The young mother of two small children sent me an interesting email this week.  It would have been interesting anyway because I’ve known her and her husband for years.  They are two of the finest Christians and most dedicated parents I’ve ever known.  Since we have about a two-decade track record of friendship, this email would have gotten my attention anyway.  But, this week, it really got my attention because, just as I got her email, I was also reading Jesus’ words, “‘I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’” 

That’s what Jesus said.  This is what my friend wrote.  “I am so confused about my career!  I am driven to do well, I am balancing four jobs, making good money and feel totally unfulfilled.  I need something that I can sink my teeth in and call my own.  The problem is I don't know what that is or how to find out what it is.  I am praying but I don't feel a sense of direction.”

How many of us could have written that email?  “I feel totally unfulfilled.  I need something.  The problem is, I don’t what that is or how to find out what it is.  I am praying but I don’t feel a sense of direction.”  Mind you, she’s sitting in church this morning in another city.  I know her church well.  I’m guessing they’re singing songs with lines like, “Jesus is all the world to me.”  But, like more people than not, there is a disconnection between what the church asks her to sing and what her heart really feels.  Her church may ask her to sing, “Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all (Will Thompson, Jesus Is All The World To Me).”  Her private confession is more like, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”  The only problem with our hymns, as wonderful as they are for helping us worship, is that too often they rush us from problem to solution in one stanza.  It’s not that easy, is it? 

There are two emotionally operative words in what Jesus had to say, hunger and bread.  They beg two questions.  What is your private hunger?  What is your source of nourishment? 

Hunger.  What are you hungry for?  What private hungers drive you?  In his book, Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond has done some remarkable work researching the role that hunting and gathering food has played in human history.  It hasn’t been until the relatively recent past that mankind has learned how to grow and store enough food stocks to set his primary energy free for higher pursuits like education and research that have led to the scientific and medical breakthroughs that define modern life as we know it (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies, HighBridge, 1999).  As far as where we’ll get the next loaf of bread is concerned, we don’t consciously think about it. 

How many blocks can you drive in your neighborhood without crossing paths with a 7-11 or a Tom Thumb or an Albertson’s?  I’m certainly not diminishing the struggle the truly underprivileged face.  There are hungry people within the shadow of this church.  But, there are very few, if any, in this church who don’t already have the next several days of food in their pantry or refrigerator or have access to it in a nearby grocery store.  Again, we just don’t think about what it means to live like wild animals who literally expend nearly every stored calorie chasing the next calorie.  Frankly, though there were starving people in Jesus’ day, too, I don’t think Jesus was primarily thinking about those hungers that make our stomachs growl as much as he was the ones that make our hearts hurt, even as we’re singing “Jesus is all the world to me.”  He even said as much.  “‘I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.’”  What hungers was Jesus talking about if he was talking about bread that nourished people for eternity?  Any chance we already have a clue?

What unsatisfied hungers drive you, keep you from life’s higher pursuits?  Hungry for love?  Hungry for the attention that only success brings?  Hungry for accomplishments that you believe will finally justify the air you breath?  Hungry for something to sink your teeth in to call your own, that, once achieved, won’t leave you feeling unfulfilled?  What hungers drive you?

My friend was bold enough to make her confession and even let me borrow it for this morning.  So, taking a cue from her courage, I’ll make my own.  I’m hungry to know what it means to be able to live in this moment, right where I stand, in this moment, to be where I am.  Of all the things that surprise me about being almost forty-nine, that one surprises me most, I think.  I’d known about it for a long time, but I found myself staring right into that flaw in my soul over our vacation this summer.  The second part of our vacation was spent in Richmond, Virginia where Nancy’s niece was getting married.  Forty-five minute wedding in St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Patrick Henry made his famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech.  Beautiful!  Forty-five minute wedding.  Four hour reception!  Two hours into the party, I went back to the hotel. 

I can’t honestly tell you why other than saying that, even for me, there’s a limit to how far I can go on boiled shrimp and crab cakes.  I was restless.  Just needed to move on.  So, I did.  Nancy went the distance, stayed for the whole thing.  It wasn’t until she got back to the hotel later that I found out that the band that had been playing way too loud (I’m almost forty-nine), started playing the slower music.  I was restless, so I went back to the hotel.  And, I missed dancing with Nancy.  How many chances do I get to dance with Nancy where no one would make fun of a Baptist preacher dancing?  I was so restless to get to somewhere else I left the party early and I missed the dance! 

I make my confession because I’m willing to risk believing that I’m not the only one here who’s missed the dance because he doesn’t know how to live where he stands.  To not grieve over sins long forgiven.  To not spend even one more cerebral calorie thinking about, worrying about, a tomorrow that may never come.  Eddie Cantu, my college dorm mate just the other side of forty-nine, dropped dead two weekends ago in Alabama.  In good health, everyone thought, a stroke cut him down.  In one instant, he was gone.  He’s not worried anymore about what was or will be.  His death reminded me of the importance of living where I stand.  If we read Jesus’ words and sing hymns written about them, why is there such a disconnection between them and our inability to live in the only moment we have, to live where we stand?  

