Sunday 4th of August 2024 - Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Exodus 16:2-4,12-15/ Psalm 77(78)/ Ephesians 4:17,20-24/ John 6:24-35

Paul could be writing his letter to the Ephesians to the people of today. So many these days seem to be living an aimless kind of pagan life, a life that is going nowhere and is all about immediate pleasures that don’t last. People are still chasing what Paul calls illusory desires presented to them through the internet and social media. These illusory desires may appear good and wholesome, but they can influence the way we think and act. Many are short lived leading us into self-obsessed ways of thinking. If we can resist these desires and look to what is truly important our decision-making processes can be radically changed. The expectations that are foisted upon us are often unachievable leading to a life of false hope and disappointment.

Humanity can be quick to develop a hardness of heart, an ungrateful attitude for all that God has provided. This attitude is apparent from the first reading, and it remains true of many today. The people had been rescued from the Egyptian captivity but very soon they were moaning and complaining. Not because they had been given their freedom but that in captivity they had enough to eat. They were more interested in their physical wellbeing than their spiritual health. Jesus gave us a different set of values in opposition to those of the world. The rich, famous and successful are replaced in God’s kingdom by the poor, struggling and failed. Being a Christian means we must replace our old, corrupted values and submit to a spiritual revolution putting on the new life offered to us through baptism. In this way we can become what God meant us to be living in goodness, holiness and truth.

We are living in a spiritual desert, a world that is inhospitable to our faith. As with the people of the first reading we might think it preferable to enjoy the pleasures of the world, eating pans of meat and bread to our hearts content rather than living according to God’s will. We should be seeking the bread from heaven rather than the food the world has to offer. It will be preferable to die to this world than to become rich in it only to die to the next.

In the gospel passage Jesus addressed the crowd that followed him after the feeding of the five thousand. The people continually miss the point of what Jesus was telling them through his miracles and teaching. He warned them as he warns us not to work for food that does not last but to work for the food that endures to eternal life. He is talking about the food he provides, himself as food and drink in the eucharist, nourishment that will see us through the dangers and famines of this life and take us through into eternal life. Referring to the first reading and the provision of food for the people in the desert Jesus made it clear that it was not Moses who worked the miracle but God the Father. It is through God the Father that his son, Jesus, provides the food we need in our wanderings in the desert we find ourselves in. Jesus is our bread of life and he tells us, ‘he who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.’

It is tempting to be like the ancient people in the desert and the people who flocked to Jesus in his day. We can want God and what he provides on our terms rather than his. We can pick and choose the things of faith that appeal to us like choosing items in a supermarket. We can prefer to hear from the minister who gives us an easy time rather than the one who challenges us. Jesus challenges us, he provides himself as food and drink, but it is to sustain us on an arduous journey that leads to sharing in the suffering of the cross and to death before we can experience the resurrection and our new eternal life in Christ.

Paul speaks of putting on Christ. In baptism we put on a white garment as a sign of putting on a new life in Christ, an outward sign of an inner change. Putting on Christ and eating the eucharistic gift of his body and blood causes us to become Christlike. We become what we wear, and our bodies assume what we eat. This should cause a profound change in our attitude to life. We should no longer hunger and thirst for the passing things of this world but hunger and thirst for the food of eternal life, the food that Jesus provides through himself in the eucharist. When we become like Christ, think and live more like Christ, we will be truly Christian, and our lives will be transformed along with the world around us. As the psalm predicted, we eat the bread of angels, God sends us food in abundance and brings us to his holy land which is the mountain of heaven.

God Bless Brendan