October 19,2003

Isaiah 53:10-11+ Hebrews 4:14-16 + Mark 10:35-45

Many people read the gospels to ask what Jesus would do. Many see the gospels as a way to look back in history, find what Jesus really said and did, and so renew their commitment as disciples.

But Mark writes to communicate with the future. His concern is not “what would Jesus do”, but “what will those do who hear the Good News?”

When he wrote this Gospel, James and John are already dead.

Recalling the story of their brash ambition is not just an excuse for Jesus to teach about greatness. It is also Mark’s method of drawing us into the mystery of suffering, service, and love. It is an invitation to wonder about how these two who could not get it right who could not stay awake in the Garden of Olives and ran away from the crucifixion ever found a place in the New Covenant.

All of Marks Gospel tells the story of how slow to believe disciples of Jesus have been. And why would he tell it that way except to hold our attention and make certain that we are included. In story after story when a miracle happens, Jesus insists that the one who is cured tell no one. Not until his hour has come, until the passion and death, is the story to be told lest anyone think that glory comes anyway except through obedience, suffering, and service.

There will be no instant miracles bringing the Kingdom of God. It will not be a matter of privilege, who you know, or what they can do for you. Citizenship in the Kingdom of God comes only the hard way; by faithfulness in love no matter what it costs.

Talk of a “cup” is Covenant Cup. It has to do with identity and mutual fidelity. There is no suggestion here that God likes suffering and is its cause.

The proposal made in this Covenant talk is that we are the cause of the suffering because of our failure to make Justice and live in peace. The suffering of Jesus Christ is not because God likes it,

but because of our failure to bring an end to the kind of behavior

that makes anyone who is innocent suffer. The news here is that God will not shy away from even that behavior, and that God will still claim as his own people like us, like James and John. The Good News is that eventually they got it right, and so must we.

The future for which Mark writes is now. Our easy ambitions and a culture of privilege are challenged by this Gospel.

Those who expect instant success and live in a culture of instant pleasure will be impatient and wander away to seek easy glory that will not last.

The issue is simple and straightforward. We have to be here for the long haul. It is fidelity in face of trouble, suffering, and disappointment that matters.

When miracles do not happen and the way seems difficult and painful, those who do not turn away from a Jesus of suffering

those who do not abandon the covenant of Blood poured out in love will be those who have their place with the Jesus of Glory.

These are the ones who will, as Isaiah says, “see light in the fullness of days”.

October 12, 2003

Wisdom 7: 7-11 + Hebrews 4:12-13 + Mark 10:17-30

The man in this Gospel wants insurance, not assurance. He wants to do something to guarantee his reward. The response of Jesus in this poor translation missed the mark. The scholars insist that what Jesus says is: “You lack one thing.” It is not as though there is a list of things you have to do – the truth is, there is something you must become. It is not a matter of doing something. It is a matter of being something.

The rich young man gets the point, and he goes sadly away. The challenge of Jesus is finally not a matter or wealth or poverty, but a matter of confidence and trust, a matter of priorities and security.

This Gospel text is serious business for you and me. I can’t imagine how this Gospel is heard in the third world, and I could not begin to think of what someone would hear in these verses who goes to be hungry tonight. This Gospel is about us – it is about church-going people, who, in the sense of being here today, have come running up to Jesus. Our piety is largely a matter of keeping the rules, just like the man in the Gospel, and we most often think of salvation as being the result of something we do. Keep the rules: get to heaven.

A hard look at the Gospel of Mark today does not give us the comfort of that kind of thinking. We are not going to have a place in the Kingdom of Heaven because of something we do. Our place will be there because of something we are, and no one is closer to the Kingdom of God than a faithful steward. Stewardship is a lifestyle, a way of seeing oneself in relationship to everything else, a way of perceiving what we have what it is for, and where it came from.

What happens in this Gospel today changes the question. It is no longer for us a matter of what we must do to be saved. It is now a matter of what we must become: radically dependent upon God.

