Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." So says Jesus in today's verses from the gospel of John. No doubt the familiarity with these words has numbed many Christians to the oddness of this metaphor. What does this mean? What in our personal lives of faith and spirituality is described by never being hungry and never being thirsty?

Certainly my own spiritual life can get pretty dry at times, and I can feel empty. How do such experiences fit into what Jesus says?

I don't have any neat answers to such questions. And sometimes I think that the trite formulas spouted by some Christians are more of an impediment to deep faith than they are a help. Faith needs to wrestle with doubt, with feelings of God's absence, with questions of "Why?" if it is going to grow and mature.

So I won't offer a one size fits all interpretation of today's words on hunger and thirst, but I will speak of my own experience. Often times my own spiritual dryness is connected to barriers I set up between me and Jesus. Sometimes these barriers have nice, religious clothing such as my work as a pastor. Serving a religious institution is not always the same thing as following Jesus, and sometimes I need to make a concerted effort to draw close to Jesus once more.

What are the things in your life that get in the way? In my case, they are rarely things which seem patently evil or opposed to God. The best barriers, like the best idols, usually appeal to our religious and spiritual hungers.

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