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19 December. John chapters 5-6
Understanding John’s gospel is not easy: he writes in an oriental style in which many themes are woven together in a way that does not work in English. Resurrection, faith, the Last Day, Heaven, eternal life – all these appear in this passage, and each deserves a book in itself. So I have decided to focus on one verse “no-one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me” (6:44).
However brilliant Jesus’ teaching may have been, that alone would not have drawn crowds of followers or made committed disciples. Indeed at the end of this passage, following his very difficult teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (6:66). Rather, it is a sense of spiritual hunger that draws people to Jesus, then as now. And hunger is a personal experience. We all know what it is to be hungry in an ordinary sense, but some of us can only guess what it is for others to experience the hunger of strict dieting, lengthy fasting or starvation.
The contemporary Christian writer Tom Wright says that the Father’s drawing of those whom he has given to the Son “takes place in the silent, secret places of the human heart”. How can one describe a silent experience in words? What does it mean to feel hungry for God, to be aware of being drawn to him? St Augustine famously wrote of the heart that is restless until it finds its rest in God. That resonates with my experience. A continuing sense of “feeling restless for God” sometimes takes the form of being unable to relax, even though there is nothing I could name that is causing me any anxiety or pain. Once I have spent time in prayer or praising God, then I can relax more easily.
Your own experience of spiritual hunger, of being drawn to God, of having a real need for him, may take a different form. What matters is that we can feel this spiritual hunger when it comes, recognise it for what it is, and know that God will provide the spiritual food in Jesus to satisfy it.