Convincing Your Cravings

John 6: 1-14

 

We crave all kinds of things in our lives--from foods to physical touch.  One of the things I want to explore in this sermon is what is at the root of those cravings?  What do those cravings tell us about a need we have in our bodies or in our lives?

 

Let me conduct an unscientific experiment. 

Imagine you come home and go into the kitchen.  A plate of warm chocolate chip cookies sits on the counter just out of the oven.  Their smell hits you as you walk in.  You do not feel hungry.  No one else is around.  What would you do?

 

Some of you think the answer is obvious.  Others of you may be asking, “Why would I eat a cookie if I wasn’t hungry?”  Some of you might be saying, “Well I might eat one.”  Others of us are literally having a visceral response.  Our mouth has started watering.  We can smell those cookies.

 

Those of us who can smell the cookies probably crave sugar a lot.  We would be what one doctor and nutritionist calls ‘sugar sensitive.’  Sugar sensitive people would inhale that plate of cookies—even if they were not hungry--because hunger is not their driving motivation.  What triggers their desire to eat is the smell of the cookies, the anticipation of how the cookies will feel in the mouth, and the warmth and sweetness of the chocolate.  Even the feeling of having a cookie in hand will have a powerful association for them.

 

Those cookies mean love, they mean comfort!  The cookies are friends and lovers!!

 

 

 

The cookie test is just one way to know whether or not you are sugar sensitive.  Another way is to remember the size of the bag you carried at Halloween.  Children who were not sugar sensitive carried those small orange plastic pumpkins.  We carried pillowcases.  Their candy lasted until Easter.  Ours was gone in three days.

 

Well, this little experiment actually comes from a best-selling book POTATOES NOT PROZAC, by Kathleen DesMaisons.

 

She says that there is actually a physiological condition that can cause some of us to crave sugar.  It has to do with the chemicals in our brain.  These chemicals work with the blood sugar in our bodies and if they are out of balance they can cause mood swings, low energy, irritability, depression, low self-esteem, and a whole host of other things. 

 

One of the ways psychiatrists have dealt with some of these symptoms is to prescribe Prozac, which helps to restore the chemical balance in our brain.  But DesMaisons claims that Prozac only deals with one of the chemicals that can get out of balance, and that proper nutrition—at least for folks who crave sugar—is a better approach to stabilizing our mood swings.

 

She claims that the miracle drug, or food I should say, for all of us who are sugar sensitive is the potato.  She says that eating a potato before you go to bed every night raises your insulin level and moves the needed chemicals to your brain.  Potatoes may even improve your dreams!

 

 

Our cravings take many forms.  We could substitute that plate of cookies with any number of things:  love, attention, intimacy, power.  Eating the whole plate of cookies signals that we definitely have a craving for sugar.

 

Going from one relationship to another may signal we have a craving for love. Being obnoxious or doing reckless things may signal we have a craving for attention. Having multiple sexual partners may signal we have a craving for intimacy. A pattern of betraying others for our own gain may mean we have a craving for power.

 

The word ‘crave’ actually comes from the Old English word ‘craven’ meaning ‘to beg.’  Some of the definitions for crave or craving include:

          To have an intense desire for

          To need urgently, require

          To beg earnestly for; implore

          To have an eager or intense desire

 

Sometimes our cravings or desires can be unhealthy for us, or a source of sadness or pain.  Many of us remember the oscar winning movie from several years ago, The Piano, starring Holly Hunter.  It is a movie layered with craving and desire.  The character played by Holly Hunter is named Ada.  She is a Scottish mute woman who craves the music, the voice, she has with her piano.

 

As the movie progresses she craves more than just the music of her piano and she winds up having an affair with a man named Baines. His desire for Ada is overwhelming, to the point that he is willing to risk everything to have her.  At the end of the movie Ada has to make the most difficult choice of all.  A choice between her beloved piano or her life.

 

Our cravings can also be a source of transformation for us.  They can move us beyond ourselves.  One writer has said, “When I look at the moon, I am reminded of the great distances that can be traveled on the wings of our desire.”

The story is told of a man who was riding the train home from work and noticed a beautiful woman looking out the window of a rundown building.  He was so overwhelmed by his desire to find out more about her, that one day he got off the train and went into the building where he had seen her.  The building was a dance school and he started taking lessons.  A wonderful teacher helps him discover how to enjoy the music and relax into the movements.  He learns to live in the moment and to trust his body.  His life is transformed because of the catalyst of desire.

 

 

There is always a deeper cause at the root of our cravings.  That deeper cause may be physical or it may be spiritual.  You know there has been a lot of research done on the connection between the physical and spiritual.  Today, physicians, psychologists, and theologians are telling us that our body and our spirit are not as separate as we think and we need to value the body more than we have.

 

For centuries—actually since the New Testament—there has been this dualistic view of our personhood.  A split between our bodies and our spirits.  In Western thinking especially, our bodies were thought to simply be a shell for our spirits.  This led to thinking of the body as bad.  The body was associated with matter, the physical, material world which is weak and evil.  While our spirits corresponded to the spiritual realm—the good, the realm of God.

 

There was actually a type of religion in the New Testament period that denied the humanity of Jesus because of this thinking about the body.  This religion claimed that Jesus only appeared to be human.  Well, people like the apostle Paul dismissed this pretty quickly as heresy.  Paul and the early church were clear that Jesus was both human and divine.

 

I think that understanding of the incarnation of Jesus—God became a body, human flesh, and lived among us—is important for us to hold onto.  Our humanity, our bodies are a source of revelation.  We are not angels or spirit beings.  We have a body and in this body we know both the ecstasy of a relationship with God, and the agony of our weakness and shortcomings.

 

Our bodies can tell us something about our craving for God.  Now, we might not get great spiritual insight from craving a chocolate chip cookie, but we do understand something of the nature of desire in that craving.

 

The psalmist uses the language of physical craving over and over again to express desire and longing for God.  We sang one of those psalms tonight.  Psalm 42: “As the deer thirsts for flowing streams, so my soul is longing for you, my God.”  Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God, I long for you; my soul thirsts for you; my body seeks for you as in a dry and weary land without water.”

 

In our scripture reading from John we get a hint of the connection between our physical cravings and our spiritual cravings.  The large crowd kept following Jesus.  They were drawn to him, they craved him.  They weren’t quite sure what the source of their craving was.  Maybe it was curiosity about all the miracles they had seen him do.  Maybe it was a longing in some of them to be the recipient of Jesus’ healing power.

 

I don’t think it is coincidence that Jesus winds up feeding this crowd with loaves and fish.  I think the story illustrates for us that there is a connection between the body and the spirit.  Our physical hunger can teach us something about our spiritual hunger.

 

In case we miss that point from this part of the story, Jesus drives it home later on in this chapter. (verses 22-34) We are told that after Jesus feeds the crowd, he spends some time alone on a nearby mountain.  The next day, the crowd goes looking for Jesus. They are craving him so badly that they go all the way into the next town looking for him—and they find him.

 

Jesus says to them, “You are looking for me not because you saw the miracle, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  Jesus knows that their physical hunger has brought them to this place.

 

Then Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”  The crowd thought Jesus was talking about the manna that fell from heaven in Moses’ day—they were still focused on their physical hunger.

 

Jesus replies, “Moses was not the one who provided the manna, my parent God gives the true bread from heaven.  That bread gives life to the world.”

 

I can imagine mouths are watering—all this talk about bread. With saliva dripping from their lips, the crowd says, “Sir give us this bread always.”

 

In that moment Jesus connects body and spirit saying:  “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

 

What cravings have brought you to Jesus today?