on whether the church is meeting people's actual needs

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?"

Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 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... it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

John 6:24-27a,32b-35

Starting seminary in 2020 was challenging, to say the least. All of my classes were online, and I lived alone in a student apartment in a state where I knew no one. It was not what I had planned, and I was lonely.

During that first, hard year of seminary, I found one small ritual that helped me get through it. I made a friend who lived in the same student apartment building and was in the same New Testament class. So for every class session, I would walk to her apartment so that we could Zoom in together. 

Almost always–as soon as I stepped into her home–I would be surrounded by the smell of freshly baked bread. This was our ritual: She would make dough the night before, let it rise, place it in the oven an hour before I arrived. By the time I got there, there was always a round loaf of focaccia, dimpled with olive oil and covered in fresh produce–rosemary and basil, tomatoes and onions, olives and garlic. We would slice huge wedges of hot bread onto our plates, and as we listened to our New Testament lecture, we would feast.

When I think of the bread of life, this is what I think of: showing up to her apartment door, hungry, lonely, sad, longing for a different kind of life–and being greeted by a friend and the smell of warm bread. That bread fed me in multiple ways–not just the hunger in my stomach, but the longing for human connection, for meaning in a season of life that drew out painfully long. It sustained me through a semester that felt like it might never end.

The bread of life. Mysterious words from Jesus in the Gospel of John. He has just fed five thousand people with only five loaves of bread; a crowd of hungry, longing people has been satisfied. Now they have come looking for him again, because again they are hungry. They still live in a rural area, where they work hard for every grain of wheat they harvest and every fish they catch. They still live in a society where their government does not care whether they starve. So they face the very real threat of hunger every day. And here, here is a man who has the power to produce a feast out of virtually nothing!

It makes sense, right? Of course they go looking for Jesus. I would too.

Yet I think sometimes we have a tendency to look down on them for this–the same way we might look down on the Israelites for complaining about the lack of food in the wilderness. They're missing the point, we think. Why don't they just trust God? Why are they so focused on material things?

But it is not unreasonable for them to be concerned about food. They live, daily, with hunger, with lack, with the real threat of starvation. They need food. And we know Jesus thinks that need is important, because he has gone to great lengths to feed them all!

So I do not believe that this passage is Jesus condemning them for their hunger. Instead, I think Jesus is inviting them–and us–to pay attention, to recognize that food is not all they need. That a loaf of bread is not all they hunger for. 

One of the commentaries I read this week told the story of missionaries to Asia in the nineteenth century. During this time, the commentator said, missionaries offered food at church services and events–and locals flocked to church because they were hungry; they needed food. They worshiped with these Christian missionaries and they ate together. Yet once their political systems stabilized, once they were no longer food insecure, they stopped coming to church, and congregations shrunk and struggled to survive.

Apparently locals like these were called–and sometimes still are called–“rice Christians.” This phrase is used as a slur, to dismiss people for not being truly committed to their faith. They were frowned on for being Christians only as long as they needed the rice the church offered, and giving up their Christianity as soon as they had rice of their own.

The commentator said–this is what the passage in John is about. It's about people who come to Christianity only to meet their physical needs, only because they are hungry, and don't care about truly committing to their faith. And the implication is this: Because of people like them, the church shrinks and suffers.

But I disagree with this commentator. And here's why. 

Jesus knows we have physical needs. He spent a lot of his time meeting physical needs–feeding people, and healing their bodies, and resurrecting them from the dead. But Jesus also pointed out and addressed our spiritual needs: our need for community, for love, for meaning in our lives, for the support that sustains us through difficult and lonely times. Jesus says: We need both. You can't have one without the other.

And I suspect that the ministry of those missionaries may very well have been one without the other. They offered food to the hungry–but did they give them a safe place where they felt loved and accepted for who they were? Did they help them wrestle with the big questions of their lives? Did they listen to their deepest fears and pains, and respond without forcing their own culture or beliefs on others as the only right answer to fear and pain?

I suspect the answer is no. Because we know that much of missionary history has been European people going to colonized nations and presenting their own culture and belief system as superior. We know that much of missionary work has harmed and exploited people, taking the products of their land and labor, condemning local cultural practices and beliefs, instituting European systems of belief and governance. Although I'm sure there are exceptions, the overarching history of missions has not been about listening to the needs of people in their own contexts and loving them without trying to change them or trying to gain something from them.

So when these local people were no longer in need of food, they stopped coming. Because in all likelihood, the church wasn't meeting their actual spiritual needs. Surely these missionaries thought they were: they were preaching the Gospel, and offering the Sacraments, and hosting worship services. But was that meeting the actual spiritual needs of the people in that place?

Jesus says: People come with a need for food, and they come with a need for something deeper. For spiritual sustenance. For something that will sustain their hearts and minds during difficult times.

Just as I came to my friend’s door three times a week for our New Testament class: hungry for bread, and hungry for the companionship of eating that bread with a friend.

I think this is a question we must ask ourselves as we seek to do the work of ministry. Because the work of ministry is the work of meeting the needs of our community. Are we offering something that meets our community's needs–both their physical needs and their spiritual needs? And are we meeting their actual needs, and not just what we think their needs are or should be?

Many of these human spiritual needs are the same thing they have always been. The need for community. The need to be known and loved. The need to feel heard, and the need to be accepted for who we are. The need to wrestle with the pain we see and experience that we don't understand, and the need to find meaning that sustains us through difficult times. It is the same thing that the Israelites needed in the wilderness; it is the same thing that the crowds following Jesus in the hills of the Galilee longed for.

But we have to be really honest about the fact that not everyone gets those needs met in the same way. Not everyone gets those needs met by singing hymns or listening to a sermon. Our job as the church is to listen, really listen, to people's needs and to respond in a way that actually supports them for who and where they are. To meet those needs in a way that honors their life experiences, their values, their interests, their longing.

After all, Jesus responded to different people’s needs in different ways. Some he preached to. To others, he told parables; others he met in the dead of night for long conversations about the meaning of life. Still others he went fishing with or ate dinner with. And for some, he knelt down and washed their feet.

We all have deeper needs–for love, for community, for meaning. And depending on our experiences–our traumas, our backgrounds, our cultures–our needs might best be met in different ways. Ways that require us as the church to be creative, to try new things, to go outside of our comfort zone. To step into the shoes of those who are different from us and experience their longing, their hunger. 

May we remember that is what Jesus is offering us: physical and spiritual sustenance that meets us right where we are. And may we seek to share that same bread of life with others.

Modified from a sermon preached at West Trenton Presbyterian Church on August 4, 2024