Satisfying the Hunger

Studies in the Gospel of John #10
John 4:31-42; Exodus 16:1-12 

“Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles" (Psalm 103:1-5).

“Fonny: chews on the rib, and watches me: and, in complete silence, without moving a muscle, we are laughing at each other. We are laughing for many reasons. We are together somewhere where no one can reach us, touch us, joined. We are happy, even, that we have enough food for Daniel, who eats peacefully, not knowing that we are laughing, but sensing that something wonderful has happened to us, which means that wonderful things happen, and that maybe, something wonderful will happen to him. It’s wonderful, anyway, to be able to help a person to have that feeling (from If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, page 114, New York: The Dial Press, 1974).”

The disciples walked up to Jesus as he was finishing his conversation with the Samaritan woman. They were dumbfounded that he spoke with this woman, a mixed race person, an inferior, an unclean individual worse than a Gentile. But their silence meant that they had already learned something. Whatever justification there might have been in the past for Jews to have no dealings with the Samaritans, this no longer held true.

It was now obvious to them that the Christ of God had come to earth, full of grace and truth, and the good news concerning the presence of the Christ in their midst must be proclaimed to all people, not just the Jews. They had brought food, so they urged him, “Master, eat something.” But Jesus replied, “I am already full—my hunger has been satisfied.” The disciples, missing the spiritual truth asked, “Could someone else have brought him some food?” Jesus went on, “I satisfy my hunger by doing what God sent me here to do.”

What did God send him to do? What had he done which satisfied his hunger? He made a connection with the Samaritan woman. It was not just any connection. It is so easy to connect with people of our own socioeconomic class, educational level, cultural community, with someone we have shared values with. So often our churches become little more than extensions of other social venues we participate in, because we, like the disciples have not yet understood the miracle and meaning of the Christ being made flesh in the world.

God’s will was done because in the words of singer Traci Chapman, Jesus went: “Across the line. Who would dare to go, over the bridge, under the track, that separates?” God wants us to make connections with people that we do not normally connect with. That’s the power of the Gospel. That’s the miracle. Every time we connect with someone who does not have what we have, think like we think, sing like we sing, play the games, know the slang, know the stories that we know, we are reconnecting humanity from its disconnectedness. And when people get connected to the Christ through us; they begin to recover their own Christlikeness, their own specialness, their own giftedness, their own inheritance as children of God.

In James Baldwin’s novel, "If Beale Street Could Talk," Clementine, known by all as Tish, and Alonzo known by family and friends as Fonny, had been childhood friends, but as this chapter unfolds, they had just discovered each other as lovers. They had gone to her father and announced their plans to be married. They had a small one-room basement apartment in Greenwich Village; they were poor. Fonny had no regular work, but his real gift and calling and vision was sculpting, which Tish supported fully by working a menial job. Just as they came together and were discovering their own love, their own happiness, Alonzo encountered his friend Daniel Carty on the street. He had known him from high school. Daniel, at age 23, had already had a hard life, and already showed signs of being beaten down by all that young black men were facing in white supremacist America in the 1960s in New York City. He had served two years in jail for stealing a car that he had never seen, and was distraught and depressed.

Fonny and Tish were just exploring their togetherness, their love. They had no money. But they invited Daniel to their place, listened as he shared his story, took turns holding him as he cried in their arms and held on until he would stop and rest. Finally they fixed him a sumptuous soul food meal. Baldwin suggests that this enhanced, rather than took away from the newfound love that Fonny and Tish discovered with each other. Love has a generative quality. Real love is contagious; it’s infectious. It does not lose its power. It reaches to the highest mountain. And it flows to the lowest valley. Love never loses its power. Love enables us to connect with others. And the connection grows, it spreads, it heals, it reveals, it renews.

As Jesus says to his disciples in "The Message" paraphrase of John 4:35ff: "Take a good look at what is right in front of you. The Samaritan fields are ripe. It's harvest time! The harvester isn't waiting." Likewise the time for us to make meaningful connections with all sorts of human beings, who may or may not be very different from ourselves, is like some of our credit card bills, past overdue.

The Samaritan woman went to her village and spread the love Jesus had demonstrated towards her. She connected with her people, people who had perhaps looked down on her, maybe they felt sorry for her at one time, but something had changed. She approached them with a new boldness, a new attitude, a new self-confidence. She had discovered her own inheritance as a child of God. But the Samaritans did not stop with her testimony. They went to meet Jesus for themselves.

The first encounter that people have with the Christ is with us. This is why we need to seek to live holy lives, lives set apart for love, and lives committed to making connections with all kinds of people from all kinds of places. We need to let God heal us, to allow us to let go of preferences, biases, and predispositions about who is and who is not in our circle. Some of our circles need to be abolished anyway, because they exclude rather than honor the God of inclusion, the God of connection.

All of us have a hunger that needs to be satisfied. It is a hunger for the bread of life. But it is not bread that we will eat, but like Tish, it is "bread" that God would have us prepare and give to others. Share your food with others and in so doing, become the Christ in the world. The Word (the Christ) must become flesh and live among the people of the world, in order for the complete satisfaction that God has for us to be achieved--that we connect with each other in love.

“We are happy, even, that we have enough food for Daniel, who eats peacefully, not knowing that we are laughing, but sensing that something wonderful has happened to us, which means that wonderful things happen, and that maybe, something wonderful will happen to him. It’s wonderful, anyway, to be able to help a person to have that feeling.”

Oh, something wonderful had happened to Jesus. He had gone across the line and connected with the Samaritan woman. And this something wonderful happened to her as well, and convinced her that her life could be different, that she could experience God’s recovery through the Christ. And Jesus was full, because as James Baldwin wrote, “Its wonderful anyway, to be able to help a person to have that feeling.” It is time for us to satisfy our hunger. It is time for us to experience being full through connecting God with someone else, and ultimately our being connected with him or her. In this we satisfy the hunger.