The Food We Need

The message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Wednesday, March 8, 2023.  The Bible verses used are John 4:31-38.

            One of the questions we should always ask ourselves, when we read a passage in the Bible, is “Why is this passage here?  What is God trying to teach me?  What am I supposed to learn from this?”

            Sometimes the answer will be obvious, sometimes not so much.  Sometimes we have a hard time understanding why certain things are in the Bible.  Sometimes we wish certain things we not there, because we’d rather not have to deal with them.  But nothing in the Bible is there by chance or coincidence.  As the Apostle Paul wrote to his friend Timothy, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.”  Everything in the Bible is there for a reason.  There is something we’re supposed to learn from every passage.

            Our passage for tonight is really kind of a sidelight, almost an after-thought.  It comes right in the middle of the story of Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman at the well.  In verses four through thirty of this chapter, we’re told that Jesus is traveling through Samaria, He meets a woman at a well and He starts taking to her–which in context was a really strange thing for Jesus to do.  Ultimately, Jesus tells this woman that He is the Messiah–which is another strange thing for Jesus to do, because He rarely said that publicly–and the woman goes back to town and tells everyone what’s happened.  And right after this passage, in verses thirty-nine through forty-two, we read about the townspeople coming out to talk to Jesus, Jesus spends a couple of days with them, and many people come to believe.

            And right in the middle of this is this little story about the disciples wanting Jesus to eat something.  And Jesus responds, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

            You know, I’m sure the disciples loved Jesus, and believed in Him, and were happy to be around Him and all that, but there had to be times when it was really frustrating to be with Jesus.  Because He so often would say things like this.  Enigmatic things.  Things that made them go, “Huh?  What’s He talking about?”  In fact, in John Chapter Sixteen, when Jesus is telling the disciples some things they need to know just before He’s arrested, the disciples say, “Now You are speaking clearly and without figures of speech.”  You can just hear, in those words, the relief they have that for once, they can understand what Jesus is saying and they don’t have to ask Him about it or wonder about it.

            But of course, in our passage for tonight, the disciples don’t understand.  When Jesus says, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about”, they’re thought is, where did Jesus get food from?  Did someone bring Him food?  And they were probably thinking, why doesn’t He share it with us?  Because, after all, the reason Jesus had been alone to talk with the Samaritan woman is that He had sent the disciples to town to buy food.  So they had to be wondering just what was going on here.

            Jesus, of course, finally tells them what’s going on.  He says, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.”  He then goes on to talk about the fields being ripe for harvest and the harvest being eternal life, and that’s usually where we focus when we read this passage.  But today, I’d like to just stop where we are.  I want to focus on that statement we just read:  “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.”

            It seems to me that there’s a lot we can learn from that statement.  It seems to me–and I do this as much as anyone, so don’t think I’m criticizing you–but it seems to me that we spend an awful lot of our time on earth worrying about material things.  Food, of course, is one of them, but not the only one.  We spend a lot of our time and effort making sure we have “enough”.  Of course, what we call “enough” varies from one person to another.  And most of the time, for most of us, “enough” is more than what we have now.  And so we have to keep trying to get more, because we need to have “enough” and what we have now is clearly not “enough”.

            Now, obviously, we need some.  We do need to have food, or we won’t live.  And we need clothes, and a place to live, and transportation, and things like that.  But I suspect most of us–maybe all of us–have more than just enough to meet our basic needs.  The vast majority of Americans have more than just enough to meet our basic needs.  And yet, for a lot of us, it’s still not “enough”.

            And yet, for all our worrying about material things, most of us are not happy.  According to the most recent poll I could find, only forty-one percent of Americans say that they are happy.  All the stuff we acquire, all the things we have, all this time spent trying to get “enough”, does not make us happy.  

            What does make us happy is what Jesus said.  Doing God’s will.  That’s the real food.  That’s the food that does more than just keep our bodies going.  That’s the food that keeps us going in every way.  Mentally.  Spiritually.  Emotionally.  Doing God’s will is the food that gives us satisfaction.  It’s the food that bring joy.  It’s the food that brings peace.  

In Ecclesiastes Chapter Three, we read that to find satisfaction in all your work is a gift from God.  That’s what Jesus was talking about when He said His food was to do God’s will.  That’s the satisfaction that kept Jesus going through all the things He had to go through.  Through all the days and nights facing Satan in the desert.  Through all the days walking along dusty roads.  Through all the arguments with the Pharisees.  Through all the days working Himself to the brink of exhaustion healing people and driving out demons.

And that’s the satisfaction that kept Jesus going in His last days on earth.  It’s what kept Him going through His betrayal by Judas.  It’s what kept Him going through the mockery and the beatings and the whippings.  It’s what kept Jesus going when He was hanging on the cross.  It’s what made Jesus able to say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  

Through all of that, Jesus knew He was doing God’s will.  That was His food.  Doing God’s will was more important to Him than anything else.  It was more important than the pain.  It was more important than his need for rest.  It was more important than comfort.  It was even more important than knowing where His next meal might be coming from.  The satisfaction, the joy, the peace, that came from doing God’s will was Jesus’ food.  It was all He really needed.

And when you think about it, it’s all we really need, too.  Again, we need certain things to keep our bodies going.  But when you think about what most of us really want, it’s the things that Jesus had from doing God’s will.  Satisfaction.  Joy.  Peace.  Those are the things we really want, right?  Those are the things we get when we do God’s will.  Those are the things we get when we live in accordance with what Jesus said and when we put our faith in Him as the Savior.

            You know, when you read the gospels, you never see Jesus worrying about the future.  And you can say, well, He was Jesus.  He knew the future.  And that’s true, but remember what He knew about His future.  We just talked about it.  The betrayal.  The beating.  The whipping.  The painful death.  Yes, Jesus knew His future, but He knew His future on earth was not going to be good.  He would, of course, be resurrected, but He was going to have to go through an awful lot to get there.  

And yet, as far as we can tell in the Bible, Jesus never worried about any of that.  Jesus had peace, because He knew that His future was in God’s hands, and following God’s will gave Him peace.  Following God’s will was all the food that He needed.  It was all of everything that He needed.

            And you know, in a sense, we know our future, too.  We know, just as Jesus knew, that we are going to die.  We don’t know exactly how or when, but we know it is going to happen.  And if we have faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior, we know that we, too, will be resurrected.  And we will have salvation and eternal life with Jesus in heaven.  And that should give us peace, too.  Our future, too, is in God’s hands.  If we follow God’s will, that can give us peace, just as it gave Jesus peace.  It can be all the food we need.  It can be all of everything that we need.

            I like to eat, and you probably do, too.  But the food we really need is the food Jesus had:  to do the will of God the Father.  If we have that food, we will have what Jesus had.  We will have the gift of finding satisfaction in our work.  We will have joy.  And we will have peace, the peace that can only come from following God.