by Br Julian McDonald cfc
Elijah went into the wilderness a day’s journey, and sitting under a furze bush, wished he were dead. ‘Lord’, he said, ‘I’ve had enough! Take my life; I’m no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down and went to sleep. But an angel touched him and said: ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked round, and there at his head was a scone baked on hot stones and a jar of water. 1 Kings 19: 4-8
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever…Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me…whoever believes has eternal life.” John 6: 41-51
Today’s gospel reading is another excerpt from Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel. The crowd that had been pursuing signs that would demonstrate that Jesus was from God and wanting from Jesus more of the bread that would fill their day-to-day hunger had come up against a Jesus who was trying to convince them of the importance of looking beyond the miracle of the loves and fish and to see that what they had experienced was an expression of the compassion and love of God. He was also stretching them to realise that they, too, could be God’s instruments of compassion, hope, generosity and nourishment for others.
The meaning of today’s gospel-reading pivots on an argument that Jesus had invited them to consider. Effectively he had said to them: “Your ancestors, whom you rightly hold in great admiration, came to appreciate that the white powdery substance which they gathered on the ground each morning and which they had derogatively called “What’s this stuff?” was sent by God to save them from dying of hunger in the desert. God was able to nourish them with something as earthy and ordinary as the excreta of insects. If God was able to do that, God could use people as ordinary as you and me to bring goodness into our world. Moreover, the message and teaching and compassion which I have been extending to you is proof that I am from God.”
In today’s gospel-reading, we hear John pointing out that the crowd that had been badgering Jesus “had murmured against him because he had said: ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” The irony is that these descendants of those who had wandered and not seen the manna as God’s gift, were failing to recognise Jesus as God’s gift to them.
The message here for us is that we, too, can seek to feed ourselves on the wrong things – reputation, fame, qualifications, getting the better of others, getting even. In today’s gospel-reading, we encounter a Jesus who invites us to nourish ourselves on the ‘living bread’ of compassion, reconciliation, encouragement and affirmation, justice and integrity. To nourish ourselves on that kind of bread will lead us to become ‘bread’ for others, ‘bread’ that is not only from Jesus but is Jesus himself.
The very word eucharist is derived from Greek and means thanksgiving or gratitude. To live gratefully is to see our lives as gift rather than entitlement, to count our blessings and let go of our disappointments, to encounter God in the love we extend to and receive from others. Jesus Christ is bread for us and we, in our turn, are bread for others in the love care and compassion we extend to them.
Complementing today’s gospel-reading is the story of Elijah, who had reached the end of his tether. Queen Jezebel had been after him, intent on killing him. Exhausted from running, he collapsed under a bush and complained to God for expecting too much from him. His prayer was courageously honest. God responded by sending an angel to feed him with bread, so that he would have enough energy to begin again. There is a second story of how Elijah was fed with a scone by a widow who used the very last of her meal to feed him and her son. God blessed her generosity by making sure that her oil bottle and her meal jar were never again empty (1 Kings 17: 7-16.) There is a further story of how the Prophet Elisha fed 100 men with twenty small barley loaves (See the first reading of the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2 Kings 4: 42-44). Worthy of note for us is the fact that, in today’s first reading, Elijah described himself as being no better than his ancestors who had lost faith in God in the desert. He was clearly familiar with the traditions of his people and with his own personal inadequacies. Note, too, how God rescued people who had been faithful with the staple food of bread.
The bottom line of today’s gospel-reading is that Jesus was reminding those who were doubting that he was from God, to take the time to get in touch with the Prophets and the traditions and stories of their ancestors, in order to recall how God had worked through very ordinary people and very human situations to reach out to people in need. Those who doubted that God might be able to work through an ordinary tradesman from Nazareth were not only questioning Jesus and the God who had loved each of them into life but were revealing how abysmally low were their expectations of themselves. They were disclosing their belief that the God who had loved them into life had not done much good by letting them loose in the world. How open are we to be God’s instruments for good in our world?
In conclusion, let’s not be hesitant, when our spirits are low, to be courageous enough to pray to God as Elijah did when he dropped in exhaustion and self-doubt under the furze bush.
