in the fullness of life. As opposed to simple need, the relentless drive for more always arises from a sense of lack and insecurity. The advertising industry spends billions to make us feel inadequate. Everyone knows this at an intellectual level. Maybe you have successfully risen above it. I have struggled with it for years.
So, even before I turn up at the feast of loaves and fishes, I know I am flirting with emptiness. I have not come out to find Jesus because I am satisfied and fulfilled, but because I am hungry and sick. John's Gospel says, "A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick." I come to the feast because I have been tried, and crave satisfaction.
Temptation is a far broader subject than chocolates, brandy and cigars. Temptation holds all that tries our souls. It comes from the same root as attempt. It is linked to the question of freedom of choice. Advertising, as it plays with my unconscious, suggests that our choices are often less free that we might wish.
The loaves and fishes are thus a temptation. It is not temptation that Jesus feeds us, or that we feed each other. The test lies in how we respond. Do we want to "brand" Jesus, make him our king? Do we go after Jesus because he offers security? Do we think this guy is great because he does so much for us?
Or does the miracle of the loaves and fishes tempt us to think about life in new ways? And if in new ways, what do those ways look like? How do I practice these new ways? One of the ways I know that I am growing is the knowledge that I am being delivered from those forces that would manipulate me, that I become rather more master and rather less slave to my desires. I do this by learning to see reality clearly. Or as Jesus says, "You shall know the truth." It is a slow process, but it will, at last, set me free.
In her book Eucharist and the Hunger of the World, author Monika Hellwig reminds us that hunger can be a brutal thing. When we are hungry, starving hungry, our bodies are in a state of actual dissolution. We are devouring ourselves. We will literally kill others to steal their food. All cultures of consumption play variations upon the theme hunger and the dissolution of self. We will not want that new car, computer, driveway, refrigerator, outfit, haircolor, or remodel if we are content in the fullness of life. As opposed to simple need, the relentless drive for more always arises from a sense of lack and insecurity. The advertising industry spends billions to make us feel inadequate. Everyone knows this at an intellectual level. Maybe you have successfully risen above it. I have struggled with it for years.
So, even before I turn up at the feast of loaves and fishes, I know I am flirting with emptiness. I have not come out to find Jesus because I am satisfied and fulfilled, but because I am hungry and sick. John's Gospel says, "A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick." I come to the feast because I have been tried, and crave satisfaction.
Temptation is a far broader subject than chocolates, brandy and cigars. Temptation holds all that tries our souls. It comes from the same root as attempt. It is linked to the question of freedom of choice. Advertising, as it plays with my unconscious, suggests that our choices are often less free that we might wish.
The loaves and fishes are thus a temptation. It is not temptation that Jesus feeds us, or that we feed each other. The test lies in how we respond. Do we want to "brand" Jesus, make him our king? Do we go after Jesus because he offers security? Do we think this guy is great because he does so much for us?
Or does the miracle of the loaves and fishes tempt us to think about life in new ways? And if in new ways, what do those ways look like? How do I practice these new ways? One of the ways I know that I am growing is the knowledge that I am being delivered from those forces that would manipulate me, that I become rather more master and rather less slave to my desires. I do this by learning to see reality clearly. Or as Jesus says, "You shall know the truth." It is a slow process, but it will, at last, set me free.
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