Word to the Wise
Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
[Exod 16:2-4, 12-15; Eph 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35]"Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." So they said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst." [John]
"Manna in the desert!" is an expression that one hears once in awhile when something needed badly shows up just in time. The Israelites in the desert were starving and Moses intervened with God to have quail and manna sent to them. Somehow the quail get lost from memory, but the "manna" (a bread-like substance) stayed and this incident became another pivotal moment in the narrative of the journey to the Promised Land. The responsorial psalm for today's liturgy celebrates that memory.
Manna figures prominently in Jesus' dialogue/discourse after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. (That was last Sunday's gospel. Again I recommend to the Beloved Congregation that you read all of chapter six of John's gospel because it will appear next Sunday and the Sunday after that!) The crowd challenges Jesus: "What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert." Jesus' response is that HE is the new manna, the bread of life! [Note the "I AM" saying.] The crowd was only thinking of the physical bread that they ate. Now Jesus is telling them that he is the fulfillment of a greater hunger.
At this point in the dialogue the eucharist, as we know it, is not the subject. Here it is the question of belief in Jesus as the one whom God has sent. "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent." Without this faith, what will come next, the matter of Jesus as real food and drink, will seem like cannibalism! Faith gives a true hunger for God, which is satisfied in the person of Jesus Christ. Next Sunday, the dialogue will take a new twist and create a greater challenge. Stay tuned! AMEN
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