Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Title

Real Food

Outline

Its about the economy

In election rhetoric out come economic comparisons: GDP, inflation, and the like. There is no question about whether these things are real or really matter. Even immigration issues are discussed in terms of jobs or wage levels.

In the various churches it is little different. They seek pastors who will grow the church numerically, expand its building footprint, or create satellite campuses, and develop ministries meeting the perceived needs of the congregants. Even if the expository skills of the prospective pastor are discussed, the issue is whether the “food” fits my taste.

We hear some of that evaluation in Catholic circles even though we have no votes on who will be the pastor or bishop.

What is missing is the real or the realer real: virtues, gifts of the Spirit such as wisdom, and how much a person is like Jesus.

That is the story of the Exodus reading.

“You are not giving us food” or, later, “Not giving us the food we desire.” But it is not Moses’ responsibility or ability. He is only the prophet. So God speaks: I will give you food, but it will be daily bread, a daily bread they had never seen before: Man-nah, What is this? While Exodus says it had a particular taste, the wisdom literature says that it fits every one’s taste. And, also found in the NT, that it was angels’ bread, although other texts say that angels do not eat, not having bodies.

And God did give them meat, but not continually and he gave them meat in such abundance that it would “come out of their noses”. They would learn who was God.

Yet they were so focused on the material that they got that it pointed forward. And their view of God was that of a genie in a bottle, rub it and it delivers, or a vending machine, a view of God not unknown among Catholics.

Jesus deals with the same mentality

He has multiplied the loaves and so they come looking for him. But they had not seen the sign, only the miracle. “I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”

You are on the earthly plane focused on the “food that perishes.” Focus on the food that “endures to eternal life.”

They don’t get it; they want the technique to get bread, to do the works of God, so Jesus says, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” It is not stuff, but him that you need.

If that is the case, we need a sign. This time feed us with manna, bread without five loaves and two fish. Bread from heaven.

Jesus responds, “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.” This involves the repointing of the Hebrew to change the verb from a completed act to an ongoing act. “Oh yes,” they respond, “We want that bread.”

Jesus replies: It is not that but him, me: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

They keep shifting away from Jesus, the him from heaven, to their stuff.

Paul makes the point clear for us

The Gentiles (or Jews who do not believe in Jesus) live “in the futility of their minds.” They are focused on stuff, on food, on power, on pleasure, on a life “corrupted through deceitful desires.” Now desires are valuable, for without them “no one would plant a field, build a house, marry a wife.” (Quoting the Mishnah) But they are deceitful, for they focus on this earth or our felt needs or us. They have to be controlled. So Paul says, “be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” That is we redirect our wills. And that will result in, putting “on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” If they say, “She is not herself since she associated with those Sisters,” I hope they are right, that you are putting on a new self, not just a habit.

So the point is to keep our focus and our desire on the bread from heaven, like a bride with eyes and desire only for her husband.

There are desires of this world with which we have to do, groceries and cooking and cleaning, even those outside the Priory, electricity and water and highway policy, and those of the school, desks, and books and proper food for the students for lunch and, of course, internet. But the Gentiles are focused there. Those born from above related everything to and subordinate everything to Him who is the bread from heaven, i.e. the feeding of the new self. And that is what is making us saints and giving us real life.