“Hungry
Jesus”
Easter 3B
15 April 2018; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
Today’s
Gospel reading is one of the many luminous Gospel stories about Jesus being
seen alive and well, more than he had ever been before, by his friends, after
his death on the cross. This one takes
place Easter evening, just after two of the disciples had dinner with a
stranger on the road to Emmaus, a stranger who opened the scriptures to them,
explained what had happened in the last few days, and whom they suddenly had
recognized as Jesus “in the breaking of the bread.” The two return to Jerusalem, tell the other
disciples, and as they are talking, Jesus again appears. And again, he asks for a meal: “Do you have anything here to eat?”
Hungry
Jesus! One would think that with a
perfected resurrection body, you would be the source of your own energy, with
no need for food. But here you are,
asking for meal after meal, like a growing adolescent with a serious case of the
munchies. First bread and wine with
scriptural discussion. Now, broiled fish
and more scriptures. Incarnation has
God being made fully human. Resurrection
has a fully human person being made God, but one who remains in real ways fully
human. Resurrected Jesus is hungry,
yearns, and still has scars on his body.
Perhaps
this is Luke’s way of telling us that this apparition is no ghost. Jesus is fully alive, with the vim and vigor
of the young man they had known before his death, with his appetites, hungers,
and yearning, intact.
I
suspect, though, that something deeper is at work here than just trying to
underscore the corporeal nature of Christ’s resurrection. The disciples on the road to Emmaus recognize
him by how he breaks the bread—a clear reference to the Eucharist. Later in the evening, in today’s story, Jesus
appears and the disciples and their companions are terrified. Jesus reassures them that he is not a ghost,
that it is truly him. Then, as a way of
consoling them and reassuring them, he expresses his hunger. He eats fish, the very food item he had used
with bread at the feeding of the 5000, an item he had used as an image for his
desire, his hunger, for his disciples to go out and catch people, just like
fish!
Hungry
Jesus! In your glorified state, you are
not self-sufficient. You need sustenance,
yearn for it, and the companionship that goes with it. You want companions, people you can share
bread with—cum panem. Remember that the group here is the
disciples and their companions.
There
is an important doctrine being taught here.
Sometimes
people suggest that the resurrection “undoes” the passion and crucifixion, and
somehow undoes the scandal of Jesus’ mortality.
But here Jesus shows them the wounds still in his body as a sign that it
is truly him—the resurrection has not erased the harm, the suffering. And Jesus shows them his hunger: he is not a
polar opposite of what he had been: once dead now alive, once mortal now God,
once earthly now heavenly. No. He is in a real sense a continuation of the
Jesus they had always known: Jesus the
party animal, who turned water into wine, dined with whores and crooks, and
welcomed all with a smile and open arms.
Hunger is part of being human. It has a way of making us feel more alive, by
sharpening our sense of need. Cicero said
“Hunger is the best spice.” Things taste
better when you’re hungry.
Hungry Jesus! You’re fully alive, and really enjoying that
bread and wine, that bit of roast fish, after three days without meals in the
tomb!
And it’s not just about physical
hunger. Hunger is pat of all our desire,
all our yearning. We are hungry
creatures. St. Augustine, in his Confessions, writes of a need in the
heart of every human being. Addressing
God in prayer, he says, “For you created us for yourself, and our hearts are
restless until we find our rest in you.”
In this view, all our hungers are rooted in a single hunger of the
creature for creator, a hunger only the creator can satisfy. There is a hole in the middle of each human heart,
and that hole has the shape of God.
This most basic and important need
in traditional Christian teaching can be satisfied only by the enjoyment of the
presence of God made known to us, whether in the end time, or in glimpses
through God’s indwelling spirit here and now.
In sacramental theology, it is re-presented by bread and wine.
This beatific vision is the Christian doctrine analogous to Buddhist
enlightenment and nirvana. It is the
Christian doctrine closest to the idea of gratifying desire in secular
hedonism. But in Buddhism, enlightenment
comes through abandonment of all attachments and eradication the feeling of any
need, through the negation of what it means to be human. And in hedonism, the sating of desire means
its end, at least for the moment. But in
Christianity the conscious enjoyment of God’s beauty satisfies all want, fills
every need, even while it stimulates ever-intensifying desire. The presence of God both satisfies our
hunger while it stimulates our appetite.
The
idea is expressed well in a line in one of my favorite hymns, one I hope is
sung at my funeral, one in the 1948 hymnal but not the 1982 one:
Joy and triumph everlasting
Hath the heav’nly Church on high;
For that pure immortal gladness
All our feast days mourn and sigh.... There the body hath no torment,
There the mind is free from care,
There is every voice rejoicing,
Every heart is loving there.
Angels in that city dwell;
Them their King delighteth well:
Still they joy and weary never,
More and more desiring ever.
“Do you have anything to eat?”
Hungry Jesus asks for food, invites companions.
Jesus is hungry for us to share with him. God yearns for us. Creator seeks creature just as we creatures
have a yearning for God. The great
neo-Platonist theologian known to tradition as Dionysius the Areopagite, the
proto-mystic of the church who inspired the desert fathers and mothers and the
Benedictines later on, in his writing On
the Names of God, at one point gives God the name, “Yearning.”
The idea is expressed in hymn 516,
by Italian mystic Bianco da Siena:
Come down, O love divine, seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with Thine own ardor glowing.
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
And kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.O let it freely burn, ‘til earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let Thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming. …And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace, till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.
Hungry Jesus tells us it’s OK to be
hungry, to yearn. Hungry Jesus bids us
offer him food, and offers to share food with us. Hungry Jesus appears to us in the faces of
all who hunger, whom we must feed. As
St. John Chrysostom taught, “If you are not able to find Christ in the beggar
at the Church door, you will not find him in the chalice.”
Yearning. Satisfaction. Companionship. Ever-growing
yearning. Hunger. Eat this bread, drink this wine.
Amen.
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