For the disciples of Jesus this is news comes as a surprise. Always before they thought that they had to do something to be saved

Jesus puts before them a thoroughly new idea and proposes a whole new way of living in relation to things and others. It takes some imagination to get this right, and then some desire. I have always thought that this is exactly what was lacking in the rich young man: imagination and real desire. He could not imagine life without his stuff, his property and the prestige it afforded him.

And for all we can tell, he did not desire what Jesus proposed as necessary: at least he did not desire it enough to risk what was suggested by Jesus.

Yet, he was good, and Jesus looked on him with love: details of this Gospel story we cannot ignore. This is about us, good people loved by God. It is about our desires, our relationship with all things, about where we place our trust, and how much we really trust God to care for us and have a place for us. It is about assurance for good stewards, not about insurance for people afraid of losing it all. and maybe after today, it is about asking the right question: “What must I be to be saved?”

September 28, 2003

Numbers 11:25-29 + James 5:1-6 + Mark 9:38-43,45,47,48

Joshua, prompted by that nameless tattle-tale young man of the first reading is really the center of things today. He faces a challenge we must all face sooner or later. And Moses is up for the task.

Joshua doesn’t get it, just like John in the Gospel. What does not fit into his head, into his idea of how things ought to be

must be corrected. So, like Joshua running to Moses, John runs to Jesus. And Jesus, true to his Old Testament roots, and the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel formed in the image of Moses responds with the same challenge.

That “Spirit” which is the presence of God experienced is not contained, controlled or defined by human imposed limits. It is poured out all over this earth, and those who have received it are not necessarily those in this church. The prophetic, if that is what we are, will be the first to recognize that, point to the Spirit, and affirm the truth of that Spirit’s presence.

“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets” says Moses to Joshua. And in Jesus Christ his wish or command has come to pass. We are, by Baptism, a Prophetic people: a Prophetic Church.

That gift of Prophecy has nothing to do with predicting the future –

that business has nothing to do with true “Prophecy.” That stuff is a foolish distraction and distortion of the prophet’s gift and role in the community’s life. The “Prophet” in the midst of a community of believers is the one who points to the presence of God,

the action of God; and serves as a reminder in the midst of a community that it is God who is the source of all things and the center of all.

We are a Prophetic people, a prophetic church. We do not presume for one moment that we have exclusive possession of God, or that God has no others besides us precisely because we are prophetic and can see God elsewhere. As an Apostolic Church we continue the mission of the apostles acting in the place of Jesus Christ to reveal the presence of God in all creation.

We see, acknowledge, and honor the presence of God in the poor;

and our compassion and response to the poor bears witness to the Spirit they possess and the Spirit that helps us see in them the truth of God’s presence. It is why our works of Charity, and specifically right now, our commitment to Catholic Charities becomes one measure among others of our gift of prophecy, because the poor are the presence of God, and our ignoring of them ignores God.

The poor, like the sick among us, sometimes in their suffering

fail to remember how close they are to God and God to them.

Our response, respect, honor, and care bear witness to our prophetic gift. For this reason, today, the sick among us will be anointed because they are holy, because in their sickness, they are sacramental signs of God’s presence, a God who has identified with the week, the frail, the suffering, the sick, and those who are avoided and abandoned.

This truth is the heart of the church’s teaching about the sick and the poor. These are not ignored, forgotten, nor avoided by a people who are prophetic. The prophet who sees the presence of God sees that presence in them and calls and works and cries out for justice, healing, and relief of their suffering. Those of you who will come forward in a moment are a gift to us you are a sacrament holy, filled with the Spirit, and precious in God’s sight. Not alone in your suffering and weakness, God is with you, in you, breathing the promise of healing in ever-lasting life. When you wonder “why” you bear this day’s suffering, know that it is to reveal the presence of God among us: a God who is no stranger to suffering. Those of us whose sufferings are so few and so little today, are called by the Word of God to draw near to the presence of the Holy One in our midst. With profound respect and honor just as we cherish the Blessed Sacrament among us, we must cherish and revere the poor and the sick, for they too are the presence of God in

