“You satisfy the hungry heart, with gift of finest wheat. Come give to us, O Saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.”

In these “Dog Days of August,” so called because of the presence in the sky of Sirius, Canis Major, the Big Dog, the brightest star in the sky, in these hot and muggy days, Larry and I are each spending two Sundays, as you know, on Jesus as the Bread of Life.

Even in the “Dog Days of Summer,” when delicious fruits and vegetables abound, when tables are overflowing with peaches and corn-on-the-cob and tomatoes and zucchini and watermelon all the abundance of the land even in the “Dog Days of Summer” our hearts can sometimes be hungry.

“Come give to us, O Saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.” Lots of things can cause this sort of heart condition, the hungry heart. I’m sure that the physicians among us, even the heart specialists, have seen this sort of heart condition, seen it beyond the reported physical symptoms and complaints. A hungry heart comes from loss of a love, the rupture of a relationship, the loss of a job, depression, the betrayal of a friendship, the diagnosis of a serious illness, a tragic accident, a parent’s failing health, a child’s rebellion, global warming, a world at war—all kinds of things can cause our hearts to feel hungry for something more. We grow hungry for hope, hungry for love, hungry for God.

“You satisfy the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat. Come give to us, O Saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.” What is the bread of life? How can this gift, this saving gift, feed our hungry hearts?

I recently read the story of a doctor in New Jersey, Michael Nissenblatt, who has created a way to treat his patients’ hearts and souls, as well as their bodies. Dr. Nissenblatt is an oncologist and treats many for whom hope is elusive. He has sat with his patients, listened to their despair as they struggled to find meaning in the midst of the chaos created by their disease. He has been with them as they faced their shock at losing their sense of themselves as whole, healthy beings.

One Friday, Dr. Nissenblatt, a practicing Jew, bought a loaf of challah on his way to the hospital to check on his patients. Challah is a braided loaf of bread, blessed and eaten by Jews on the eve of every Sabbath. That day, he observed that one of his patients, an elderly woman, was losing hope as her fear of pain and more suffering overcame her. The doctor went to his car and got the loaf of bread and gave it to her. And he saw that the bread, carrying with it God’s promise of abundance and life, gave her the strength to carry on.

As time went on, he began buying more and more loaves each Friday and giving them to all of his patients, Jewish or not. And in each encounter he experienced the same feeding of the heart. As this went on, two men, who had lost their wives to cancer, volunteered to help out, picking up loaves at the local bakery and distributing them on his behalf. Since 1993, over 20,000 loaves have been distributed.

All God’s children, Jewish and Christian, share the understanding as stated by the prophet Nehemiah that “for their hunger, you gave them bread from heaven.” This bread from heaven is both physical and spiritual food. It feeds bodies and souls alike. It offers strength and solace when our hearts are hungry and sustains us through the times when we feel lost and afraid.

The earliest biblical story of this saving bread of life is the story of the gift of manna to the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. It’s in the Book of the Exodus. Do you remember it? Our great God had brought the people out of slavery in Egypt. God had vanquished their enemy and parted the waters of the Red Sea to bring them into the freedom they so cherished. But, lo and behold, God’s timeline after that was not their timeline. Remember how they would wander in the wilderness for forty years before seeing the Promised Land?

Oh, maybe forty years doesn’t seem so long to us any more. It sure doesn’t seem as long to me as it used to! But then it represented a lifetime. A whole lifetime of exile in the wilderness, the desert. And the people who’d thought they were just going to bounce straight from their horrible old life to their fabulous new life grew tired and irritable and hungry. They complained about their leaders, Moses and Aaron, who didn’t seem to be able to make things better. They complained about everything. In that unfamiliar, scary time, you see, their hearts were even hungrier than their bodies, and they were even tempted to give up on God.

But God didn’t give up on them. God never does, but just like the Israelites, we’re prone to forget that when the going gets really hard. And I don’t mean the sort-of-hard days when the best cure for a bad mood is to go shopping, as the bumper sticker would have you believe. I mean the really hard times, the wilderness times, the exile times, the fearsome times, when our hearts are so hungry we don’t think there’s anything that can fill them up.

“Come give to us, O Saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.” Remember God’s gift in the wilderness. One morning when the hungry-hearted people arose and the night’s dew dried, the ground was covered with a fine flaky substance that was white and tasted like wafers made with honey. And they asked, “What is it?” “Man-hu” in Hebrew. “What is it?” And that became its name—manna. And they were given instructions to only gather as much as they needed one day at a time, enough for each person for each day. “The bread of angels,” the Psalmist called it. Jesus called it “our daily bread.”

The Book of Exodus tells us that God gave this gift of manna to the people in response to their complaining. And if you didn’t know the rest of the story, you might think they’d learned their lesson, once and for all, after such an amazing miracle. But no, then they get thirsty and complain. So God sends water. Then they long for order and God sends the Ten Commandments and all the law. But even then, when Moses takes too long coming down from Mt. Sinai, they turn away and build the Golden Calf.

In the midst of that experience of wandering in the wilderness, their hearts were so hungry nothing could fill them up. It’s just like parents trying to feed teenage boys. No matter how much food there is in the house, it’s never enough! They’re still hungry!

But God continued to love them. And feed them. And teach them how to trust. And only after all this did God finally lead them into the Promised Land.

Can we see ourselves in this story, friends? We, who so quickly forget that gift of love and daily bread. We want more, don’t we? We want answers. We want quick fixes. We want security. We want storage bins for all our stuff so as never to worry about daily bread. We want immunity from pain. We want to be in the Promised Land at all times and in all ways; but when we’re not, we complain—and God hears. God, instead of turning away, offers us grace through Jesus Christ.

“I am the Bread of Life,” he says. This true bread is from God. It comes from heaven and gives life to the world. “I am the Bread of Life,” he says. “Come to me, and you shall not hunger. Come to me, and you shall not thirst.”

A Lutheran pastor from the Pacific Northwest region, Daniel Erlander, has written a great little book called Manna and Mercy: A Brief History of God’s Unfolding Promise to Mend the Entire Universe. He calls this whole thing I’ve been describing this morning “The Wilderness School.” The Wilderness School is this experience we, as God’s people, have over and over again. This experience of finding ourselves lost in some kind of wilderness—literal wilderness like the Israelites, or the variety of spiritual wildernesses that we have all known. Times when we’ve been uncertain and afraid, our hearts so very hungry for assurance and love.

The Wilderness School is where we learn that the only daily bread that we’re sure we’ve got is the Bread of Life, God’s gift of grace. It’s a gift. It comes from God. It’s the food God gives us for our wilderness times, the food that satisfies our hungry hearts. Like God’s love, it is new every morning. Like manna, it might be just a little spiritual wafer of faith, found after our tears have dried and the sun rises on a new day. But it tastes like honey. And it is enough.

The Wilderness School of life is where we learn to trust and to put our whole trust in God, who creates us in love and who, every day, gives us bread for the journey.

“All I have I needed, thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Notes:

The story of Dr. Nissenblatt is taken from “Leaven for our Lives: Conversations about bread, companionship and faith—with recipes.” By Alice Downs. 2002. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications.

Erlander, Daniel. Manna and Mercy: A Brief History of God’s Unfolding Promise to Mend the Entire Universe. 1995: Fortress Press.

© Patricia E. Farris, 2003. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved