XVIII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Ex 16:2-4, 12-15
Ps 78:3-4, 23-24,25,54
Eph 4:17, 20-24
Jn 6:24-35

If you will remember back from last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus feeds the multitude with five loaves and two fish.  This is the context by which we can understand what is going on in this passage taken from Chapter Six of John’s Gospel today.  There is actually a small passage that is skipped and goes in between what we heard last week and what was proclaimed today.  But for now just put in the back of your mind that Jesus had just fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish; and that He and His disciples went across the sea to Capernaum, where we find today’s Gospel.

The crowd had already been following Jesus wherever He went.  They would go wherever He went because He was doing some things that you just didn’t see every day.  And when they finally found Him, they asked, Rabbi, when did you get here?  This sets Jesus off on a small speech.  He says, Amen amen… whenever you hear Jesus saying the double “Amen”,  He is about to say something that is profoundly true.  We end our prayers in “Amen” to ratify and accept what has been said to be true.  But Jesus begins with the “Amen” to emphasize that what is going to say is Truth and we are to pay attention.

Jesus tells the people that they are looking for Him because they were getting their stomachs filled.  In other words, they were following him because they were out for a free meal – kinda like those things you get in the mail where they’ll give you a free dinner at a nice restaurant, all you have to do is listen to “small talk” about how this guy has an opportunity that you don’t want to pass up. The people weren’t really there for Jesus, they were there for the food.  So Jesus calls them out: …you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  He practically accuses them of not recognizing the miracle that was just done and that all they wanted was a free meal.

[rant] How many times have we not recognized the miracle that has happen before our eyes?  How many times have we asked “Why should I go to Mass, I don’t get anything out of it!  I don’t get what Father’s saying, it’s boring and the music is this or that….”  And we MISS the fact that every time we come and celebrate the Mass, ordinary bread and wine is turned into the Body and Blood, Flesh, and Divinity of Jesus Christ our Lord.  There is a miracle that happens before our eyes and we don’t even recognize it.  [mutter] “I don’t get anything out of it!”  YOU GET THE BREAD OF LIFE and you witness a miracle before your very eyes.  [/rant]

Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life…  

Jesus tells us to work for the food that endures for eternal life.  And the people ask, What can we do?  This answer to this question should be quite obvious for the average Jew at that time: Follow the Commandments given to them by Moses, follow the Law, worship the Lord God with all your heart, with all your might, with all your soul.  But Jesus turns this obvious answer on its head and gives this in reply:  This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.  This is puzzling for the Jews.  It’s an answer that they don’t quite understand.  Just like us, if you are going to make a change in the status quo you are gonna need to back it up with some sort of authority.  So the people ask for signs; miracles for them “ratify” the authority of the prophets.   You would think that would be enough: feeding 5000 people with five loaves and two fish; and having twelve baskets full of leftovers.  Not good enough for the crowd apparently.

In order for the people to accept Jesus’ authority, they want Him to outdo what Moses had done.  We hear in today’s first reading what Moses did.  This serves as a footnote to what the people are demanding in the Gospel.   It seems a few hundred years’ time has not changed the people much at all.  Still grumbling and still looking for miracles despite what they have already seen.  So Jesus answers again with a double “Amen”:  It was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  So Jesus is telling the people: there is a proverbial “man behind the curtain”.   Moses didn’t give them that bread the Jews ate, it was God – Our Father in heaven who is behind all of this.

Jesus is leading these people into thinking not from a material standpoint – that is, thinking with their stomachs and appetites, but with eyes of faith – a spiritual reality that they have yet to understand.  Jesus builds on the physical and the material so that the spiritual may be understood.

It is only natural that we want to satisfy our natural desires and appetites.  If we are hungry, we get something to eat; if we are thirsty we go get something to drink.  We are bored, we find something to do, we are busy we find time to rest.  We are lonely, so we call up a friend.  These are the natural appetites and desires that every human person has.  However, if we stay with our stomachs, we will never be able to tap into the grace that allows us to go beyond the natural into the supernatural.  By our baptism, we have membership in the supernatural life.  But because we are so preoccupied with only satisfying the natural, we forget the supernatural.  We forget about paying attention to what God is doing in our lives: raining down bread from heaven.  The Jews in the time of Moses called that bread Manna – a pun for “What is this stuff?”  Because they had no idea what it was.  How many times in our lives have we missed the Manna from heaven, and question “What is this all about God? I don’t get it.”

When you think about what you are attracted to the Mass: be it the music, the preaching, the fellowship, or the community – you have to ask yourself:  are these superficial feelings that make me feel warm and fuzzy or should there be an even deeper reason?  The warm fuzzies are your emotions and your appetites, but Jesus is calling for something even more here: a greater reality – the supernatural, the Divine – which is revealed in the celebration of the Eucharist.  If we miss the supernatural in our life, if we miss the divine moments that God gives us, we are missing out on our inheritance: what is rightfully ours as Sons and Daughters of God’s family.  [It’s like having a gym membership and never going!]

Today God calls us through St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – we must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.  We must no longer live like secular society around us – looking for and searching for things that make us happy, warm, and fuzzy.  We cannot keep on searching for those temporary feelings of hunger and thirst.   These will pass away, but the bread that Jesus gives is ever lasting – the enduring sustenance that is Jesus Christ.  We must put away our old self and former ways of life, be renewed In His Spirit – put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.