Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Title

Give Us Today our Daily Bread

Outline

God is always bringing us to the edge

We want financial and material security where “give us today our daily bread” is a nice sentiment, not a child’s cry to the Father.

God constantly brings his people to the point that they must trust him for daily bread, as Roman slaves and dependents did their patron. This is the story of Israel in the the wilderness, bread from heaven, ma-nah, what is this? This is the story of Elijah and the widow, whose last meal for two lasted a year for three. This is the story of our first reading, where Elisha takes food for twenty or fewer and orders it given to a hundred, promising that there would be leftovers, showing that there really was multiplication and not people being thankful for a few bits and pulling their belts tighter.

A mark of God is his bringing us to the edge and then asking us to trust him and only then providing what we need and calling us to live like that always.

And he usually does that with groups

Look at our Gospel

People have gathered to Jesus because he was a healer not getting it that he was YHWH our healer. They receive healing but also teaching, a lot of teaching. The setting is that of the Sermon on the Mount. Then a note is added: the Passover was near, Passover when the Jews ate the meal that set them free, Passover that opened the way to the desert where they would need and receive daily bread, Passover, when Jesus would break the bread that is his body and share it with us. John is rich with allusions and images.

“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” It is a question to elicit a trusting response, but he gets only this-worldly responses. Philip mentions that what to them would have been a vast sum was not enough to give each person a bit. Andrew is closer, willing to offer all, but not thinking that it was enough. Notice that the 5 barley rolls, the food of the poor, and two fish were the day’s meal for the boy.

“Have them recline” on the grass, Jesus orders, getting the crowd’s expectation up. Then he takes the food in his hands, gives thanks in good Jewish fashion, acknowledging the giver, and distributes freely. (The synoptics focus on the disciples’ doing this.) Finally he says, “Gather the fragments” (as in the case of Elisha). It was clear that there were at least twelve times the leftovers than what Jesus had started with. They thought of Elisha, “This is the Prophet.” They thought further, “This is the Messiah,” for they wanted to make him king. They had no idea that the king would give himself for the them, that he was the bread from heaven. That, of course, comes later in the discourse.

This is where Paul comes in

We have received a call, to be like what we have received, the very life of Jesus. To fulfill these we need virtue: “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love.”

And then we realize we are a unity persevered by God’s shalom, Jesus is our peace. Finally we get a series of one’s: “one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Brothers and Sisters, Christ is our bread from heaven and he makes us into his one body. The minute we break into factions we lose it all, all the one’s, and to avoid this we need to pray for a practice the virtues. This is utterly important in our factious world both within and outside the church, both within and outside of families.

We need bread from heaven. We come empty handed. Jesus is the ultimate bread who makes us one. He is the continuing bread who keeps us one. He is the abundant bread which we can share with others.

Jesus develops in us those virtues that seem idiotic to the world but which make us like him. Jesus feeds us day by day in the Eucharist and in our prayers - all contain the Our Father. Jesus sends us to feed the world, not become like it, and we go empty handed knowing that he will give us abundance if we share what we have with others.