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Welcome to the Anglican parish of St. Andrews Wimbledon where I serve as vicar
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How do you fare when you are hungry? I know for me it's not good. I get irritable, distracted
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hard to focus on anything. Actually in those moments I realised I am no better than my
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three-year-old son. When I'm hungry, I can't cope. Jesus Christ in the Gospels was in the wilderness
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for 40 days without food. So it's hard to imagine what kind of hunger that would have been like
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physically. And precisely at that moment, he was tempted to turn the stones into bread to satisfy
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his hunger. And he said something quite amazing in response. Jesus said, it is written, man shall not
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live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. There's nothing wrong with
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bread. Our bodies need bread. But Jesus is saying our souls need even more. Our souls need to be
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nourished by the word of God, says Jesus. As the story continues, we see Jesus is the one who suffers
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temptation in the wilderness on behalf of all his people. He's telling a whole new story about the
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human race that will be faithful to God when tempted. And wonderfully, this same Jesus who's
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faithful in temptation is the one who offers himself as the bread from heaven, the word of
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God that satisfies our deepest soul longings so that we don't need to be hungry for God anymore
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Could it be that underneath so many of our hungers and our restlessness and our distractions
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is that deep soul hunger for God. If that's us, Jesus tells us how it can be satisfied
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through the word of God
