The Hunger Inside: How the Meal Jesus Gave Transforms Lives
by Bradley Roth, Paraclete Press, 2022 (224 pages)
Reviewed by Marlene Kropf
In a welcoming, conversational style, pastor-author Brad Roth offers both a personal story of encounter with the Eucharist, and thoughtful historical and biblical reflections on the role of the Eucharist in the church’s life and witness. His purpose in writing, he says, is to leave a “bread crumb trail” to the Lord’s Table for others to discover the richness of the feast to which all are invited.
Raised in an evangelical Mennonite family and congregation in Illinois, Roth grew up with infrequent exposure to the Lord’s Table. Like many other Protestant churches, his congregation celebrated communion only a few times a year. And when they did obey Jesus’ command to eat and drink at the Lord’s Table, the church taught him that the bread and cup were symbols, nothing more. Yet a hunger persisted within him for something more – for a more vivid experience of the living presence of the Risen Christ. Though he knew Jesus, he had not encountered him.
No one was more surprised than he was, Roth says, by the turn of events which brought him to recognize that more was going on in communion than he could account for with his mind alone. His heart was being stirred and his body enlivened by the palpable presence of Jesus. Hours after the ritual, he could still feel the lingering frisson of joy emanating from the meal.
To understand his own experience more fully and to encourage others to do the same, Roth went “deep and wide” in his search to illumine what God is doing in the communion ritual and what is happening in those who partake of God’s gifts. In one of his strongest chapters, he lays a foundation for the idea of a “sacramental universe” in which God’s presence and activity are known not only through the revelation of scripture but through the molecules and atoms of the material world itself. He draws on a wide array of thinkers and writers as varied as Augustine, Hans De Ries, Immanuel Kant, David Brooks, and Marie Kondo to support his vision of the sacraments as “the way God communicates his grace into human life in real time.”
Having established a sturdy foundation, Roth goes on to examine biblical themes traditionally associated with eucharistic theology: sacrifice, communion, hospitality, thanksgiving, remembrance, real presence, marriage supper, and mission. What stands out in these chapters is their breadth, clarity, and blend of scholarly sophistication with on-the-ground experience and vocabulary. For example, he uses contemporary metaphors to good effect when he speaks of the Lord’s Supper as a “superconductor” of God’s action or the encounter on the Emmaus road as “the Christian Big Bang” because it is the moment when the Christian sacramental universe unfolds. Likewise, his description of real presence comes alive when he says, “Jesus is not present because he has hacked reality and imposed himself, but because reality was always meant to be open to him.” Such fresh comparisons and analogies will delight and enlighten readers.
In the midst of theological explorations, Roth does not avoid some of the thorny questions surrounding communion: Who can participate? What about children? What is the relationship between baptism and communion? His discussions are generous; even when his study leads to conclusions that satisfy him, he finds what is worthy in varying viewpoints.
A feature of Roth’s eucharistic theology that many will appreciate is his attention to Anabaptist voices. Though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant traditions have given exhaustive attention to the Eucharist, Mennonites and other Anabaptists, with few exceptions, have not explored this territory in depth.
An original contribution of Roth’s thinking is the connection he makes between “Gelassenheit” and the bread and wine of communion. Describing Gelassenheit as “Anabaptism’s little treasure,” Roth defines this German loan-word as the stance of disciples who are being transformed as they “yield to the will, ways, work, and presence of Christ.” In a brilliant analogy, he perceives the miracle of communion as a similar transformation: the bread and wine yield to the presence of Christ and become a kind of material expression of Gelassenheit, representing “bits of mended reality, a reality that depends on and finds its fulfillment in the risen Christ who in his resurrected body is not limited to a local presence in heaven but can be anywhere with his people.” The Bread of Heaven indeed!
Despite the thoroughness of Roth’s work, he misses a maternal aspect of communion that would have enriched his book, especially in his treatment of Jesus’ words, “This is my body … this is my blood.” Since the early days of Christian history, theologians such as Irenaeus and Chrysostom perceived Jesus as our Mother, feeding us during gestation and nourishing us at his breast in the blood flowing from his side. “Christ himself is food,” they agreed, not as a theological abstraction but as a warm and intimate feeding like that of an infant at her mother’s breast. The 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote similarly:
Our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself and does most courteously and most tenderly with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life … our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side.
In a final inspiring chapter, “Ite missa est” (“Go, it is dismissed”), Roth makes a strong connection between the celebration of communion and the church’s life of mission. He says, “The grammar of Christian worship isn’t a period, but a colon. You have been gathered, you have heard the word, you have been fed at Christ’s table: now go forth.” What follows are
heartwarming stories – an account of what happened when his own congregation made communion a centerpiece of their life for a year as well as stories from other faith communities.
With regard to the Bridgefolk community, both Roman Catholics and Mennonites will benefit from reading The Hunger Inside. The book offers Roman Catholics an inside look into the mind and experience of Mennonites who have not been formed in a sacramental world view; it can also refresh and renew their own understanding and experience of Eucharist. Because of Roth’s attentiveness to scripture and especially to Anabaptist history, the book can also provide a reliable pathway for Mennonites who desire a deeper and broader understanding and experience of the Lord’s Supper. Though Roth may have intended the book to offer a “bread crumb trail” toward such understandings, many readers will find instead that they have been served huge chunks of nourishing whole-grain bread on their journey. Let’s eat!
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