September 21, 2003

Wisdom 2:12,17-20 + James 3:16-4.3 + Mark 9:30-37

There is a reason for Christian people to assemble week after week before an image of Christ crucified. The earliest of our sisters and brothers did not do so. They had no need of that image. They lived with it in their memory of Jesus and their own experience. They knew nothing of success or greatness. In fact, to become one with others who followed “The Way” of Jesus meant that they would lose whatever success or greatness they had. The cross does not appear until much later when those who followed “The Way” began to assimilate the trappings and measure greatness by their ability to imitate imperial power. At that point, the cross appears. They needed it, lest they think that greatness and goodness in God’s sight had anything to do with their power, their accomplishments, and their resources. And the cross is still there because we need it too,

a constant and in-your-face reminder that our image of and our definition of greatness is in constant need of revision in light of what we know to be true from what God has taught us through Jesus Christ.

We come into this place week after week to be reminded

that we follow a messiah who suffers instead of producing spectacular victories. We want divine strength to fix our messy and difficult lives, but what we get is the cross. We want nations subdued under our feet rather than our own prostrate before the One who is truly just. Power and might, success and victory are not the ingredients of greatness among those who have taken Jesus Christ as the Way of their lives. Jesus did not die for the sake of glory. He did not suffer and accept his defeat because he thought it would make him successful. He did it because it was good and right. The goal was not victory or glory. It was to make a new and lasting covenant in which sin is forgiven, reconciliation accomplished,

and eternal life made available to all. I believe that he was just as surprised on Easter morning as those guards when the stone rolled away. He did not suffer to gain heaven, but to be faithful. His was a life of service and goodness, obedience and fidelity; and He lived that way because it was the right way not because he thought it would get him something. He hung out with people who had nothing to offer him. Grasping at greatness or serving others because it will make us great is the wrong path. It is not the Way of Jesus.

This Gospel proclaimed with Old Testament Wisdom before it urges us to think again about greatness. The true disciple of Jesus Christ is not necessarily a “winner”, flawless, or perfect in any way. The true disciple never thinks that winning is everything, and true disciples do not define themselves or measure their worth by what they have accomplished, bought, sold, or saved. They are not found in the company of people who can do them favors

We sit before the cross again today, a week after the Feast of the Holy Cross, and we are both cautioned and comforted by the Word of God: Cautioned lest we think that greatness has something to do with us, Comforted lest we forget that the Son of God was alone,

abandoned, rejected, misunderstood, and used by those who wanted what he could give them, but wanted nothing to do with him.

Greatness then, in the light of this Gospel may well require that we surrender “greatness” as our ancestors in faith had to do in order to do what is good and right. It may also mean that in the light of this Gospel, we surrender the comfort of pretending we are not great enough and abandon the excuse that we need to have more of anything before we can really serve and walk in the Way of Jesus.

If we do not embrace this Gospel Wisdom, then we are doomed to spend all our days in one great ambitious, competitive, anxious squabble about who is the greatest.

September 7, 2003

Isaiah 35:4-7 + James 2:1-5 + Mark 7:31-37

There is a word used only once in the Jewish scriptures and once in the Christian scriptures. We hear it today in Isaiah and in Mark.

With those readings as a pair, we can hardly fail to miss the point.

The word is translated differently in Isaiah and in Mark, but in the original language, it is the same. Isaiah says: “then the tongue of the mute will sing.” Mark says: “He spoke plainly.” What we are drawn to see today in our feast upon this Word has something to do with breaking the silence and being heard. The miracle story is not as much about a deaf man as it is a sign that God’s dominion is at hand. It’s not about a deaf man and Jesus. It is about signs that we belong in the Kingdom of God.

What this Word and the Church does today is bring us before Jesus just as the people of the Gospel Story brought that deaf man.

We stand before Christ Jesus deaf and silent. We do not hear. We do not hear truthfully, and so our speech is unintelligible, or we do not speak the truth. Sometimes it is not so much that our ears are closed as it is the selective attention, we have perfected. Yet in this world there are so many voices and there is so much noise leaving us overwhelmed and confused. And in this world there is always the option of listening to the voice of self-interest; of hearing what serves our self-worth; and all of that leaves us silent. Standing before Christ Jesus today, we hear him say: “BE OPEN.”

