He who satisfies

“I am the bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”

We heard last week of the boundless love of God that even after everyone was satisfied, there were twelve basketfuls left over.

You know, human beings are almost impossible to satisfy. We are restless, always reaching out beyond ourselves, always hungry for new experiences, more things, more achievements, the grass is always greener on the other side.

We are restless, often unhappy in our own skin, in our own life. We spend hours, days, weeks, sometimes who lifetimes dreaming of leading a different life, a better life than the one we have been dealt. Even our families don’t satisfy us. Too ordinary, too humdrum, not exciting enough. We always crave more. We dream of the life that is always just out of reach, the one that will start one day when I will fulfil all my potential.

Why is this? The Bible says that we are made in the image of God. At root, a human being is made with the God like desire for communion with all things yet we are finite beings confined to our frail bodies that are all subject to decay and death.

The only thing that can satisfy us is communion with the boundless reality that is God Himself. He who transcends time and space.

In one man, the risen Jesus of Nazareth, we have a person who in the doctrine of the church is a meeting of the finite and the infinite, of flesh and spirit, of heaven and earth. He is the first fruits of the new creation when we will be eventually and eternally satisfied, where decay and death have no place, where pain and tears are no more.

The awe inspiring thing about the risen Jesus is that he shows us the way to our own futures. We see our own future, as resurrected people in a restored and transformed creation.

This is the glorious hope of Christian people. But there is still more. For that glorious future, premised on that history changing event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is available to us now. It can become real to us in our lives now when we come to Christ. When we in all humility come to the source of all things and can experience the liberating forgiveness, mercy and love of God.

As Paul writes, this is the one hope of your calling – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Lord and Father of all, who is above all, and through all and in all.

The one who satisfies, now and forever. By the inviting the Holy Spirit into our hearts, Christ, who binds heaven and earth together – is uniting us with the sourceless source of all things.

God is the only one who can satisfy our deepest longings and desires – because being made in the image of God as we are, the only thing that can satisfy us ultimately is God Himself.    

We play that scenario out every time we commune with God when we share bread and wine together.

In Jesus, the first fruit of the new creation, the fusing of heaven and earth, we feed on Him, the source of life and in doing so, we commune with the true source of Life and Love itself.

“I am the bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”.