Our gospel extract today is taken from the beginning of chapter 6 of John's gospel. It is entirely devoted to his teachings on the Eucharist. The chapter begins with the observations: "A large crowd followed him, impressed by the signs he gave them by curing the sick." So impressed are they that they want to make him their king. However, by the end of Chapter 6, we are dealing with a very different mood: "As a result of this {his teachings on the Eucharist}, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer walked with him." Once again, they are victims of their own expectations. They were attracted to him because of his curing the sick. They failed to recognise the deeper needs that Jesus set out to address, that the Eucharist still addresses.
I have spoken here before about Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned in a concentration camp during the 2nd world war. Frankl, as a scientist, was an astute observer of the human condition. His captors spared his life because he was useful to them as a medical doctor. Frankl soon concluded that not all black and white. There were as many saints among the captors as among the captives, and as many sinners too.
We are familiar enough with the horrendous pain inflicted on the captives by the captors. Frankl lifts the veil on the pain inflicted on prisoners by their fellow prisoners. They pilfered food and clothing from each other when their backs were turned. Prisoners betrayed fellow prisoners for selfish reasons, and sometimes for self-preservation. Frankl survived the camp and he reflected on his experiences for twenty years before writing his book, which he called "Man's search for Meaning."
In that book he identifies four principal types of hunger, four primary needs that preoccupy mankind: the first hunger or need is self-preservation. Man will go to any extreme to postpone his demise. This is the need that Jesus met in todays gospel. The crowd were facing starvation and he fed them.
The next hunger or need that Frankl identifies is the need to propagate the species, or sexuality.
The next need is the hunger for power, or the need to dominate others. He maintains that it was this instinct that caused most suffering in the concentration camp. This is the second need that emerges from the crowd in todays gospel. They wished to make him king and he refuses.
The final hunger identified by Frankl is the hunger for meaning. The survivors of the camps were those who had some meaning in life, either a religion, a relationship or some deep political convictions. "If man has a why, he will tolerate any how."
The consumer society derives its energy and its dynamism from the fact that human beings are never satisfied. We always want more. There is a craving within us that is insatiable. The object of people's hunger will vary, depending upon their social or economic status. But once the basic necessities of life, such as food, warmth and shelter, and sex are met, other needs begin to emerge. This is what happens to the crowd in today's gospel extract. When Jesus had fed them, when he had satisfied their basic needs, other needs began to emerge.
The Galileans wanted to take him by force and make him their King. The Galileans were just one small tribal group among the twelve tribes of Israel. They wanted to make him their king, king of the Galileans not king of Israel. They sought to hijack him, and to exploit him for their own ends. Through him they would establish their dominance over the other tribes. This was the need he refused to meet.
When he realised what was going on he simply disappeared back into the mountains. In the not too distant future, he himself will be the bread that is offered, a lordship of care and a sign that in the Kingdom of God all will be fed. But the Lordship he has in mind is a lordship of breaking and sharing, a lordship of service.
He had already warned his disciples against this tendency to dominate: "Among the pagans, great men lord it over their subjects and they make their authority felt; this must not happen among you." Service, not dominance, will be the hallmark of God's Kingdom. In this way Jesus will satisfy the crowd's hunger for meaning. He rejects the lordship of domination, the destructive power which he sees all around him.
In saying no to the Galileans who would have made him King, Jesus gives us the model of Christian leadership, a leadership that must be free to give itself to all the multitude. That is the challenge of Jesus. Only when we share the little we appear to have will we discover how much we have left over. That truth can only be discovered by doing it.
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