18th Sunday Year B

Through the graces of this Sunday’s Eucharistic celebration may you realise your dependency on God and Jesus, the bread and source of life and thereby be transformed in your innermost being. Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Exodus 16, 2-4.12-15; Ephesians 4, 17,20-24; John 6,24-35: 18^th Sunday Year B)

This Sunday`s liturgy proposes that we reflect on the discussion of Jesus on the bread of life in the gospel of today. The first reading takes up the issue of the gift of manna from God to his people in the desert. In the wilderness they were hungry and longed to be satisfied. They were discouraged in the face of hunger. Their very real need for food put their faith in God to the test. The entire Israelite community grumbled to Moses and Aaron. Although it is God’s leadership that is being challenged, it is God’s appointed leaders who are being blamed. Since the people are in a very vulnerable situation in the wilderness, a certain amount of complaint is understandable. It is not the complaint itself but its content that is disturbing. The people prefer their former situation of oppression in Egypt with food rather than their present freedom without food.

The deliverance from Egypt was the founding event that shaped the motley (mixed) group of forced laborers into a distinctive people with a singular relationship with the liberating God. The events that surrounded the Exodus demonstrated again and again God’s preference for the descendants of Jacob. Now they are suggesting that it would have been better had God not intervened on their behalf. To them, freedom with a commitment to this liberating God seems a small price to pay for the satisfaction of the meat (fleshpots) and bread of Egypt.

One would think that the phenomenal character of the Exodus events would have prompted the people to develop a faith that would be unshakable amid the obstacles they were now facing. After all, God had conquered the forces of the pharaoh, a ruler who claimed to have divine power and whose subjects revered that power. Elements within the descriptions of God’s mighty acts suggest that the deliverance itself was a kind of cosmic battle and God was the victor. Now the people wished this to be undone. Such a desire is a total rejection of God.

God heard their rebellious grumbling and responded with provisions. They had longed for the meat and bread of Egypt, and God promises to send meat and bread from heaven. Once again, God demonstrates divine power and a preference for the Israelites. However, the reason for this display is that the people may know that the Lord is their God (v. 12). Their grumbling implies that they were willing to relinquish their privileged status. God’s action on their part shows that God is not willing to do so.

In the gospel reading the crowd who were fed by Jesus was able to encounter Jesus on the other side of the lake of Tiberias. First, Jesus is well aware of the reason the crowd have followed him. He knows it is not really or basically for any religious reason. They were not looking for signs of the presence of God in their midst. They had been fed by him and they wanted more of the same. Jesus turns their desire for bread into an opportunity to teach them about a different kind of food. The bread they desired would only satisfy them temporarily, but he had food that would endure. The crowds had been given bread without having had to work for it, but they know that normally they would have to toil very hard for it. Once again Jesus uses an idea they know well to teach a deeper truth. He reinterprets work. Manual labor produces common bread; a different kind of work is required for the bread of which Jesus speaks. When they ask him how they can accomplish the works of God (presumably the works of the law), he reinterprets work once again. The work of God is faith in Jesus. This is a bold claim, and the crowds demand that he give them a reason to believe in him. For example, God fed their ancestors with bread from heaven. What can he do? A startling challenge after Jesus himself has just provided them with bread. In taking up this challenge, Jesus argues that just as God gave their ancestors manna from heaven, so God gives them the true bread from heaven, the bread that gives life to the world. Through careful explanation, Jesus has led them away from a superficial search for physical satisfaction to a desire for the deeper things of God. More than that, he has prepared them for his self-proclamation: I am the bread of life.

This Sunday continues the theme of the bread of life. The readings again show God’s loving care for the people. However, on this Sunday the meaning of this feeding begins to unfold. The food that is given is not just bread from the earth; it is bread from heaven. We hear this in the first reading. The Gospel tells us that Jesus is the true bread from heaven. In many ways the Exodus story of the bread from heaven is similar to last Sunday’s accounts. God uses natural means to feed the people. Last week it was barley loaves; this week it is substance from the tamarisk tree and low-flying quail. However, something is different in today’s story. There is not an overabundance of food. In fact, the people are forbidden to collect more than they need for that day. The point of this story is not divine prodigality but total dependence on God. The bread comes from heaven not merely because the food seems to come down from the sky but because it comes from God. The restriction about collecting it was meant to emphasize this point. Our survival is in God’s hands, not ours. Jesus insists that he is the true bread from heaven; he is the real basis of our survival. The people followed him because they saw him as a source of bread; they did not realize that he is also the source of life. If we fill ourselves with all that the world provides as nourishment we will still hunger. Neither the barley loaves nor the food that God supplied in the wilderness will permanently satisfy us. We will feast on it, but we will be hungry again. The bread that Jesus is, this bread that really comes from heaven, is different. Its effects will endure for eternal life. It is faith in Jesus that will satisfy our deepest hungers, and we will not be able to survive apart from him. Acceptance of Jesus as the source of our life and the very nourishment of our spirits effects a total transformation in us. We are no longer content to live with full bellies but empty minds. We put aside our old selves steeped in ignorance and self-interest, and we put on a new self created in his image. Having fed on the bread from heaven, we are mysteriously transformed into it. The spirit of our minds has been renewed. We have learned Christ; we are nourished by his teaching. As a result, we launch out into a way of living that witnesses to our new understanding, our new life. May we pray in this Eucharistic celebration for the graces to be ever dependent on God and on Jesus, the bread and source of life and thereby be transformed in our innermost being. Happy Sunday! + John I. Okoye

(graphics  by chukwubike)