NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 19 in Ordinary Time, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And our Gospel this week starts from a jump of about five verses from where last week's ended, so I'm going to have to play a little catch-up. Remember last time: as part of the discussion which Jesus was having with the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum — which is where this discourse of the bread from heaven happens — Jesus tells them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." And this is a part of a process by which Jesus is trying to bring their attention down to earth, down to the horizontal level rather than the vertical level. They immediately want something vertical. They say, "What sign are you going to give us? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness. He gave them bread from heaven." Jesus tries then to bring the matter down. "It wasn't Moses who gave you bread from heaven. It's my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. And that's at this level. That's me." "The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." So he's in a sense trying to get them off celestial miracles and down to something that is in their midst. "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." So that's where we ended last time, with him trying to get them to concentrate on this one who is doing something in their midst, and that the real work of God — in a sense the most difficult thing about this — is having some idea of the love involved in God sending Jesus to give everybody life. But that's the really difficult thing. The very difficult thing is not believing in celestial miracles; he's done a celestial type miracle by feeding 5,000 people. But what he really wants to do is to get them to concentrate not on that, but on the one who is in their midst giving them something that is going to be much more solid and much more long-lasting. So he then continues in this passage which isn't yet in our Gospel: "Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away." In other words, he's emphasizing that all that he is illustrating is something which the Father is doing — there's another who is doing something vastly bigger than any of those present can see. That Jesus has come, if you like, to be the visible sign of that in their midst. "I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he's given me, but raise it up on the last day." In other words, what he's really trying to do is to stretch their minds with relation to the shape of God's loving affection. This is what's really difficult to believe — believing in a powerful but otherworldly God. Easy enough believing in pious miracles, easy enough. Actually having your whole picture of God, and therefore of the power behind everything that is, altered to see that there is a loving plan at work in someone coming into our midst and giving themselves away — that is really difficult. And yet it's that love and kindness that Jesus is trying to get across in the synagogue teaching. And so we come to today's Gospel. "Then the Jews" — the adepts of the regime, perhaps, would be the best way of saying it, so that we don't fall into the ethnic slur, which the modern word "Jew" has an ethnic meaning, whereas it had a partisan ideological meaning — so the adepts of the regime began to complain about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." This word, gongudzein — this is the classic word from the book of Exodus and the book of Numbers concerning the complaining, the grumbling, of the people of Israel in the desert. They were forever grumbling to Moses, and they get punished severely for grumbling actually. And they grumble about him because he says, "I'm the bread that comes down from heaven." I noticed they began to complain about him. They were saying — and presumably this is amongst themselves, because they're referring to Jesus in the third person — they were saying, "Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" In other words, we know where this guy's come from. He doesn't have a celestial origin. A celestial origin would be someone who came down like in a chariot or some other such thing — a deus ex machina. They missed the point completely. "How can he now say, 'I've come down from heaven'?" And Jesus answers them: "Do not complain amongst yourselves." So he's using here the same verb, the Moses verb: do not grumble amongst yourselves. But it is interesting that he doesn't say "do not grumble about me." He remembers that in the Exodus and the book of Numbers they are grumbling about Moses — what Moses has done to them, and how cruel God is in sending Moses to make them have such a rough time. Jesus says, "Do not complain among yourselves," because he knows perfectly well that complaining amongst yourselves is a marvelous way to whip up group disapproval against someone else. But it is the one thing that makes you unable to be drawn by the Father. If you are part of the contagion of a crowd that's against something, that's far too rich a form of belonging for you to be able to be drawn by the Father towards Jesus. And that's where Jesus is going. "No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father." It's this very gentle verb. Jesus is bringing out that the pattern of love that is behind this, the desire of the model, is what points… to him. We follow the desire of the Father, and if we find ourselves following the desire of the Father, we actually find ourselves being drawn to Jesus. This is, if you like, the mimetics that's at work here, the Father drawing us to Jesus. And one way to be absolutely sure that we cannot be drawn by that love is for us to have been drawn into being able to join in a gang of complainers, grumblers, people who are looking for someone whose fault it all is. That's the pattern of desire in which we're going to be heading for a scapegoating. We're going to be heading to do real harm to some wicked other. And Jesus is, of course, the one who's come to occupy the place of all our wicked others. So that's to set us free from ever having to do that again. He's going to teach us that; that's what he's going to do. He's going to give himself to us so that we can begin to step out of that world. But the one who's making all that possible is the Father who draws us. That, for me, is the gentle central line of this: "No one comes to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me." In other words, the pattern of desire makes available a model, a sign. We find ourselves being drawn in, to be able to perceive and therefore follow the sign, the one who is being made alive in our midst. Jesus then continues: "It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me." So he's saying that "all being taught by God" is true. This is to be found both in Isaiah and in Jeremiah. Jesus is talking about the way in which the Holy Spirit comes between us and enables us to be taken into the fullness of God's teaching, so that there's nobody above us — we are all alongside each other, and we're all learning how not to be caught up in lynch mobs, in ganging up over again, but rather how to be drawn to the one who has occupied that space, the space of the victim, occupied the space of the scapegoat, so as to enable us to have life. But that's what he's pointing out is happening. This is organised by God. He's merely part of this, and there's an amazing liberty about the way he talks here, aware that it's someone else who's drawing people to him. He doesn't need to make himself important. He is going to draw people to himself when he is lifted up — that's another phrase which he uses. The drawing is the important thing. "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me." So he's saying: yes, I am actually the criterion, the Father's criterion for what his own love looks like. "Anyone who sees me has seen the Father" — that's what he will say later. What he says is: the work of God is believing that God has sent me, because once you see that you begin to get a sense of God's love. That's what he really wants people to understand. that the one who is behind all this is doing this out of a plan of love. "Not that anyone who has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life." In other words, once you say yes, yes, I can see that the entire shape of the power and dynamic of God the Creator who brought everything into being is made available to us in this one going to his death as the scapegoat, as the cast out one, so that none of us need ever be caught up in that again, and so that we can learn how to live forever. We can share the age that is to come, share the life of God. "Your ancestors," he then says, "ate the manna in the wilderness." The point which they themselves, his listeners, have made: "Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness." "Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness and they died." In other words, the manna in the wilderness wasn't something to open them up to life for good. It didn't even get them into the promised land. It was an energy boost in order to get them through the wilderness. But because they grumbled and complained amongst themselves, they were not able to get into the promised land. It was the grumbling that kept them out. Why? Because grumbling is the way in which you create bonding and belonging together, and that's always over against someone, and that means you're failing to come to life. It's when you see that the one who is being thrown out is the one who is the representative of how God loves you that then you are to be given a belonging that's of an entirely different sort, and so you're able to be brought to life. So then he continues: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. I've come down; whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." So he's beginning to move from the discussion of the bread from heaven to the Eucharistic bread, which is going to be the participation in his self-giving, in his flesh. Again, the difficult thing with this passage is how much more down to earth Jesus is being than it's difficult for us to imagine. The words sound so celestial that it's difficult for us to see him constantly trying to get people to concentrate on what is before them, on what is being acted out before them. Someone who is going to undo the way of being together that is, if you like, dominated by grumbling, by complaining; someone who is going to occupy the space of the grumbled against and is going to open up life forever. The next passage… Continues with that even more strongly, in which he brings out, if you like, even more concretely how this is to work. Alas, next Sunday we will not get that gospel passage, because we will have the solemnity of the Assumption. But we will return to John 6 for one final go the Sunday after that, and I'll fill us in on the bit we've missed out when we get there. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.