His command speaks more to our mind and heart than to our ears.

Minds closed to the truth of Gospel values leave us dumb and able speak. And when we are silent, the poor and voiceless that grow in numbers around us have no hope at all. To minds, lives, and hearts closed to others, Christ says: “BE OPEN. Speak for the voiceless when they are jobless and homeless, because voters only vote for what protects themselves. Speak for the Immigrant who know not the language that asks for a share in the wealth of the earth. Speak for honesty and a limit on wealth in a day when deceit is the standard operating procedure in business for the sake of profit.

Speak the whole truth about the common good in a day when half-truth is offered by governments for the sake of private interest. Speak of the ugliness of war in a day when it is managed and concealed to look like a game on prime-time TV.

Open to God’s voice we can stand before this world bearing witness to the power, the truth, and the love of that Voice. If we know the touch of the risen Christ before whom we stand in this place, we will confront the growing suffering of humanity\ and confront the principalities and powers that block the Holy Way of God. Open to God’s voice we shall hear hope in desolation. Open to God’s voice we shall hear comfort in sorrow and sadness. Open to God’s voice we shall hear “I Am with You.” in fear. Open to God’s voice, we shall know what to say in the face of injustice.

Those who live in the Dominion of God have new ways of evaluating what is good and who is important. Their agenda is Jesus Christ who made the needs of others his own mission. His true  disciples shall ask for his healing touch today because they cannot risk being deaf to the overtures of God who invites us to be open.

August 31, 2003

Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8 + James 1:17-18,21-27 + Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

What we hear today is not so much Jesus speaking to Pharisees as it is the first- and second-generation church reflecting upon it’s internal problems. We hear them seeking in their memory of the words of Jesus a resolution that leads them to fidelity, unity, and holiness in the context of Gospel Morality.

Early Christians of gentile background would have not understood Jewish customs and law. Probably some teachers among that early church insisted on continuing the legalism and rituals of Judaism;

and into that conflict steps Mark with the authority of Jesus, who is for him the Risen One.

Their faith in the Son of Man liberated them from anything that would keep them from the table fellowship.

That was the essential.

So if someone said you may not come to this table because you do not wash your hands exactly as prescribed in the details of the law, that custom had to go.

It is a serious issue that has not been resolved even to this day.

It may not be hand washing that causes dispute over this table and who may come here; but it is always something to do with human behavior. Then it was mostly about washing pots, pans, and hands.

Now it seems to be sexual behavior, and in our recent past it has been a matter of race, language, and ethnic origins that have excluded some from the table.

The point Mark makes is that there is nothing wrong with hand washing, in fact it is probably a good thing for the control of disease,

but it can do nothing to prevent the contamination of human sin.

That contamination is only avoided by sincere soul-searching in the presence of a merciful and forgiving God.

Goodness, uprightness, and lawful behavior begin with being good and loving what is good.

Goodness or “Morality”

come from being personally and profoundly convinced

that goodness and holiness are the only appropriate response

to the God who is goodness personified

and in whose good image we have been made.

Their trouble was simply that they had turned a ritual into a religion. Instead of leading them to purity of heart, it simply gave clean hands.

The point Mark is making is that goodness and morality are not just a matter of keeping the rules.

We run the constant risk of thinking that way.

Without understanding this Markan insight into Gospel Morality,

we begin to think that if no one gets hurt,

or if everyone is doing it, it’s just fine.

The consequences of behavior like that are only considered when one gets caught.

Until then there is no thought about whether or not something is right or wrong, or whether or not our behavior has been good or bad.

We are living with those consequences right now with that kind of morality, and it is just as much a problem for us as the hand washing was for those earliest of Christians.

There is just as much immoral behavior in offices and classrooms as there is in bedrooms. We are living these days with the consequences of lies from the White House to classrooms of this city where cheating and dishonesty is now the way to get what you want, and if you don’t get caught it’s the way to go.

