Vienna
May 7, 1824
The long-awaited moment has arrived. Tonight the Imperial Royal Court Opera Theater, the premier concert hall in a city renowned for its music, is packed. Vienna's most distinguished citizens make their entrances to the theater in a swirl of grandeur. All Vienna is here, it seems, as the audience dazzles in a display of pomp and pageantry. At the center of this evening's festivities is the unveiling of another masterpiece from the world's foremost composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. The members of the audience, hungry with anticipation, make their way through the aisles to their seats. In the wings stands the man whose genius has brought forth this moment, the score of his last and greatest symphony in his hand.

The crowd's enthusiasm and energy at last give way to the silence that settles over the hall. As the concert begins, the patrons are enveloped in sound. The music fills their souls, suspending them in a momentary state of transcendent satisfaction. Their anxieties and concerns melt away as a magnificent choral explosion fills them with an ascending sense of awe. Though the night must soon draw to a close, the joyous music has reached the listeners, filling their emotions, flooding them with its power, and so transporting them, at least temporarily, into a realm where contentment feels within their grasp. In the next day's newspaper review, a critic would go on to capture the evening with a most fitting turn of phrase—it had been a "musical high feast."¹

Soul Food
Such a scene of enjoyment is one of many examples that we can all appreciate and relate to in some way. While every person's source of pleasure may not be writing or listening to music, each of us has something on which we thrive. Whether it be academic excellence, sports, friends, or a special relationship, this something is what makes our world turn. Like the audience members in that concert hall nearly two centuries ago, every time we do that certain activity or spend time with that special person, we feed our soul. As the Viennese critic so accurately expressed, such things can even be a sort of feast to us.

The thought of food and eating immediately brings to mind images of physical eating and considerations concerning our body's health and sustenance. Eating is central to our survival. We all are well aware that if a person stops eating, he or she will starve to death. So every day we eat, even several times, in order to ensure that our body has the fuel it needs. Eating, however, is not merely a necessary chore; it is a significant source of enjoyment. Descriptions of savory foods make our mouths water, and our cravings for good things to eat send us to all quarters. Whether it is a medallion of smooth, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate, barbecued salmon drenched with butter and lemon, or a juicy steak cooked to perfection, feasting on the food we love fills our stomachs and brings pleasure to both body and soul.

As we see from the story of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, however, eating is not limited to the physical realm. As human beings, we endure another kind of hunger, one different from the physical, that leads us to a different kind of eating. In the parts of our soul—the mind, emotion, and will—we sense a hunger for satisfaction and fulfillment that causes us to seek knowledge, entertainment, and pleasure through a myriad of means. Whatever we choose to do to satiate that hunger is our "food." Whenever we contact something outside of us and receive that thing into us with the result that it becomes our inner constitution, we are eating. If music is our source of pleasure, every time we go to a concert, or even just play an MP3 or CD, our soul receives melodies and lyrics. As a result, the music and the words become what we think of, dream of, sing of. Our soul is filled with what we listen to and we are temporarily satisfied, for we have eaten that music. The same can be said of any other activity or pursuit. Every person on the globe has some kind of psychological food. The question is not whether we are eating, but what we are eating.

A Nameless Hunger
Yet time and experience have proven that whatever our fare, our attempts to fill the inner hunger are futile. Although we may indulge ourselves with all the world has to offer, it seems we are never finally and fully satisfied. Despite success, attainment, and fleeting moments of fulfillment, the hunger endures. We are still hungry. That proverbial spot has yet to be hit.

How can this be? This hunger does not originate from our soul (that is, our psychological and emotional faculty). Rather, this hunger is within our spirit. We as humans are a composition of a body, a soul, and a spirit—the spirit being our deepest part. The insatiable hunger we sense in our soul is actually the emptiness in our spirit. In other words, the hunger that originates in our spirit passes through our soul, and as a result, we live under the misconception that if we feed our soul, we will somehow be happy and satisfied. Our spirit, nevertheless, retains the irrepressible yearning for something infinite, eternal, and limitless. Our unfilled spirit is the source of the nameless hunger that drives our seeking for something better than what the world has to offer. Deep within our spirit is a hunger that the world, if given all time and all resources, could never fill. This is the hunger that only Jesus Christ as food can satisfy.

Five Loaves, Two Fish
Masses of humanity congregated on a deserted mountainside near the Sea of Galilee, far from the cities from which they had journeyed. They had been there all day and the hour was late. The time to eat had come and gone. Yet there was no food to be had, and the thousands that had followed Jesus to hear His teaching and receive healing had grown very hungry. As evening fell, His disciples suggested that they send the people away into the villages to buy food. But the Lord was not willing to let them go away hungry. Instead, He had compassion on the famished company and asked His disciples to fulfill the seemingly impossible task of providing them with something to eat. The disciples' search for food to feed five thousand men, not to mention the women and children, turned up little: just five barley loaves and two fish that a young boy in the crowd had given them. Not bothered by the apparent scarcity of food, the Lord Jesus arranged the multitudes in groups of fifties and hundreds on the green grass, seating them as if for a feast. After He had done this, He took the loaves and fish, gave thanks, and distributed the food to the multitude. When the thousands received the food that Jesus gave them, they all ate and were satisfied. The broken pieces left over were enough to fill twelve handbaskets.²

