Why are we here? It would have been better if we died in Egypt! What will we do?! This week’s readings carry the tone of frustration and impatience, often portrayed as ungrateful complaints. Yet, in looking closely, these readings echo cries of fear born from an unsettled people, a people who know change is imminent and demand to know how they are going to survive. 

This, to me, is not only what the Israelites and disciples were asking but what we today are earnestly wondering as well. Can (or will) we survive the revolutionary change we know is needed to have a livable society, one that has broken with the capitalist extraction that is killing our community, ourselves, and our earth? 

The readings from Exodus, and John’s bread of life discourse, reflect the sounds of a community in the throws of change, or perhaps even on the brink of revolution, itching for sustenance in this upheaval. Held together by Paul’s words to the Ephesians, the necessity of this change is evident: “You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self…your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s likeness.” We must become radically new persons to live into “the justice and holiness of the truth.” 

However, this revolution, whether it be the formation of God’s people in the desert, the new Gospel community forged by the early church, or the many profound social upheavals we are living through today, is heavy and unsettling work. It is labor that makes us hungry – and thus demands sustenance. It necessitates assurance that we can survive becoming a new people. 

The womanist theologian Delores Williams famously centered this theme of survival (in contrast to a simplistic liberation) in her book Sisters in the Wilderness. In this book, Williams posited a God who allows us to see ways to carve our path of survival. Williams demonstrates this through the figure of Hagar, who, having been cast out to wander and die by her oppressor, has her eyes opened by God to resources for her and her child’s survival. This “survival hermeneutic” can give us a new way of approaching today’s readings, to see in them a new perspective on the resources we need to sustain us in transforming society. What could allow us to survive the radical transformation around us and undertake the work of revolution? The readings point to two interconnected things: material goods such as food, and networks of community care. 

The Exodus and Gospel texts reflect that the giving of bread is a gift and a commandment to responsibly enact this gift of care for others. Note how God tells Moses the people are to only gather today’s portion, to stop thinking in logics of scarcity and individual accumulation. Gather food and distribute responsibility. The Gospel text on the other hand is often spiritualized, given Jesus’s claim of giving life-giving bread that lasts for eternity. However, consider that this reading comes just after the feeding of the 5,000, a miracle of materially providing for people. If we hold the bread of life discourse in context and in tension with the Exodus distribution of Manna (physical bread from heaven), maybe we can resist efforts to spiritualize the concept of the bread of life, and instead take seriously the practice of providing bread for others as a path to survival. 

What if we took the material reality of the bread of life more seriously and focused on the need to literally feed people, to care for people, and make them whole? Would we then be able to not only to survive but to live into a new way of being, not only because we would be physically nourished but because in the very act of community care we became the new people we want to be? As Delores Williams notes, “not only God but also the community must work on behalf of its survival and the formation of its own quality of life” (113). Today’s readings highlight a connection between material sustenance for revolution and the work of community nourishment. We will find our sustenance in the feeding of others. 

As we continue to watch the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian people, as well as other war-torn countries – all the while knowing the future will continue to hold a dire decrease of Earth’s food supply, given our failure to stem the climate crisis – we feel the urgent need for bread from heaven. We sense not only the threat to our future bread, but the need to feed people today such that we can have the strength to become a new humanity. Thus, we ask, will we survive the age to come? We cry out with the Israelites and disciples, rightfully demanding our God provide sustenance in our striving for survival. If we succeed it will be because we did the work of being a community, materially caring for one another.

“Messenger”  ~ From Thirst, Mary Oliver (2006) 

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
    equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. 

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
    keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
    astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
    and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
    to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
    that we live forever.

This poem by Mary Oliver offers a reminder for how our work can, in fact, be the labor of love and creation that feeds ourselves and others. May we all be so blessed and so brave as to do the work of loving the world and be, in time, freed from all exploitative and dehumanizing work.

The resurgence of labor unions forming across the country embodies the hope for new communities of sustenance and survival. Unions are communities of laborers learning to rethink their daily work and, by extension, forming communities of care. I have had the privilege of being a member of my own union (FGSWCWA) as a graduate student at Fordham University.

Forming this community with my peers has not only radically changed my relationship to work and capitalism, but it has instilled in me a depth of solidarity to my colleagues and all who labor. 

While imperfect communities like any other, labor unions can be places for us to learn to break with the systems of capitalism and provide sustenance for one another as we forge new ways of being. As my union fought for our first contract (which we won, bringing large raises and improvements to our university), we also learned to show up for each other, in some cases literally feeding and housing one another. It is this very hard work of community forming that, to me, has provided the nourishment and grounding to believe we can survive the radical changes needed in this world. The burgeoning of new unions is a glimmer of hope that we are learning to see the means of survival in our own labor, to form our daily bread and ensure all are fed.