Mark calls all of this thinking into question today. The church formed in the Markan tradition thinks of morality in terms of the good we have failed to do just as much as in terms of what we have done wrong.

Morality is not just avoiding sin.

To be “moral” means to answer the call of God

in all we are, in all we say, in all we do.

Morality is concerned not only with what,

but also with why and with who.

At the center of our lives,

the difference between right and wrong, good and bad

begins to be perceived by those

who choose to be shaped in the way of God’s own image,

who choose to live in the freedom of God’s presence,

a people whose lives, like God, are turned to the needs of others

and are then growing in the way of salvation.

Recognizing, affirming, and joyfully living

in the immediate and loving presence of God-incarnate within us

is what makes us good,

and it makes us holy and blameless in God’s sight.

August 24, 2003

Joshua 24:1,2,15-18 + Ephesians 5:21-32 + John 6:60-69

On this final Sunday with the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel we discover what it’s all about. It is not about food. It is not about bread. It is not about flesh or blood. It is about covenant. Now we can understand why those people listening to Jesus responded as they did: why they walked away returning to their former life, why they shook their heads and murmured, why they found it hard to believe. Jesus is inviting them into a covenant, an intimate relationship with God that brings them to the edge of decision, and that is exactly where Joshua is in the first reading today. “Decide today who you will serve.” Joshua says to the assembly gathered to renew the covenant. The choice to be in covenant with God means rejecting all other gods. Every alliance must give way. Nothing is more important than serving God. Those people who walked away did not do so because they did not like the menu at the heavenly banquet. They returned to their former way because getting to the banquet was going to ask more of them than they were willing to give.

The Sixth Chapter of John’s Gospel is about Covenant. Hear and understand the ancient liturgy we glimpse in the first reading. The Book of Joshua that relates the gradual conquest of Canaan and the assimilation of those who lived there concludes with the ceremony we hear today. Those newly joined to the faith of Israel were incorporated in the ceremony we read today while those who have strayed or lost their resolve are invited to renew the covenant God has offered them. But it will require a single minded commitment to the God of this covenant.

This is what Jesus offers in John’s sixth chapter. A deliberate faith commitment and a bond of mutual trusting love were required of those who would serve as disciples of Jesus. It does not mean that disciples have an absolute and equivocal grasp of doctrine. It does not mean that all empirical data has been examined and understood. It means that disciples will trust only one to sustain them, to bring them through this life, to provide care and love them. It means a completely different way of looking at one’s self and others. It means a totally new relationship with all others, a relationship that leads to unity. To help us grasp this vision of what Jesus intends, the Church gives us a section of Ephesians: a section that raises eyebrows today just as the words of Jesus raised them before. It is a teaching that may well cause some to turn away, many to murmur, and some to say: “This is hard.”

When that happens, it is because, just like in the Gospel, listeners don’t get the point.

The second reading is about covenant. It is not about marriage. Those who think it is about marriage miss the point just like those who thought talk about flesh and blood was about chewing on meat.

This whole set of readings today, and this whole series for the last five weeks is about unity. The Covenant we are offered in Jesus Christ makes us one with Him and each other. The gift of the covenant of marriage is that two partners become one. Anything that would destroy unity is to be rejected. That means domination, paternalism, abuse, — all destroy unity. There is no hierarchy in  marriage, only equal partners with different gifts and duties. The partners to this kind of covenant commit themselves to live lives and nurture a relationship that strives to reflect and cherish the unity that comes in Christ. That is why Paul insists that husbands and wives are to be subject one to another and imitate Christ in their lives together.

Covenant, whether in marriage or our relationship with God is an invitation to intimacy. But intimacy is a problem for our age because we live in a time that is fearful and uncomfortable with intimacy. To avoid it, the immature escape into sex and pretend that they have found it. To refuse it some simply turn to themselves and never risk trust with another. But intimacy is what God desires to have with us, and the sacrament of this altar is about that intimacy. It is about getting close, so close that you become part of the other.

