Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B
August 04, 2024 – 10:30 AM
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. David Justin Lynch
Exodus 12:2-4;12-15 | Psalm 78 3-4;23-25;54
Ephesians 4:17;20-24 | John 6:24-35
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
You’ve heard the saying, “Bread is the staff of life.” Bread, in one form or another, is beyond question the most basic form of food in practically every human society, past or present. Fossilized cakes of bread have been found in many ancient archaeological sites.
The sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, which we started reading last week and will continue reading for the next few Sundays, is about bread. In today’s first reading and today’s Gospel, the term “bread” is used symbolically to symbolize nourishment. But nourishment is not just physical. It is also spiritual. As today’s readings illustrate, God takes care of both for humankind, providing not just physical sustenance, but also spiritual nourishment.
As you will recall from the story of the Exodus recounted in its eponymous book in the Bible, Moses led the Hebrews through the Red Sea out of Egyptian slavery and headed for the Promised Land of Canaan. They wandered in the wilderness forty years before they arrived there. They were to take possession of the land God had promised their forebears, a land “flowing with milk and honey.”
That journey took forty years because Canaan was inhabited by primitive pagan tribes that needed to be cleared out through military operations under the leadership of Joshua, the successor to Moses. Those tribes did bad things. They practiced infanticide. The land they occupied was infested with temples full of idols, prostitutes, and worship of multiple strong gods. The Canaanites were bad people that had to go!
One of the most significant challenges for the Hebrew people was hunger. In those days, there were no grocery stores or restaurants, and because they were constantly on the move, they didn’t have the opportunity to farm for their food. So, like hungry people have done for centuries, they sought divine intervention to solve their problem.
The starving Hebrews, with their leader, Moses, as spokesperson, asked God for help. But the people were skeptical of Moses. Some of them said they’d rather be enslaved in Egypt again, because there, they at least had something to eat. This doubt and struggle were part of their human experience.
God responded with bread from heaven, not the loaves they knew as bread, but a fine sprinkling of white powder called “manna.” The Hebrews didn’t know what it was and didn’t know what to do with it. Moses told them it was bread from Heaven. It would sustain them on their journey until Joshua led them into the promised land of Canaan, where they ultimately made their home, at least for a while, until the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions.
The Hebrews were a pragmatic people. Their interactions with God were oriented toward the immediate practicalities of their lives. Nonetheless, they trusted God to act in their best interest. That is, they showed faith in God, who took care of them.
Fast forward a few thousand years to the days of Jesus, where we encounter more pragmatic people with an earth-bound orientation. In last week’s Gospel, we heard about five thousand people trusting Jesus to allow five loaves and two fish to feed all of them and have some left over.
You will recall from last week that Jesus hurriedly escaped from their midst to be alone after feeding all those people. The people he fed trusted him so much that they wanted Jesus to become their earthly king. However, as we shall later learn from reading the Gospels, the Kingdom of God is nothing like an earthly kingdom.
However, some of the people Jesus fed were still in awe of his power, so they boarded boats and looked for him. They found Jesus on the other side of the lake. But Jesus knew exactly why they had chased after him.
They wanted to be fed again. But Jesus chided them because they thought solely about food that would assuage only their bodily hunger and not the food that would nourish them for eternal life. Jesus was among them to give them that food.
However, they didn’t believe Jesus. They wanted a sign directly from God. The response Jesus gave them was, in essence, “I am that sign from God.” Jesus used the analogy of the manna from heaven as bread from God and told them he was the living bread from God that would bring them eternal life.
In doing so, Jesus asked them to leap in faith towards him. Jesus wanted them to trust him to bring them eternal life. He would be the bread they needed for spiritual survival, just as the manna provided physical survival for the Hebrew people. They responded, in so many words, “that’s the kind of bread we want.” Jesus had convinced them that their spiritual survival was as important as their physical survival.
Today’s Gospel presents us with the question of the importance of our spiritual as well as our physical survival. There are many good and laudable programs, both public and private, for feeding hungry people, and it goes without saying that Christians should be active in their communities supporting such programs. However, the problem with most of those programs is that they mirror the problem raised in today’s Gospel. That is, satisfying bodily hunger does not satisfy spiritual hunger.
That’s where the church enters the picture. Unlike programs that merely fill stomachs, churches are uniquely positioned to relieve spiritual hunger pains. Paraphrasing today’s Epistle, churches provide opportunities to leave our old selves behind and put on a new self.
In Psalm forty-two, we hear, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” In Psalm 63, the author writes, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus declares, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
The common theme in these verses is that of hungering and thirsting for God. The question is, how do we recover and foster a holy hunger for God? How do we regain and cultivate a sacred thirst for Christ? How do we renew in our hearts an earnest longing for God? Here are three simple ways:
First, feed on Jesus. In the Eucharist, his Body and Blood provide life, forgiveness, salvation, and nourishment for our souls. The Mass is a blessed foretaste of the heavenly marriage supper of the Lamb.
Second, change your spiritual diet. If we want an increased hunger for the Lord, we must be willing to change our “diet.” We must be willing to consume less of the world and its “word” and more of Jesus and his “word.” We must be willing to spend a little less time looking at our screens and a little more time reading the scriptures, singing, and praying in our homes. Changing our spiritual diet in these ways will increase our hunger for God and our craving for his word. A renewed hunger for the Lord will also generate new priorities in our lives and schedules.
Third, commit to prayer. Considering God’s infinite love for you and the grace he so lavishly pours out upon you through Jesus. Cry out to him in prayer out of a growing spiritual hunger.
Go ahead. Do it now. Boldly approach the throne of grace and ask God to change your appetites, to cultivate in you a hunger and thirst for him that is unrivaled by the world.
The church is not a private club confined to a few individuals. It is for everyone. Anyone who walks through our doors is welcome to worship with us. We have no “in-crowd” here. Rejection is not on our menu. We are here to facilitate the Kingdom of God, where faith, that is, trusting in God, must pervade all of what we do.
Trusting God helped with the difficulties and temptations experienced by the Hebrews in today’s first reading.
Trusting God was the answer to those who sought Jesus in today’s Gospel.
Trusting God is our program, too.
Trusting God can convert us into new people created on the principles of the Kingdom of God, a place where our deepest wants are satisfied, a place where people love one another, and a place where all are reconciled to one another. Let’s get that done. AMEN.