18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle B 20-21

Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15 | Ephesians 4:17, 20-24 | John 6:24-35

 Almighty, everliving God who govern all things both in heaven and in earth, mercifully hear the pleading of your people and bestow your peace on our times.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

We’re continuing the same theme that we started last week, the image of the bread of life.  Jesus is the bread of life.  So what I’m praying I can do in this homily is open your minds, your hearts to a way in which God has intended us to live in this world with him.  We’re not here to please him.  We’re not here to be tested by him.  We’re not here just to obey his rules and laws and prove that we are willing to surrender our wills to his.  No, no.  He wants partnership.  He wants us to be in him and he in us, and we together work to engage in whatever this mysterious thing is that is called life.   

Now, this first reading is a reminder, and it’s a great image of what we’re here to accomplish.  The Israelites found themselves in a very negative position.  They were slaves, slaves to something outside of themselves.  They were having to do what they were told to do and couldn’t be who they were.  Just keep that in mind, that image of human beings living in a world of authority is not what we’re intended to live in, and so there’s this image of God intervening in their life and calling Moses to lead these people from this place of slavery to a place of freedom, a land of milk and honey, a place of wonder and beauty.  That’s a very strong way for you to understand what we’re here on this planet to do.  We’re here as participants in a process of all of us together moving to a place of greater fullness, and so in that story, we can see that there is a part of human nature that doesn’t like to go through a process of transformation that demands a loss of certain levels of comfort and well-being.  I think it’s fascinating that even though they perhaps didn’t remember what it was like to be in an environment where they were slaves, they felt that the accommodations in this process of moving to a new place was unacceptable.  “We don’t like the food.  We don’t like it.  We don’t like living this way.  We want to go back.  Even though it was imperfect, it was more comfortable.”  That image of we want comfort is so big in each of us, and so what’s wonderful about this story is we see something in God that is, in a way, a sign of patience and a sign of compassion.  He listens to the Israelites, who are really complaining about the food.  So he said, “All right, I’ll feed you.  Don’t worry about it.  I will make sure you have some food.”  And so Moses is the one that proclaims to everyone that they will then be fed by God with this miraculous, mysterious hoarfrost on grass in the morning, and then quail will be plentiful in the evening.  So they were fed for a very long time.  That whole journey was 40 years in the desert, and then they were to get to this new land, this new place.  And the new place is, of course, the new life that God promises us when he himself entered into the world to guide us.  So you have this image that is a strong image of what life on this planet is for.  It is about a journey from one place to another, and the journey is not necessarily comfortable.  It’s painful and difficult.   

Now let’s go to St. Paul.  St. Paul says something really interesting about what it is that we are here to become, and he says we have to become something different.  And so he says, “The work of God in your life and in mine is to bring us into a place where we’re renewed in spirit and understanding.  We put on a new self-created in God that’s whole and complete, living in the truth.”  So let’s just talk about this new creation, this new self.  It’s different than the old self, and the old self could be described as a lower level of consciousness where we’re always basically longing for the most simple, primitive needs.  “Give me a couch.  Give me a beer.  Give me a football game,” whatever or whatever it is.  We love comfort, but there’s a new self in us that needs to be born of spirit, and it has a different disposition about how we are to live in this world.  And so we have it in the gospel, the secret, part of the secret.  

All right, now let’s go to where the crowds are.  The crowds around Jesus were amazing, and the life of Jesus is amazing, and the one thing about his life that is both confusing and wonderful and challenging for us to understand completely is his miracles.  And you have to understand what those miracles are for, because the shadow of misunderstanding the miracles that Jesus performed — and he’s saying, “Anything I did, you can do.”  We may say, “Oh, well then, if God is in me and I’m a new person in God and I believe that Jesus was filled with divinity and that that’s the symbol of who we are —”  The sign that Jesus gave us was this image of a human being filled with divinity.  That’s why the work of God, the work of God described in the scriptures today is, in the words of Jesus, is we believe in the one who sent him.  When you believe in someone — we tend to think of belief as just — I believe in God.  That means he exists.  Well, it’s pretty hard to imagine the world without some kind of intelligence when you understand how the world works, but nevertheless, there is something important about believing that God exists.  But believing in someone, if somebody says, “I believe in you,” they don’t mean, “I believe you’re alive and standing in front of me.”  They say, “I believe in you means I trust in you.  I feel something good in you.  I would trust you with my needs and wants.  I believe in you.”  Well, if the work of God is believing that he came and lived in Jesus and that was the model of the new self that we were going to live in in the New Testament, then we’re getting close to the truth.  We are gifted, through this mysterious thing called redemption, which was Jesus somehow, as a human being struggling with all the things that he wanted to do, had to face the fact that it wasn’t going to turn out the way he wanted, and he was going to have to endure the humiliation of failure.  And he accepted the suffering that that entailed.  He accepted the role that God gave him, and it was the most painful thing he could have endured.  And when he did it, there was an explosion of life within him, and that’s our model.  Jesus is the model of surrendering to the way things are, and yet we make him the model of a world that he created for us where he says, “I’m in the world with you,” and we put on the emphasis on Jesus.  “Jesus did this for me.”  But just like the people said about Moses — they said, “Moses gave us bread from heaven.  Why can’t you do these miracles for us?”  And Jesus said, “No, Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven.  God gave you the bread from heaven through Moses.”  Jesus the man is saying, “I am not the source of what I can do for you.  God in me is doing it.  So my power as a human is just like your power as a human.  We’re limited.  We can’t do that much that we need to do in order to engage in the world in the way it is, a place of growth, change and development.”   