A covenant is always sealed and celebrated with a feast. Savor today the feast of God’s Word. Hear Joshua’s choice to serve the Lord, and his challenge to decide whom we shall serve. Hear Paul call us to unity as church. And hear John’s Jesus ask us: “Do you also want to leave?” If you choose to stay, If you choose this covenant, If you risk this intimacy with God and unity in this church, then you must forsake all others, set aside anything that divides, and risk losing yourself for the sake of finding Christ the Risen Lord. This food Jesus gives makes us a sacrament: a sign that is effective for salvation, a sign of a promise made and kept for eternal life. For that gift, where else can we go?

August 17, 2003

Proverbs 9:1-6 + Ephesians 5:15-20 + John 6:51-58

If you are visiting us or have been away for more than three weeks, what is now happening may catch you off guard and for a moment make you uneasy and uncertain, wondering if I am mixed up or simply do not know how the sequence of things is supposed to go. For the five weeks we hear the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel I have proposed that we consider the Word of God a “Feast” in itself, and savor every course of the meal with very quiet reflections.  To help with that, especially because the first Old Testament text is so unfamiliar, I am preaching first to provide you some thoughts with which to savor and enjoy the rich fare we are given these five summer weeks.

The first Old Testament text today is from Proverbs. We do not often hear this marvelous piece proclaimed at Liturgy. Today we will hear half of an extended reflection on Wisdom. If at home you read just a little further on, you will hear the other part. The two pieces are a comparison of Wisdom and Folly. Both are personified as women: one a great lady, the other a woman of the street. Each has built a house, prepared a banquet and sent invitations to guests who are urged to come and feast. Both invitations are ironically similar. However, Wisdom’s banquet of dressed meat and mixed wines will result in life for those share them while those who accept Folly’s invitation will be fed only on stolen bread and water and will wind up in the depths of the nether world. And there you see the point and get the lesson. Those who seek wisdom find life. Those content with silliness and folly welcome death. These are the radical alternatives the Word of God puts before us, and as we hear in another place, we are urged to “seek wisdom” and “choose life.”

Once we have been prepared by the Old Testament texts, we hear an Ephesians text that leads us to root our reflection in the context of the Eucharist, and then comes one of the seven great “I AM” passages of John’s Gospel. Hear it with all the power and awesome mystery of the voice in the burning bush. John wanted to do that.

Yet, there is a very obvious shift happening in this chapter at this point. The verses in the previous three weeks have been concerned with identity. “Who is this man?” Now it becomes a matter of:

“What is this man?” And will be settled with his first spoken words in today’s text. Now there is a change in tone and somewhat different language. The emphasis shifts from the identity of the bread of life to the identity of life in the Eucharist. In other words, now that we know what this is, what difference does it make? The radical alternative is put before us. It is focused on our relationship to Jesus, and it is a matter of wisdom or foolishness, of life or death.

The foolish quarrel among themselves over words without asking their meaning.  They want to know “How” instead of “Why”. Listen to them and learn from their folly. The issue in this text is the presence of Jesus which is the reason for the meal. It is ultimately about

the communication of divine sharing and divine self-giving. It all happens in human terms. This is simply about God becoming human

and revealing His Presence in human flesh and blood. This text is about flesh and blood, human flesh and blood, nothing else. There is no mystery, no magic, no play on words, just real and true flesh and blood.

The problem for those who quarreled among themselves is the same problem before us, believing that our flesh and blood can really sustain such a gift that is so far beyond our fondest hopes and greatest needs.

Listen then, and feast on this Word of God, for that Word has taken flesh and God is really and truly among us,never more real than among those who share the feast of this table.

August 15, 2003

Revelation 11:19-12:6 + 1 Corinthians 15:20-27 + Luke 1:39-56

The people who gather on this day in churches throughout this land are a people pregnant with God. Count yourself among them. We are a people filled with life, possibility, and promise. God is acting and living in us. God is anxious and ready to break out and declare that the Kingdom has come. Now is the time.

