MENUCLOSE

Institute for Homiletics

A Collaboration of The Catholic Foundation and the University of Dallas

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

What Are You Eating?

Israel’s complaining can sound childish to us. Did the people really think that  the God who brought them out of Egypt with such great signs and wonders was  going to let them die? But God responds graciously to their complaints with a  diet of manna in the morning and quail at suppertime. Scholars say the manna  (the word means “What-is-this?”) was an excretion of desert insects, a kind of  “bug juice.” Whatever it was, it came faithfully until Israel entered the Promised  Land. Israel had to learn to trust God and eat what was put before them. 

The Letter to the Ephesians speaks of “learning Christ,” learning the truth that  is in Jesus, indeed, that is Jesus. Learning Christ calls for a different way of living,  being made new “in the spirit of your minds,” and “putting on a new self.” We  are talking about a different perspective on life. To learn Christ is to accept him  as the one sent by the Father, the one who feeds our deepest hunger for the  wisdom that brings life to our world. It’s another way of eating what is set before  us.  

John’s Gospel calls us to absorb into our minds and hearts the wisdom of the  signs Jesus offers the people. While they focused on the surface event—Jesus  providing bread to eat—Jesus calls them to “work for the food that endures for  eternal life.” Jesus is that food. Jesus, who embodies God’s wisdom, is the bread  come down from heaven. Are we eating what he sets before us? 

Consider/Discuss

  • Do you give much thought to what you are feeding your mind? Your spirit? 
  • What is the wisdom that Jesus brings to our lives? 

Reflecting on the Word

Jesus, you are the bread that comes from heaven to give life to our world. You  invite us to eat at the table of your wisdom, that we might grow into the maturity  that marks us as true children of the Father, healthy in mind, heart, and spirit.  We thank you.

Written by

Scripture Study for

The Israelites’ murmuring in the wilderness highlights more than their discouragement in the face of hunger. Their very real need for food put their faith in  God to the test. The entire Israelite community grumbled to Moses and Aaron.  Although it is God’s leadership that is being challenged, it is God’s appointed  leaders who are being blamed. It is not the complaint itself but its content that is  disturbing. The people prefer their former situation of oppression in Egypt with  food, rather than their present freedom without food. God hears their rebellious  grumbling and responds, not with punishment, but with provisions. Once again  God’s divine power and mercy are demonstrated. 

The admonition that Paul gives to the Ephesians is a wisdom teaching in which  contrasts are drawn in an uncompromising manner. There are only two ways of  living: the way of the wise or righteous, and the way of the foolish or wicked.  Paul contrasts the life the Ephesians lived before their conversion with the one  to which they have now committed themselves. This new life demands a radical  change. However, this is not out of the reach of the Ephesians. They must further  choose the path they will follow. Will it be the way of futility, or will they be recreated in God’s own righteousness and holiness? 

Jesus’ discourse on the bread of life is actually a response to the challenge  from the people who demand a sign that will verify his authority. Knowing that  the crowds followed him for food, Jesus makes this an opportunity to teach them  about food that would endure. Just as God gave their ancestors manna from  heaven, so God gives them the true bread from heaven, the bread that gives  life to the world. Through careful explanation, Jesus has led them away from a  superficial search for physical satisfaction to a desire for the deeper things of  God. More than that, he has prepared them for his self-proclamation: I am the  bread of life. 

Written by

Missing the “Wow!”

I thought about the chocolate bar that I had eaten for lunch.  I plodded along, thinking of the mountain we’d just climbed, but  even more of my sleeping bag. I stared down at the path. Suddenly  the young woman in front of me stopped. I almost ran into her. The  person behind me bumped my shoulder before she stopped. I looked  up. There, standing six feet in front of us in this Maine wilderness,  was the largest moose I have ever seen. 

Today I feel as though I am staring at a well-worn path, too. There  is an occupational hazard in writing many reflections and studying  the same scriptures over and over again. What are the perils? I begin  to skim. I think of “mining” the word of God for “the lesson.” I  think about pontificating about “those (other) folks” who dwell in  the futility of their minds as I dissect Paul’s thought system. 

Some of the Israelites in the first reading may have analyzed the  biomass of the desert. They scrutinized their path. They correctly  concluded that there was not enough forage there to support them.  Their whole community was going to die of starvation. 

Folks scrambled off to find Jesus. Their brains were racing: “What  might we do with a man who can feed five thousand people? Many  are starving in Israel.” Like me, they were staring at their path,  thinking about their chocolate bar and their sleeping bag. 

