August 2, 2015

18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4: 17, 20-24; John 6: 24-35

There are so many ‘cache phrases’ in our lives: ‘it’s the lot of students to complain’ … ‘why can’t I go…they get to go’…’how come I got a smaller portion’…’how come they got a higher grade’…’how come you like xxx more than me’…how come I can’t stay up later’…why do I have so many rules’…and on and on… The result of all these ‘how comes’ is complaining. Another word is ‘mumbling’ or ‘grumbling’ and these are found in the readings today.

The Israelites had not even been ‘freed’ from Egypt for a month and they started to complain. Why did you bring us to this horrible place…we are all going to die. You don’t care about us…God doesn’t care about us. And God heard and God responded, “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them: in the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, so that you may know that I, the Lord, am your God.” David continues this in the Psalm Response, “The Lord gave them bread from heaven.”

In the second reading, Paul is writing to the Ephesians, specifically to the new Gentile converts in the community. Paul is telling them that they are no longer to live as they had been. (Note: in our reading verses 18 & 19 are left out…but these verses fit in to my theme today). Verses 17-20 follow, “So I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds, darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance, because of their hardness of heart, they have become callous and have handed themselves over to licentiousness for the practice of every kind of impurity to excess. That is not how you learned Christ.” Paul in so many of his letters lists the moral requirements of Christian membership as he concludes today, “and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth. “ (Ephesians 4:24) Just because ‘I always did it’ or ‘I like to do this’ or ‘What’s wrong with me engaging in this’ doesn’t make it as a follower of Jesus. How am I living Jesus? Is my life a duplicate of Jesus? Can people see Jesus in me? Am I living as a person who knows they are loved by God? Alice Camille in Exploring the Sunday Readings puts it this way: “St. Paul cautions us to consider that there are instances in which habitual patterns will betray us. The future won’t be born from old-think, and it won’t look like the world we’ve grown accustomed to. The renewed sprit won’t evolve from what’s-always-worked-for-me either. Conversion only happens when we admit a new thought. Change your thoughts, and your life changes.”

The bottom line question is am I letting God convert me to His way? So I realize that the path to heaven isn’t in a whole bunch of choices for what I WANT TO DO, but to live the life of Jesus. But it’s the lot of human beings to grumble.

In the gospel, Jesus’ listeners are not grumbling, but they will as the story continues in next week’s Gospel, but they do not understand Jesus any more than the Israelites understood God in the wilderness in today’s first reading. Like the Israelites who wanted to be fed, those hearing Jesus want a sign before they believe. They have no problem in believing in Jesus but they want to do it on their own terms.

Jesus is telling us today that everything happens on God’s terms…God has loved each of us first. If He didn’t want you or me to be born, we would not have been born. Each of us is created in His own image…as people who are loved and are needed to love. And God supplies us each day with the help we need to do this.

God gave the Israelites ‘bread from heaven’ (manna) to weather their desert journey. The manna appeared on the ground each day near the place where they were camped and the people could gather only what they needed for that day. If anyone wanted ‘more’ and tried to hoard it, the manna turned rotten and wormy. On the sixth day they could gather enough for two days (that day and the Sabbath). THIS WAS THEIR daily bread.

At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Eucharist giving us again ‘heavenly food’ which was His Own Body…He did this to sustain each of us on our daily spiritual journey.

When asked to be taught how to pray, Jesus gave the Our Father and it says, ‘give us this day our daily bread.’ Again Jesus is telling us that whatever each of us need each day to live as people of love, He gives us. How grateful are each of us? Do we take time at the end of the day and reflect on where we saw Jesus that day? Do we see that the struggles of living as Jesus said were handled by the Spirit? Did we swallowed our own pride and ways of doing things and opened ourselves to God’s help and grace?

Fr Michael Hayes in Homilies for the Whole Community entitled today’s Gospel as Expectations. I have found it very beneficial to spend time reflecting on each of these bullets:

• “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” John 6:26
• What can I expect from my religion?
• We may as well face the truth that multitudes of people have become disillusioned with their Christian faith. They are looking for something they will never find.
• We have waited for answers that never come. We have worked for causes that failed. We have searched for solutions and never found them—at least not yet.
• My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Mark 15:34
• What can we realistically expect from Christ?
• Somehow, somewhere, we have gotten the idea that faith in God is supposed to solve our problems, reduce the necessity of struggle, and virtually eliminate suffering.
• What can we expect from a Christ whose faith led Him to a cross? What can we expect from that Christ?
• His purpose is not to make life easy for us to handle, but to make us strong enough to handle life whatever it may bring.

Sacred Space 2015 shares:

“Jesus speaks bluntly with the people He had fed the previous day. He knows they came looking for Him because they had eaten their fill of bread. Why do I look for Jesus? Is it out of love or for what I can get?

The truth can be uncomfortable and make us defensive and even cynical. Or it can make us stop, look, reflect, and change. Lord give me the humility to follow the truth always, because it alone ‘will make me free’. (John 8: 32)