Jesus said, “‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me . . . and I will raise that person up on the last day.’”  He’s already taken care of our past, and just like we celebrated at the funerals of Virginia Canada and Martha Moore this week, he’s taken of tomorrow, too.  Jesus has redefined our past as forgiven and has already defined our future as resurrection people.  All to set us free to live in this moment, to live where we stand.  Do you think that’s a good part of what he meant when he said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32)”?

So, how do we get access to that kind of spiritual nourishment?  To the bread that satisfies that kind of hunger?  If our car is out of gas, we fill up at the gas pump.  When we’re hungry, we put food in our mouths.  There is something very physical, tangible, practical we can do to re-energize.  But, what about those hungers of the soul?  What do we do about those?  I give you Jesus’ words again, “‘I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’”

Our hungers only define us as human.  It’s where we go for nourishment that defines us as Christian or not.  When someone who is not a believer in Jesus says, “I’m hungry for peace of mind, a life of fulfillment and meaning and a sense of purpose for my existence,” we can say, if we’re being honest, “I hunger for those things, too.”  If we’re listening, our unbelieving friends are saying those things to us.  The trick is in listening to them without judgment.  People don’t always know how to tell you how hungry they are in neat, clean ways that we might define as morally pure.  The sins of others, like ours, are always the cries of a hungry soul.  But, if we’ll listen to them then they might listen to us when we say, “I’m hungry for the same things.  I think I’ll dine at the Lord’s Table tonight.  Care to join me?”  People are watching where we eat for dinner and what we’re eating.  It’s our greatest single opportunity to bear witness of our faith.  They know whether or not we’re really turning to Jesus for the only bread that truly satisfies.

T.B. Maston was, by any standard, the pioneer of Southern Baptist Christian ethics.  He was an eminent scholar, a truly brilliant man.  Some of those he taught went on to become pioneers in ethics in their own right and some of the greatest leaders Baptists have ever known.  What many people did not know about him was that his life was full of suffering and pain.  He and his wife had a son who was born with cerebral palsy and had to be cared for at home until he died well into his 60’s.  He had to get up several times each night to turn his son in his bed.  Maston lived near the Southwestern seminary campus in Ft. Worth and made weekly visits to widows and the impoverished people in the poor neighborhoods around the campus he taught at for decades.  He continued those visits into his 80’s even when someone else had to drive him.  It was like, no matter what life took out of him, he always more to give than life took.  How did he do that?

Joel Gregory writes of going to see Dr. Maston in the hospital near the end of his life.  “By his bedside were papers, one of which had sentence after sentence of closely written, cramped script.  (Gregory) asked him what he was writing.  (Dr. Maston said) that he was re-reading the gospels again and writing down something he learned about Jesus from each verse.  There . . . were hundreds of sentences, one for each verse (Joel Gregory, “Reflections on T.B. Maston,” Christian Ethics Today, Volume 9, Number 3, Summer 2003, p. 10)!”  For anyone willing to look closely, it’s possible to see why Dr. Maston always had more to give than life took.  Even as he lay dying, he was nourishing that part of himself that never would die on the only bread that truly satisfies forever. 

For us, perhaps getting to that bread begins with making an honest confession.  “I am so confused . . . I am driven to do well . . . and feel totally unfulfilled.  I need something . . . the problem is I don't know what that is or how to find out what it is.”  Make your confession, then listen to Jesus’ words.  You can tell Jesus anything.  He’ll never tire of listening. 

One day, a lady from the church called my dad to ask him how he was doing.  He’d been in poor health at the time and had grown a little weary of curiosity seekers.  Lot a lot of men, when my dad is sick he kind of likes to just roll up in a ball and be left alone.  So, dad said he decided that he’d just tell the church lady the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  He said, “I don’t think she’ll be calling again soon.”

Not everyone has the stomach for what we need to confess that leaves our “stomachs” feeling empty.  But, you can tell Jesus anything.  In fact, Jesus said, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if God weren’t already at work in our lives.  Jesus said, “‘No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.’”  Why are we here today unless we believe there is some connection between what we are hungry for and what Jesus has to offer?  Unless we believe that there is a part of us that only God can touch, heal and fill?  If there is something stirring in your soul, there are hunger pains that words can’t describe, maybe that you don’t even understand, it’s very likely the finger of God doing the stirring.  Tell Jesus about your hungers that just won’t go away. 

Then, listen very carefully.  The bread you seek has already come to you.  “‘I am the bread of life . . . the bread that comes down from heaven.’”  Jesus came specifically for the people whose lives are empty and drained, malnourished.  You can tell him anything, anytime.  You can tell him today and again tomorrow.  He’ll never grow tired of listening.  And, somewhere in that telling, confessing, listening and trusting, if you and Jesus can really get together, you will not only live forever after you die, you will start living right where you stand.