Jesus is like that moose in our midst. He stops us in our tracks. He  says to us, “Hey! Look up! I am the Bread of Life! I am here!” God  sent the Israelites manna from heaven to say, “Look up! I am here!” 

The moose lumbered off. We trudged back to camp. But that  startled “wow!” has never left me.

Consider/Discuss 

  • Sometimes we trudge along the well-worn path of religious practice,  staring at the ground. We may figure that we’ve pretty much “got this.”  When we are plodding along, thinking about the “how” and the “what,”  how might we miss the Who, the “wow!” of the One who is our faith? 
  • The passage just before today’s reading from John is the story of Jesus  walking on the water. Are we trudging down the weary path of life  absorbed in our own thoughts? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to help  us “look up!” to walk on water? 

Living and Praying with the Word 

In love’s deepest longings, we don’t just want to know about  someone, we want to know them. Remind us that St. Paul encourages  us to “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” So, Lord of heaven,  this day, we want to see you. Step onto the mundane path that we  trudge and surprise us! Step into our way and say, “Hey, here I am!”  Open our eyes to see you.

Written by

Scripture Study for

After their deliverance from Egypt, Israel finds itself in the  wilderness, where the people begin to murmur that they have no food  and water. The failure to trust that God will provide for them leads  them to fear they will perish, which in turn causes them to regret  leaving “the house of bondage” in the first place. It is imperative at  this early stage of the relationship that God show Israel the capability  to provide for their most basic needs. This will be important later  when God insists that Israel must not turn to any other gods for  assistance in such matters. Thus the provision of manna (from the  Hebrew man hu, “What is this?”). 

Paul has been urging the Ephesians to recognize that, having been  renewed and transformed through their incorporation into the one  church, they are not the same people they were before they were  baptized. They are fundamentally and radically different now, and  they must begin immediately to acknowledge this. Their baptism and  incorporation into Christ’s body must mean, among other things, a  complete reassessment of their lives, leading to a renewal in their  way of thinking and of evaluating the world and its ways. Now, as  members of God’s church, they must manifest the very character of  God, which is “righteousness and holiness of truth.”

Shortly after the feeding of the five thousand, the people find  Jesus in Capernaum, where their initial question, “When did you  get here?” begins a dialogue about Jesus himself. He accuses the  people of setting their sights too low by “working” for perishable  food instead of seeking eternal life. They take this to mean that they  themselves can “work” for this “food,” but the only work they can,  or need to, do is to believe in him, who was sent by the Father. Now  skeptical, the people demand proof of this. Moses was sent by God  and provided manna in the desert; what can Jesus do? He responds  that it was God who gave manna in the desert and it is now God  who gives the “true” (authentic, incomparable) bread from heaven,  the source of life, Jesus himself. 

Written by

“Come and Get It!”

A TV series featured an English chef going into an elementary school in  Huntington, West Virginia, trying to change the children’s eating habits. The resistance he first encounters is fierce. The children choose pizza over fresh chicken,  throwing the beans and salad into the trash. Even sadder was the resistance of  the adults: the women who prepare lunch, the school principal, and even the  food supervisor of the school system. 

We see Jesus feeding people in many ways throughout the Gospels: by his  words and deeds, by his preaching, teaching, and healing. In today’s account, he  literally feeds a crowd of over five thousand with five loaves and two fish. This  event is a sign of God’s ongoing desire to meet our hungers with generosity and  life-giving nourishment. 

This feeding reveals Jesus as his Father’s Son, the God who calls people to  come, eat and drink without paying, without cost. God wants to feed us so we  have and share life with others. We can refuse both the food of God’s word and  the food of the Eucharist, even when we receive it with our ears and mouths, by  not taking it into our lives. 

The word “heed” comes twice in the first reading: “Heed me and you shall eat  well . . . Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life.” God cries for us  to hear, to listen “that you may have life,” to receive the love of God revealed in  Jesus, and let it nourish us into eternal life. 

Consider/Discuss

  • Do you take and digest the food that God feeds you at the table of  the word and the table of the Eucharist? 
  • Are you willing to distribute the food of God’s word and God’s love  to others, as the disciples were asked to do? 

Responding to the Word

We pray that we fully take in the food Jesus gives to us. We ask that the bread  of the word and the bread of the Eucharist be nourishment that strengthens us  in this life and enables us to walk in the way of the Lord. We pray that we may  give this food to others.

Written by