August 17, 2024 – Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The game I most recall playing during my childhood was “Hungry Hungry Hippos.” Now, my family and I did not own the game, nor did my best friend. But I did have a few friends who owned this game. The game board featured four colorful plastic marble-gobbling hippopotamuses (or is that hippopotami?). The goal was to be the hungry hippo that ate the most marbles. You’d bang on this lever over and over and the hippo’s head would raise up and shoot out, as if it were on a long pole, and then come back down to earth, trying to pull any marbles that were underneath it back to your home base. It was a fast game, accompanied by squeals and jostles, and it begged to be played repeatedly. I never really thought about why the hippos were trying to eat little white marbles; I just knew that they should be eaten with speed and without fear in order to be declared the winner.

Fortunately, we humans are not engaged in a speedy marble-eating competition. But have we perhaps lost our marbles and tried to satisfy our hunger with whatever the world offers us? Are we in search of real food? Are we seeking food that fills not only our bellies but our bodies? Regardless of how we fill the emptiness, we are designed to crave the bread of life that Jesus freely offers to us and to all who hunger. Only Jesus can satisfy our longings and fill our emptiness.

This is our fourth week in the cycle of John the Gospel-writer talking about bread, and it gets stranger each week. In the peculiar passage for today, Jesus talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He says that if we don’t chomp on his body and blood, we won’t have life in us. But if we will feast on him, he will raise us up on the last day. [If there are any visitors we haven’t seen before, now would be a perfect time to blatantly say that this is NOT the Gospel lesson that I would choose for someone’s first experience with the church!]

And then there’s this whole “abide in me and I in them” notion that Jesus mentions. It’s far more than a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos with thoughts of “gimme marbles!” This is about forming a real relationship with the bread of life that has come down from heaven. But… that’s not all!

What Jesus is talking about is participation in a two-way relationship. It’s a relationship that requires us to be “all in.” Imagine, if you will, the difference between taking itty-bitty bites of cucumber sandwiches at a high tea versus gnawing on a plate of barbequed ribs done just perfectly and slathered with sauce. It’s about a life full of gusto, a life of focused faith, a life with Jesus at the very core of our being.

It’s a tough concept to swallow. Just like the religious folk of Jesus’ day, we have a hard time “digesting” this teaching that sounds like we are to be cannibals. We can comprehend the sacrament. We can accept that somehow, in some way, through a sacred mystery, our hungry, human selves encounter and consume Jesus in the wafer and the wine. We can rationalize that in our head and accept it without fully understanding it.

And I don’t think we need to fully understand it. Heck, theologians who have come before us describe what happens as a mystery. But let’s ask ourselves, can we chew on the bread of life in our heart? Can we be all-in, just like a kid playing Hungry Hungry Hippo? Can we keep our focus fully on Jesus?

Maybe we can follow the lead of our siblings who are marginalized and oppressed. They know what it’s like to be hungry for justice. To be hungry for hope. To be hungry for an equal place at the table of opportunity. To be… hungry for Jesus.

I am reminded of an African-American spiritual called, “Give me Jesus.” (It’s LEVAS #91, if you want to look at it.) The singer asks to be given Jesus at all times – in the morning, at darkest midnight, at the break of day, at death, and in song. The words of the chorus go, “Give me Jesus, give me Jesus, you may have all this world, give me Jesus.”

I think this beautiful spiritual captures what it means to eat and drink the true food that is Jesus. Yes, give me Jesus for a deep, ongoing, daily relationship. Let me be nourished in Word and Sacrament, lived out in community. Jesus is the Bread of Life for hungry, hungry humans. Let us feast!