by Br Julian McDonald cfc
Jesus said to the crowd: “Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life…” The people said to Jesus: “What sign will you give to show that we should believe in you? What work will you do? Our fathers had manna in the desert;” Jesus answered: “I tell you solemnly, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, it is my Father who gives you bread from heaven, the true bread;” John 6: 24-35
Following their escape from Egypt, the Israelites, encouraged by Moses, embarked on their trek through the desert. Their early enthusiasm quickly waned, especially when they had little success in their search for water and started to wonder where their next meal might be coming from. Wonder and uncertainty quickly degenerated into chronic complaining and self-pity. They even longed for a return to slavery and the flesh-pots of Egypt. When God rescued them from starvation by sending them food from heaven, they called it manna, a name which hardly expressed gratitude, as it literally meant “What’s this stuff?” Even in our day and age, all the reputable books on politeness and good manners state that anyone who asks: “What’s this?” when a meal is served is guilty of the ultimate in bad table manners.
It is clear from today’s first reading from Exodus that the Israelites were not in good humour when Moses urged them to eat the white, flaky substance that covered the ground in front of them when they rose from sleep to start a new day. “What’s this stuff?” clearly expressed their inner grumpiness and their discontent with Moses. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can recall times when, at the sight of an unappetising dish served to us, we have said to ourselves or quietly muttered “What’s this?” It’s an expression that escapes from us in other situations when our expectations have not been met, when somebody else’s words or actions have caught us off guard. Our tone of voice and/or our facial expression will signal whether our “What’s this?” is an expression of discontent or a calm request to have our curiosity satisfied. In the course of Israel’s history, a belligerent “What’s this?” ringing in the ears of Moses has changed in meaning to be regarded as a food that descended from heaven as a blessing from God and saved a starving people from dying of hunger in the desert. To our ears “manna” sounds like a delicacy to savour rather than a sweet substance excreted by insects.
In today’s gospel-reading, we hear how Jesus confronted the gathering crowd on their motives for pursuing him, pointing out to them that they were chasing after him only for what they could get out of him. He went on to alert them to the fact that everything he had to offer had its origin in the beneficence of God, his Father, who had missioned him to the world. He was shaking them to open their eyes to recognise the goodness of God present in everything around them: in creation, in the kindness and compassion of everyone around them, in the generosity of a youngster who had contributed all the food he had (five barley loaves and two fish) towards the feeding of the 5000 strong crowd of which many of them were a part.
Today’s first reading from Exodus shows how Moses brushed aside his people’s petulant “What’s this stuff?” and responded, with the help of God’s guidance, as though it were a serious question: “It is the bread the Lord gives you to eat.” So, nourished by the manna and the meat of the flocks of quail that landed every evening, the people of Israel survived their ordeal and reached the end of their desert trek. Over time, these people came to appreciate that the manna and the quail meat were an expression of God’s unceasing beneficence and care. With the benefit of hindsight and reflection on how they were sustained over four decades of wandering, the ancestors of the crowd in front of Jesus grew to appreciate that it was God who had cared for them. That corporate memory was passed on to the generations who succeeded them. Hundreds of years earlier, Moses had reminded them of God’s protecting hand in their lives when he said: “Remember how God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you…God humbled you by making you feel hunger and fed you with manna that neither you nor your fathers had known, to make you understand that humankind does not live on bread alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8: 2-3). When Matthew, in his Gospel described how Jesus was tempted in the wilderness to turn stones into bread in order to survive, he had Jesus quote those very words of Moses: “Humankind does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4: 4). Moreover, towards the conclusion of this very chapter of John’s Gospel from which today’s gospel-reading is taken, John attributes to Jesus words that echo Moses and Matthew: “The words that I have just spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (John 6: 63}.
What then is the meaning of all this for us Christians today? The whole of Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel is an instruction on the Eucharist, “the bread of life”. It is a chapter in which Jesus instructed his disciples, the people who had been present at the miracle of the loaves and fish and those who had heard about it and had turned up hoping for a repeat performance. Jesus’ response was to question their motives and to remind them of how God had worked through everyday occurrences to care for their ancestors. Nothing could have been more ordinary or earthy than providing sustenance through insect excreta and the flesh of quail that landed in their camp sites. Surviving on those food sources helped to bind those wandering people together as a community. That food source was a symbol of communion.
The people who came to Jesus looking for a repeat performance had overlooked the significance of the generosity of the youngster who contributed all the food he had. His generosity was the equivalent of a “sacrament”, a tangible expression of the love of God expressed through a young member of the community. The message for all of us is that God can and does work through our everyday expressions of generosity, care, compassion and encouragement which we extend to those we encounter. Those actions, too, are signs and sacraments of God’s love mediated to others through us. Those actions are nourishment and ‘bread of life’ for the people to whom they are directed. Moreover, they help to bind us into community.