We are also a people who feel empty sometimes, who know bitterness, aching and longing. There are days when we barely feel God within us, and times when we must simply take it on faith that there really is life and wholeness and forgiveness. Yet today we remember that God has chosen us, sealed us with the sign of the cross and so we are joined to God forever.

Hope, Healing, Service, Forgiveness, Acceptance are ours to give and more besides, because these things have been given to us.

We call this day “Assumption.” We reflect on Mary, the Mother of God, the one the Church has since the fourth century called: “Theotokos.” “God bearer.”

The people who gather on this day in the churches throughout this land know also that this day is about them. For they too are, by her grace, and her acceptance, “God-bearers.” If we do not become so, the work of God will have ceased, and the Kingdom shall never come.

This day unites us to heaven, to heaven’s work, and to heaven’s queen. This day we rejoice and are blessed. For those who gather in this church today remember that God has done great things for them, and Holy is God’s Name.

August 10, 2003

1 Kings 19:4-8 + Ephesians 4:30-5:2 + John 6:41-51

Ahab was the King of Israel: his wife, Jezebel was a princess from Tyre and Sidon. A prenuptial agreement allowed that she continues the worship of her god; and she was enthused to convert her subjects. To accomplish that, she banished the prophets of Israel and brought in her own. Elijah has confronted those imported prophets, and in conflict, they are slaughtered. So, he is in big trouble with the queen, and no one is defending him. He heads to the desert convinced that he is finished, and not just a little discouraged with the God he has defended who now seems to have left him vulnerable and defenseless.

As we sit with the Word of God today, there are many images that sweep over us: especially since last week Exodus put before us the story of a provident God who ignores our murmuring and our hoarding of what perishes only to feed us with a food that lasts forever given at the hands of his own son. Finally at the end of his road, with his own ideas and plans in shambles, Elijah allows himself to be led and fed by God. He becomes strong and perseveres to do even greater things, and at the end of his journey (because he finishes it), he meets God.

The experience of Elijah is the story of anyone who walks through this life doing their best to be faithful to God and do what is right.

The inevitable consequence of that kind of life is clear. You end up under the “broom tree” wishing it were all over. It is the faithful ones who do what is right who lose their jobs, who find themselves alone without a spouse when divorce or death leaves them alone. It is the faithful ones who find cancer in their body or lose a child or have their homes destroyed by storm of fire. It is the faithful who face defeat and find their friends too ashamed or too busy to stand by them and hold them up.

But it is to those faithful ones, the believers, that God still sends an angel. John suggests that the angel is Jesus who comes and says, “Take and eat.” It is the food that sustains the discouraged and restores the faithful. With that food, Elijah makes it to Sinai where he meets God. With that food we who make our way toward God are sustained, strengthened, and nourished, and best of all, we no longer journey alone for our food is our companion, our food is our God. The mystery of it all is that in the eating of this food we are at journey’s end. It is not miracles that sustain us, but the Word of God, the promises of God, the faith of the Church, and the discovery that we are not alone. God indeed is with us.

Full-bellied crowds, staring at their toothpicks, idly asking Jesus for some sign that would validate his claims to be the Bread of Life

dismiss both Jesus and his teaching because they thought they knew him. In their unteachable, unreachable state, they could not recognize, appreciate, or be nourished by the Bread of Life. Faith in Jesus is not simply a human choice, but a unique cooperation of divine initiative and human fee will. Those who refused to come to faith in Jesus were refusing the promptings of God. Faith requires that the believer look beyond the bread to see Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Listen today to the Word of God like never before. When you hear of Elijah’s discouragement, remember your own. When you hear of his pain, recognize your pain. When you hear the angel speak, hear the voice of God. When you think you can’t go another day or take another step,

remember the Words of Jesus and the Promise of God.

We have food here come down from heaven, Jesus Christ

who feeds those who hunger with the bread of his teaching and the bread of his very self in the Eucharist. This is the food that prompts our faith and empowers our service. This is the food that enables us to follow the way of love proposed to us in Ephesians. This is the food for all our life’s journey. Feast now on the Word of God: as the angel says: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you.”