21st Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2009

Most of you here today are parents. If you're not, at least, you have had parents.  As good parents, as you brought up your children, you told them very clearly what you expected of them; you laid down the rules; you expected them to be obeyed; and there were sanctions if they were not.  It is a bit similar in the workplace. The boss gives the orders, expects them to be kept, and there are sanctions if they are not.

But that is not the way that parents deal with each other. Nor is it the way you behave with friends. You don't assure the peace and harmony of your relationships or friendships by giving each other a set of rules, and applying sanctions when they are not observed. Nor is it the way you behave with your grown-up children.  Why the difference - rules, commandments, for some - but not for others? And which is better? Keep that question in the back of your minds as we continue.

Today's Gospel brings us to the end of chapter six of John's Gospel that dealt with Jesus referring to himself as the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven, and telling people that, by believing in him, they could experience what he called eternal life.

The action all happened during the Jewish Feast of Passover, celebrated this time up in Galilee, out in the bush. Jews celebrated Passover each year. It was their equivalent of our Easter.  At Passover they remembered how, centuries before, they had escaped from slavery, and were shaped into a wonderful people by God, who, through Moses, gave them the commandments and spelt out a whole other way of living.  Jews were proud of their Law. They rightly saw themselves as superior to the pagan people and cultures that surrounded them. The Law for them opened up a wonderful way of life - it nourished their spirits, just as God had nourished their ancestors with the Manna  (what they had come to call the bread from heaven).

It was to Jews like this that Jesus said that he was the true bread come down from heaven. He said that he opened the way to eternal life; and he said people would live that life to the extent that they believed in him. What was he saying? Effectively, he was claiming that the way of life spelt out by Moses, the way of life based on the Law and the commandments, wonderful as it was, streets ahead, as it was, of the cultures and customs of the non-Jewish people surrounding them, somehow wasn't enough.

There was a whole other way of living possible, a more fulfilling and satisfying way, whose values and expression resonated into eternity. It wasn't the way of Law or commandments, any more than rules or commands are the way of two spouses who love each other or of two friends: It is OK for the children, it is OK in the workplace, but not OK with adults who love.

What Jesus invited to was not a better, a more enlightened, law code, but a deep relationship between adults.  The way of life he proposed called for people to believe in him - not to believe theological statements about him - but to believe in him; to trust him; to entrust themselves to him, to commit to a process where, over time, their minds and hearts and wills would synchronise with his.

It was a union so intense, so urgent, so personal, so engaging, so transforming, that he used the expression eating him; eating his flesh and drinking his blood; and, through the Eucharist, he enabled us to do precisely that. He said that, by doing that, they would discover the heart of God because he, Jesus, was the human expression of God: he had come down from heaven, and he would soon ascend to where he was before.

Most of his contemporaries could not buy that. They complained. They could not let go of the security that their Law and commandments gave them even to look seriously at his claims. They could not trust that intensely engaging with Jesus would lead to something more wonderful, more fulfilling, more beautiful. They preferred the non-responsibility of childhood, the clarity of work-place expectations, to the risks and, sometimes, the lack of clarity, involved in surrendering in love.

Wasn't Peter's response great? His response to Jesus' question? What about you? Do you want to go away too? ... Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe, we know that you are the Holy One of God.