But what if you come to Jesus and believe in him, and then you find that you are still hungry and thirsty? What if your child is malnourished and has a parasite and your husband has died of AIDS and you have no prospects for things getting better any other way but to believe that Jesus will be good to his word and feed and heal you and your family? It sets you to wondering.

Forty native pastors gathered last week in a mud church in a bush clearing in rural west Kenya to seek training for their ministry. Some had walked for two days to be there. Some rode bicycles that looked vintage 1960. None had paying jobs. Most didn’t have Bibles until we placed one in their grateful, calloused hands. And these are the pastors, don’t you know?! But all of them were hungry for the Bread of Life to be broken open for them to eat, eat, eat until they hungered no more.

They said they wanted more wisdom, these pastors, but they were wise enough to understand that Jesus is himself the Bread of Life, that his word is what we eat to be nourished forever, that when he makes these promises of being eternally satisfied, he is talking about food for the soul, not food for the stomach. And yet they also don’t know what to say to the people who profess faith in Jesus and are baptized in his name and then months later find that their lives have not changed much. They are still hungry and thirsty, wounded and weary, sick and sore. Some have fallen away from the church, if not from the faith. These pastors want to know what to say, because they have promised these people that Jesus is not like the witch doctors who always promise cures but never deliver.

We want to know, too, don’t we? We want to know what difference it makes to believe in Jesus. It sets you to wondering. Isn’t there any advantage that Christians get when they get in touch with the kind of power Jesus possesses—the kind of power that can turn five loaves and two fish into a meal that feeds 5,000 with twelve baskets of leftovers?

In fact, that’s what I preached on in that little village just two weeks ago today. Nineteen of us Wilshire people and a few others from Buckner Orphan Care International spent ten days offering our prayers and presence to people who are living in conditions that quite simply break your heart. We set up a makeshift medical clinic in a clearing and dispensed all the medicine we had in less than two days. More than 500 people showed up for help. About a third of them left untreated due to limited resources. I found myself sitting behind the tent the last day as the supplies ran out, inviting people to come by for a turn to sit in a chair and allow me at least to hold their hands and pray for them. I prayed for their healing, each one. I prayed for hope to be born in their hearts, and for help to come in time. I believe in the power prayer because I believe in the power of God. And yet I could not multiply the medicine by my prayers that day the way Jesus did with the limited loaves and fish.

I needed a sermon for that Sunday morning, partly because they had asked me to preach only the night before and partly because those of us who were there to help were getting discouraged, as we could not meet all the needs before us. So we gathered under several suspect tents held up by freshly cut tree branches and men who just stood there like tree branches holding them in place. We crowded in to avoid the rain that started as a drizzle and went to pouring as the service began. The music was remarkable. It began by the chiming of the hour on a pipe organ we lugged in from Dallas. No, just kidding. It started with someone setting the beat with a steady clap. Then they added the sway. Then the people joined in, first repeating the Swahili words that were sung, and then just knowing what would come next. Even us beat-challenged white people were into it. Joy filled the singing and chased some of the disappointment. A man then asked to give a testimony. He had been a drunk and had given up the spirits for the Spirit of Jesus. Praise God, he had been saved … the night before. I wanted him to wait awhile to see if it took. But then I thought, how long do you have to wait to know if it takes? Isn’t it until we die?

Then it was my turn. I read the story of the feeding of the five thousand that begins this sixth chapter of the gospel of John. I reminded them that Jesus did not make a meal out of thin air and serve it to the people. He told his disciples to give the people something to eat. And when they said they had only five loaves and two fish, he simply told them to bring what they had to him first. Jesus blessed it and gave it back to them to distribute. Somehow the food stretched beyond what was needed for every person to have enough. I told myself, as I told the people on that Sunday, that we are not in the manufacturing business; we are in distribution. We are not the cooks; we are the servers. We are not suppliers of resources; we are resourcers of supplies. Jesus wants us to bring what we have to him and not focus on what we don’t have.

