"I am the living bread . . . from heaven"
Sunday Word: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/081212.cfm
1
Kng 19: 4-8
Eph
4: 30 – 5:2Jn 6: 41-51
This
past week we have witnessed an impressive display of power. It is quite literally something outside this
world. A car-sized rover, after
travelling for more than eight months and hundreds of millions of miles out
into deep space beyond our precious home we call Earth, landed at a precise
location on that closest red planet called Mars. If one sat down and calculated all the
possible scenarios for this perilous journey, it is a wonder both of scientific
technology and impressive human genius.
Yet,
despite all that expended power, it will not last forever. That probe, traversing around that strange
world, will need to recharge itself. And, like the more basic water we drink
and the food we eat, eating recharges our batteries as we say. Fortunately, our
folks at NASA are not strapped with searching how to supply water and food to
humans on that space vehicle.
Our
Gospel this Sunday provides for us an insight into what became and perhaps
still is among Jesus’ most challenging teachings. Our Lord promises spiritual nourishment
that will last forever: “I am the bread of life” he proclaims “. . . this is
the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die . . .”
Here Jesus compares himself to the generous manna from heaven of which we heard
last Sunday. Jesus is like that food, provided by God for the wandering people
in the desert with Moses, which gave them power for their journey ahead. Likewise, he had provided water for them to
drink; more food for their journey.
Then
Jesus adds: “. . . whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Now that is a food we would all enjoy - that
which gives eternal life. To our Catholic ears we may hear an allusion to the
Eucharist – the sacred Body and Blood of Christ. However, to those of Jesus’ time, what they
heard was scandalous, blasphemous, or mad on the part of Jesus.
“How
can he say I have come down from heaven?” the crowds wondered. They knew his parents, Mary and Joseph. “He’s just one of us!” they implied. Yes, true but far more which they did not
see, accept, or simply didn’t realize. There is the point of John’s Gospel and
a challenge for us today. Do we see it?
To
help us understand, John makes an important connection with the Old Testament. It may help us to confirm our faith as it did
for the early Christians. That Jesus
Christ is indeed “from heaven” and faith in him is food for our journey.
But,
the people “murmured” about Jesus. So
too did the early Hebrew people in the desert complain about thirst and mutter
to Moses about starvation. Moses turned
to God with whom he had a personal relationship and God, from heaven, provided
for them.
Likewise,
in the first reading we hear of the prophet Elijah, hiding in the desert in
fear of his life after he killed the pagan prophets of Baal, about to
despair. Elijah relinquishes all his
prophetic power and just wants to die.
But, God intervenes through his angel and provides for Elijah, food and
water to drink, for his continued journey.
All
this seems as background to the Gospel. Far more what Jesus supplies, his own
person, his mission of death and resurrection, is like but more than water to
drink, manna and quail to eat, or bread and fish to feed thousands along the
hillsides of Galilee. All this came from
God. Jesus from heaven like the manna now
provides himself as the food – “bread from heaven to eat.”
We profess our loyalty to live in Christ and by Christ. In him we find food for our spiritual life journey. The
Eucharist is the place we go, the food we eat, for our journey. There we find a real time encounter with the
risen Lord in our midst and the people of God, our brothers and sisters in the
faith, who are made into a community by Christ which lives in and through him.
But,
this Sunday, it seems, we are called to reflect on our own perceptions of what
Jesus has made. We forget that the
Church is both divine and human. We
murmur like the ancient people who could not see past Jesus’ humanity - “Who
does he think he is saying these things?”
All
we may see and become disturbed by is the sin of the Church – the human
dimension in constant need of reform. If all we see is scandal, arrogant
leadership, poor pastors and abuse of power, then we may as well despair like
Elijah. But we forget the divine presence in the Church which makes it Holy. We
don’t see beyond the humanity.
John’s
Gospel invites us today to look beyond
and look in to the fullness of who
Jesus is: God from God, light from light,
true God from true God. If we do
that, then Jesus and living in him and through him in his Church is the bread
that provides power to “live forever.”
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