Who was this person who possessed such a heart to care for the hunger of an immense crowd? Who was it who had the ability to provide food in such abundance? Within the people throbbed a longing to know and remain with the man who had fed them. When evening had progressed into night, Jesus departed from that place. But so intense was the crowd's desire to be with Him that they sought Him out, at last finding Him on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. As they flocked to Him, perhaps some among them were hoping that He would perform another miracle. Jesus, however, knew that the real reason they sought Him was not that He had performed miracles—it was that He had satisfied their hunger.³ Indeed, the people's mouths uttered the cry of their spirit when, after they had found Him, they called out to Him, "Lord, give us this bread always."⁴

Jesus' immense following was related to His provision of physical food—food that perishes. Much greater than His ability to miraculously multiply five loaves and two fish into an abundance of food, however, was His desire to give to the crowds the "food which abides unto eternal life."⁵ While the physical food He had given to them filled them temporarily, it was the hunger within the people for something lasting that He longed to satisfy. For this reason, when the crowds cried out to Him to have this bread always, He responded to them by shifting their focus away from the bread and fish He had fed them to the real food they needed. "I," He said, "am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger."⁶ The man before them was Himself the bread they sought. He Himself was the food that abides unto eternal life.

True Bread
Just as the crowds by the Sea of Galilee could not be satisfied with food that merely filled their bodies, we, too, yearn for eternal food. God knows our need, for He is the one who created it. As the one who created our need, He is the only one who can fill it. Jesus Christ, who is God Himself, is the bread of life, the living bread, the bread that came down out of heaven, the true bread, and the bread of God. As the bread of life, He comes to give us the eternal life—the life that is limitless, without shortage, and eternally plentiful.⁷ As the living bread, He comes to bring us into a condition of true life and vitality.⁸ As the bread from heaven, He makes us those who live in an atmosphere of peace and calm.⁹ Not only so, as the true bread, He genuinely fills us with Himself as reality, truthfulness, and sincerity.¹⁰ Finally, as the bread of God, He brings us into a deep and full relationship with God.¹¹ We can eat Jesus. When we do, we who are empty and in such great need of true nourishment are filled with Him as eternal, living, genuine, divine bread. In this bread, God Himself becomes our portion.

God wants us to eat Him. He is food for us to eat to satisfy our deepest hunger. God—the almighty Creator of the universe, the unique source of all things, the only divine, majestic, eternal, uncreated being—has become edible for our enjoyment and satisfaction. God is now available for us to eat. He desires not that we shrink back in awe; His greatest longing is that we experience Him personally as divine food. We can partake of the very God who created us simply by eating Him as our true bread. It is for this reason that Christ said that He was the bread of life.

Eating God
Just like the crowds by the Sea of Galilee so many centuries ago, today on this earth, billions of people are starving. Students at top universities are starving. Successful professionals driving European automobiles are starving. Wives with perfect husbands and ideal children are starving. Physical prosperity, intellectual achievement, and emotional fulfillment have all left us hungering for real food. The appetite the world's tenderest delicacies cannot allay, Christ as the bread of life can.

We can eat God, for He is true food. While our religious concepts concerning God have limited Him to a realm far apart from us, He Himself has come down to us as food with the desire that we eat Him. When we eat Him, He comes into us and fills us with Himself to sustain and satisfy us. Indeed, our satisfaction and fulfillment as human beings lie hidden in the words uttered by Christ to the hungry ones around Him: "He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me."¹² Christ is our real food. The Bible accordingly refers to Christ as "spiritual food," indicating that there is a spiritual realm in which we can eat Jesus Christ as our food.¹³ When we eat Him, we no longer have to look to physical and psychological food to provide the lasting satisfaction we seek. Today, our spirit is the organ with which we eat in the spiritual realm and the Lord Jesus as the Spirit is the food that we eat.¹⁴ We are now able to eat Jesus by receiving Him as the Spirit into our human spirit. In this way, the emptiness of our human spirit is filled with Jesus Himself.

This is what it means to eat Jesus. Only He as the real food can fill the hunger for something eternal within us. When we eat Jesus Christ, who is God, by believing into Him, the hunger that has plagued us throughout our years will cease. No longer will we compel ourselves to eat things that will pass away. For we will have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.¹⁵

1 A critic for Die Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung quoted in David Benjamin Levy, Beethoven: the Ninth Symphony (Schirmer Books, New York, 1995), p. 136 (back) 2 Matthew 14:14-21; Mark 6:30-44; John 6:1-14 (back) 3 John 6:22-26 (back) 4 John 6:34 (back) 5 John 6:27 (back) 6 John 6:35 (back) 7 John 6:35, 48 (back) 8 John 6:51 (back) 9 John 6:41, 50 (back) 10 John 6:33 (back) 11 John 6:32 (back) 12 John6:57 (back) 13 First Corinthians 10:3 (back) 14 Second Corinthians 3:17; First Corinthians 15:45b (back) 15 Psalm 34:8; First Peter 2:3 (back)

If you, too, have a hunger inside that refuses to be filled up with anything you've tried, you need God as your food. To begin a life of eating God, simply open up and speak these words to Him from deep within:

"Lord Jesus, I am empty and hungry. I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross to cleanse me of my sin. Thank You for rising from the dead as the Spirit so that I can eat You. Lord Jesus, I receive You into me right now. From this moment on, fill me with Yourself every day of my life. I love you, Lord Jesus!"