We most of us operate most of the time on the premise that there is only so much of anything to go round and then it’s gone. This is the root of so much conflict in the world today. There’s only so much land. If you have it, I want it, so we’ll fight over it. Oil. If you have it and we want it, let’s go to war. Respect. Not enough to go round, apparently. We think we can have it only if you are deprived of it. We live on a scarcity model of things, but Jesus sees the world differently. He knows that his Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He knows that God in the beginning made something out of nothing, and he knows that God gets up before we do every day filling the earth with good things. Jesus operates on an abundance model, not a scarcity model.

So when the disciples bring what they have to Jesus and then give it to the people in need, Jesus makes what they have stretch far enough to meet the need. That was my sermon. That was the sermon I preached to people we could not serve because we didn’t have enough medicine. That was the sermon I preached to people with hungry children because we did not have enough food. That was the sermon I preached to people who did not have water to drink that was free of parasites.

What do you think? Coy? Cruel? At times it felt like that to me even as the words were coming out. But it’s not my job to explain miracles as much as to proclaim them. And yet there must be something more to all of this, don’t you think? I mean, would Jesus be so cruel as to promise bread and drink and not deliver? And why does Jesus feed some and not all? Why does Jesus heal some and not all?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that Jesus did not come from God to bring wonder bread for everyone and make sure no one ever goes hungry again. When Jesus did miracles, he was opening a wormhole from eternity to time, giving us a moment to glimpse the future life in the kingdom of God to come, offering a window into the promise of life when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. He brings the kingdom into view in moments like these when he feeds the 5,000 or heals the sick, so that we are encouraged to realize that this is in fact the way things will be when the kingdom comes in full. But by resisting the temptation to be nothing but a wonder bread maker now, we are set to wondering by God about that “more” that is to come. He opens the way for faith to see life differently.

Here’s the thing about things: they are always meant to be signs that point beyond themselves. But here’s the thing about us and things: we are always trying to make the things themselves the thing itself. We want bread, in other words, instead of the Bread of Life. We want pharmaceuticals instead of the Great Physician. We want eternity collapsed into time, rather than seeing time as tipping us toward eternity.

When you go to the mall to make your next purchase and walk out of there feeling more validated and valuable because of the thing in the shopping bag, you have made the thing signified into the thing, and it will never satisfy you for long. When you love another person as if your whole life depends upon that love, you have made your beloved into your god and dethroned the true God, who is love.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Moses was the first to tell us that after the children of Israel had tasted manna from heaven and wanted more. Moses said that God fed the body that way in order to give the people a taste of the Lord’s goodness, but their hunger would never be satisfied unless they ate up the commandments of God and let them be food for the soul. Jesus defeated the temptation of the devil in the wilderness by saying the same thing. The devil tempts us to take what God means to be a whiff of heaven and turns it into a longing for earth alone.

Some of you here this morning haven’t thought about your soul in years. You’ve been busy working on your body, working on your work, working on your house, working on your spouse, working on what cannot and will not last beyond the grave. And you are in the same position as those Jesus spoke to that day who thought of him as little more than a meal ticket.

Can you smell the bread-baking candles in the sanctuary this morning? Doesn’t it make you hungry? Don’t you just want to get up from where you are and let your nose lead you to the food? Well, what if you were to let that smell of bread lead you instead to the Bread of Life? What if your olfactory sense led you to make some spiritual sense of things for the first time in a long time? What if you were to get up and follow your nose to the Bread of Life instead and eat, eat, eat until you hunger no more?

Jesus gives us glimpses of heaven on earth so that we can see where God is truly leading us. If we stop with the thing and never get to the thing signified, if we stop with bread and never get to the Bread of Life, we will die like our ancestors in the wilderness. But if we take Jesus to be the Bread of Life and receive him as food for the soul, we shall receive all he promised. We shall never hunger again for things that do not satisfy.

As I held the hands of people with hungry stomachs and hurting children and prayed for their healing and help, I could see they knew something that maybe I had missed with my full stomach and healthy children. They knew to wonder, to wonder about more than bread, to wonder about the Bread of Life. Funny, I thought I was there to help them. Makes you wonder, huh?