Exodus 16:1-17

            {Prayer}

            The season of Advent is a sacred time of anticipation and preparation. It’s a season of comings and goings, of traveling to visit loved ones, to return to places and people to whom we feel a belonging to. Songs of the season speak of these travels in joyous language. “Over the hills and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go!” and “O’er the fields we go, laughing all the way!” These songs paint a picture of holiday travel by horse and sleigh that probably strike us as quaint and fun, maybe even a nostalgic for a time long since passed away.

            But many parents have experienced that not all children travel joyously on holiday trips. Small children almost universally ask, “Are we there yet?” just a few minutes into a long drive. And many often state how they need to go to the bathroom just as you drive through a town with options. When you asked prior to the town, no one had to go, but now that you are two minutes past it, everyone has to go. Children ask for a snack or to stop for food long before their parents would like to stop, sometimes not because they are hungry, but because they are bored. In a certain way, we can see a similarity here with the Israelites, whom we read about in our Old Testament reading from Exodus.

            “The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death’” (16:1-3).

            Moses is taking the Israelites out of Egypt, out of bondage and slavery, and toward the Promised Land … and the people are grumpy. They’re tired, they’re hungry. Each of us can relate to this somehow. Maybe we relate to Moses and Aaron, who know that the people will be happy when the journey is over and they’ve arrived at their destination, but still have to deal with the grumblings of their people in the meantime. Or maybe we relate with the Israelites, who, after a month and a half after leaving Egypt, or who, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, are a bit “hangry”. In their discomfort, they are wondering perhaps if they’ve made a big mistake in leaving Egypt. But God, like a caring parent, provides for them. He provides them plentiful quail every evening and miraculous bread every morning, bread that they don’t even have to make themselves.

            We hear this story again in our Gospel lesson. A little bit of context here. In the beginning of John 6 we come upon Jesus having just fed a crowd of five thousand people. Because of that amazing miracle, the crowd began to call Him a prophet and sensing that the people meant to make Him their earthly king, Jesus fled to the mountains by himself. After walking on water to meet up with the disciples going to the other side of the lake, the crowd of people catch up with Jesus the following day. And so Jesus says to them, “you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you” (John 6:26-27 NLT).

            Both Moses and Jesus tell their people not to be confused about where their true satisfaction comes from. Moses reminds the Israelites that their daily bread is from the Lord. Jesus reminds the Galileans that they are thinking with their stomachs and not with their spirits. Earthly bread is perishable … eternal life is forever.

            Jesus goes on saying, “‘I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now on give us this bread.’ Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty’” (John 6:32-35).

            Both Jesus and Moses warn us not to put stock in bread that is perishable, that goes stale or molds. Bread from heaven, it lasts forever, and it’s right in front of us … so why don’t we see it? We don’t see it because we aren’t looking for it. Instead, we’re chasing after things that provide temporary satisfaction. It sounds easy to focus on the true bread from heaven, right? We know that the things of this world are temporary, we know that nothing will last forever, and yet so many of us find ourselves starving after the next big thing. We look through the Christmas catalogs, drooling over what we would love to feast on next.

            And here’s the thing, if we sometimes have a hard time keeping out hearts set on the eternal Bread of Life and not earthly things … we’re not alone. The apostles and later Christian writers often learn the truth of Jesus’ words the hard way. Ancient church father Augustine wrote on the very first page of his book Confessions, “you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” For hundreds of pages after he wrote that, Augustine tells the story of his own misspent childhood. Years that were wasted chasing after the admiration of his peers, the comforts and thrills of romantic relationships, and prestige in his career. Augustine tells the story of his restless heart. Nothing, he says, could satisfy the aching hunger within him … nothing except God.

            In looking briefly at the long and winding spiritual journey of Augustine and the desert wandering of the Israelites … we need to take a moment and think about our own winding journeys. Have we ever been so certain we wanted something particular, only to be disappointed when we didn’t get it? How did you react? Thinking back to the hungry kids in the back seat of the car on a long road trip … maybe one of yours, or maybe it was you back in the day … you were finally given a plate of food, only to immediately claim that you were no longer hungry.

            The fickle child in the backseat is much like the crowds in our Gospel reading. Knowing that child, perhaps you know how this story ends. Jesus’ words and deeds, while initially a cause for excitement, are totally rejected. The people cannot accept that this Bread of Life is coming to them through a man. Jesus, who is promising them the Bread of Life, is too familiar to them. Some of them have maybe seen Jesus grow up. They’ve seen Him around town a time or two. The crowd knows his parents. And all this talk about eating his body and drinking his blood is just too strange. So, despite the crowd of five thousand having been miraculously fed … they leave. They leave Jesus because He doesn’t fit into their expectations.

            As an Advent hymn says, Jesus is the “long-expected” one. As we begin this Advent season, we ponder a Savior who comes to us as bread. We do so as we sing the words of this song:

            “Come, Thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set Thy people free; From our fears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, Hope of all the earth Thou art; Dear desire of ev’ry nation, Joy of ev’ry longing heart.”

            Jesus, who offers us the joy of our longing hearts, will come in an unexpected way. We’ll find Him soon in a messy manger. He’ll be lying on a bed of hay in a feeding trough in Bethlehem, in the House of Bread, like the true nourishment He is. So let us prepare our hearts to receive Christ, our bread from heaven, which does not perish, but satisfies every mortal longing and brings us eternal life. Amen.

            The peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord, now and forever. Amen.