The ancient Israelites have been delivered from slavery in Egypt. You all know that story. God empowered Moses, and he performed lots of miracles and finally wrestled the Hebrew slaves away from Pharaoh. It’s the “Mother of all Deliverance Stories.” And so these former slaves are profoundly grateful — for a little while. This morning we find them doing what I find myself so often doing: whining and complaining. (I know none of you ever do that, so I’ll just speak for myself).

But I must admit, they’re quite dramatic whiners: “If only God had killed us in Egypt, where at least we had plenty to eat; but NO, Moses, you had to bring us out into this wilderness to let us starve to death. Thanks a lot for nothin’!” I’m sure Moses wanted to just say, “Shut Up!,” but God sent them quails and manna, bread from heaven. So, they quit complaining. But if you’ve read much further along, you know that they didn’t quit complaining for long. In fact, as far as I can see, God has experienced a more or less constant stream of whining and complaining from the beginning of humanity until this very moment, and I’ve certainly contributed my share.

Here’s one of my whines: “God, this discipleship you call us to is hard. Devoting our lives to you. Giving our treasure to you. Feeding the poor. Working for justice and peace. Being ready to die for you. This is serious stuff. And you know, sometimes I worry — just a little bit, just a wee bit— but still I worry that maybe it’s all just a bunch of made-up-hooey. How about a sign to let us know we’re on the right track? Yeah, I’d be a great disciple if you’d give some signs. Really, I would. Come on, just a little one, a tincy one, please, please, please.”

Now, I know none of you ever think like that, but I think lots of other people do, and they have for a long, long time. God must be awful tired of it, all the complaining we do, verbally or otherwise, about how hard discipleship is.

But you know, it strikes me that discipleship wouldn’t seem so hard if we really, really believed in our hearts and in our bones that God’s love is so freely and abundantly offered through Christ.

Because isn’t discipleship really just modeling that kind of love freely and abundantly offered? But often we don’t really believe it. And that, I think, is when we start complaining. And that’s when, in a thousand ways, we quit modeling love freely and abundantly given. That’s when we are likely to say or think, in our most private thoughts, “Okay, God, let’s see it. Send us a sign.”

That’s what the crowd wants from Jesus, too. Mind you, he has just miraculously fed them with bread. They follow him, and he says, “Look, quit following me around because you think I’m good for a free lunch. I’m not a meal ticket. Don’t you get it? I fed you to teach you about God’s gift. This isn’t about food which perishes—we’re not talking lunch here—this is about food which endures to eternal life.”

Jesus is using metaphor to talk about the love of God. You have to use metaphor and poetry to talk about God’s love because its so much greater than anything we can express directly. So he uses the image of food and sustenance to express the gift of God’s love.

You know, really, hardly anybody’s very good at accepting gifts. And these folks aren’t any better at accepting gifts than we are. They say, “That sounds good, what do we have to do?” But Jesus won’t let them earn it. He insists that it be a gift. So he says, “You just have to believe in me. Believe that God could love you that much. That’s all. Accept the gift.”

And now they respond just the way we often respond. They ask for a sign to make belief easier, to assure them that they will get something out of it. They say, “Make manna fall from heaven like in the days of the Exodus.”

And Jesus says, “You still don’t get it, do you? I’m not going to help you with your easy belief by showing you this sign.” What Jesus is asking for is not an easy faith based on seeing miracles or magic tricks. He doesn’t want people to follow him because he can do amazing things. That’s a faith from outside. A performance-based faith.

That’s a faith that’s easy to have. It’s easy to follow because someone performs well. That’s the kind of belief we have in quarterbacks, or starting pitchers. While they’re performing well, they’re heroes. But when they stop performing, they’re discarded.

That’s the kind of belief we so often have in each other. Sometimes we get angry with poor people because we try to help them and they don’t perform the way we want them to. Sometimes we believe in and love our children because they perform well. Sometimes married couples lose their faith in each other because one of them stops meeting the other’s needs. “You’re not doing what I married you for. You’re not giving me the income, or the status, or the attractiveness, or the sex,” or whatever.

That kind of performance-based belief doesn’t last. When the performance stops, so does the belief. Jesus knew that when God sent manna to the Israelites the first time, they believed — because they weren’t hungry any more. So they believed — but only until they got thirsty. Then God had to send them water from a rock. And that only held them for a little while. It’s endless, this performing for faith.

Jesus doesn’t want the crowd or us to have performance-based belief in him. So he won’t perform; he won’t do tricks. We don’t earn God’s love, and Jesus won’t allow the crowd to make God earn theirs.

And Jesus doesn’t want us to be disciples so that we can earn God’s bread. We don’t earn it. He doesn’t want us to serve because of what we think we might get out of it from the person we’re helping or from those watching, or even because we think it will get us into heaven. I think it was Thomas Merton who said, “The real test of discipleship is what you do when you think no one is watching, not even God.”

Jesus wants us to be disciples because we’re aware of how freely and abundantly God’s love is offered in Christ, and we are responding to God’s gift. We are responding with the gift of our own love.

So, he says, “Accept the gift. Accept in your heart and in your bones that I love you. God is giving you, right now, right now, the bread you need, the real, eternal, sustenance of God. Don’t believe in me because of what I can do for you. Don’t love me for that. Love me because I love you. Just because I love you. And I love you even when you fail me, even when you screw up, even when you kill me. I love you.”

So I wonder: can we stop whining and really believe that? Really? Can we? Can you? I hope so. It is the food that endures for eternal life. It is the bread of life. And we are offered it over and over. That’s never the issue. The issue is, can we eat it? Can we take it into ourselves, make it a part of ourselves? As St. Augustine says, can we “become what we eat? Can you?