So what are we learning?  This God, who entered into a man who’s the model of who we are, performed marvelous miracles, and he said we can do the same thing.  So what do you do when something happens to you that’s painful and difficult, or worse, what do you do when somebody you love deeply is going through something really painful and difficult, a disease that will take their life, a struggle with addiction?  How is it that we’re to imagine this power of God flowing through me like it flowed through Jesus, doing the work that Jesus showed us we can do?  Well, the mistake we make is we think that the miracles of Jesus were to always remove suffering.  They did remove some suffering, but what are the miracles about?  They’re about this mysterious way in which God is saying, “I came into the world to empower human beings to be all that they’re intended to be.”  The healings of Jesus were about physical healings.  Eyes that couldn’t see can now see.  Ears that couldn’t hear can hear.  Mouths that couldn’t speak can speak.  Arms that couldn’t work now work.  Legs couldn’t move.  So it’s all about being fully alive and fully human and being open to the truth, seeing what’s real.  “Open my eyes, God.  Let me see who I am and what I’m here for.”  That’s the miracle.  He also drove out demons.  It’s interesting that in John’s gospel, he never mentions the driving out of demons, because it’s as if he saw that as something a little different, but John wanted us to know, in his gospel, who he is, who God is, who Jesus is, what it’s like for a human to be filled with divinity, because that’s our task.  And if — we think that we have this divinity in us to be able then to accomplish something that isn’t really what Jesus did in his miracles, and we think it’s about taking away suffering.  And what if suffering is not to be taken away?  If we look at the crucifixion of Jesus, then if suffering is to be taken away, the death of Jesus makes no sense at all.  If he’d have trusted more in the Father, the Father would have been able to allow him to conquer everything, destroy all those enemies.  And Jesus could have.  He said God could do that, but that’s not God’s will.  God doesn’t want to be in you and in me, empowering us to be the instrument that, when I’m suffering or somebody else is, he gives me the power to take away the suffering.  What would happen to us?  We wouldn’t grow.  We wouldn’t change.  We wouldn’t become who we’re intended to be.  So when you pray for yourself or for someone else, asking God to be inside of you, giving you the wisdom you need to be able to make this move in a direction that creates life in me and in everyone around us who knows this story, we’re not asking for removal of the pain, that we long for that, but that the pain will do its work.  And the work will be finished, and we’ll surrender to it.  And when the work is done, the pain stops.  So the pain goes away when we’ve learned what the pain is there for.  That’s a very different way to deal with these issues of suffering and the miracle of God’s giving us power to be in charge.  If God is in charge of the world, that means he can make it all happen a certain way.  Well, he is, in that sense, in charge, but he isn’t going to change the way the world is and the way it’s designed because we don’t want to be uncomfortable or we don’t want to be in pain.  

It’s almost like saying, and this is naive, but if we just had enough health, enough money, enough talent, then whatever we’d do would be so successful.  We’d just soar into fullness and greatness.  Do you know anybody that’s ever had a lot of money or just could do anything or have super success in everything?  Have you ever spent time with them?  They’re obnoxious.  They’re self-centered.  They’re self-consumed.  I want to be with somebody that knows what it’s like to be changed by suffering and has wisdom and truth inside of them, and they look at me, and they say, “I want to be there with you in your suffering, because I know it will bring you to a new place.”  And then you wait, trusting, believing that, when you have turned to God and given him the ability to work through you, dealing with yourself or dealing with somebody else, you will be a powerful agent in moving that person to the place the pain is intending them to be, and it will be less pain.  So in a sense, you are healing them in a way that means less suffering, but the most important thing you’ve got to have in your heart is this is in God’s hands, and he will make this work.  And we’ll look back on this and smile and say, “Without this, I could never be who I am.” 

Father, your presence is your greatest gift to us, that you dwell within us, creating a new person, a new self, and in that presence of you within us, we find the most important gifts we receive is wisdom, understanding, compassion, empathy for the plan that you have for the world. And the honor that you’ve given us to be a part of that unfolding is beyond our imagining. So bless us with the kind of faith that truly opens our hearts so that we take on and become your heart, your compassion, your love, and let us share that with the people around us that we love, that we’re called to be there for. And when we feel the power of this grace flowing through us, give us the confidence that it is a gift, never us alone, always with you, always in you, always because of you. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.