18th Sunday B

18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Exodus 16:2-4,12-15  Ephesians 4:17,20-24  

John 6:24-35

The readings for this Sunday proclaim God as the giver of life-sustaining gifts: manna for Israel in its journey through the wilderness, and Jesus, the bread come down from heaven, the source of eternal life.  Christians are challenged to move beyond working simply for perishable food to union with God, the giver of the gifts that sustain God’s people on their journey through history.

The Exodus reading presents a sharp contrast between the grumbling Israelites and the Lord who provides manna and quail for their journey through the wilderness from Egypt to Mount Sinai.  Rather than trusting the God who had saved them from slavery in Egypt with spectacular signs and wonders, “the whole Israelite community” grumbles and wishes nostalgically that they had died in Egypt where “we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!”  Material security in slavery is preferred to the freedom of the wilderness which calls for trust in God.  The Israelites complain to Moses and Aaron, “But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!”  In spite of these rebellious complaints, the Lord patiently promises sustaining gifts of manna and quail “so that you may know that I, the Lord, am your God.”  The purpose of these gifts is not simply physical sustenance in the wilderness.  Behind the Israelites’ complaint about lack of food is their failure to trust in God.  The daily portions of food will be given to “test them to see whether they follow my commandments or not.”  When the Israelites see the strange “fine flakes like hoarfrost” and ask, “What is this (ma-hu’)”? Moses tells them, “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.”  Israel is challenged to move beyond the gift to the giver, the One who sustains the community on its journey to freedom under the covenant.  Sadly, they sin by both trying to store more manna than they need (16:19-21) and then trying to go out to gather manna on the Sabbath when they have provided with a double portion on the day before (16:27-30).

The Epistle reading from the Letter to the Ephesians also exhorts them no longer to live lives of “illusion and desire, and acquire a fresh, spiritual way of thinking.”  This Gentile community that has now been incorporated into the cosmic body of Christ with Jews has to set aside its empty pagan way of life and “put on that new man created in God’s image, whose justice and holiness are born of truth.”

The Gospel is the beginning of the Bread of Life dialogue between Jesus and the crowd that follows his multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the miraculous crossing of the sea by walking on water (John 6:1-21).  As always in John, the dialogues are filled with irony and misunderstanding and challenge Jesus’ hearers to understand those signs as calling for a new spiritual insight into his identity as the One sent from God.

The crowd’s initial question, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” is simply an attempt to find out how Jesus arrived in Capernaum without coming in the boat with his disciples.  But Jesus immediately chides them for looking for him simply because he has physically fed them with loaves and not because they have seen those actions as signs pointing to his relationship with the Father.  He challenges them with wisdom sayings, like Lady Wisdom in Proverbs: “You should not be working for perishable food but for food that remains unto life eternal, food which the Son of Man will give you; it is on him that the has set his seal.”  When they in turn ask what they must do “to perform the works of God,” Jesus replies: “this is the work of God: have faith in the One he sent.”

The dialogue continues to build on the twin themes of “food” and “work.”  When the crowd asks Jesus to perform/work a sign as a basis for their putting faith in him and mentions the sign of manna given to the ancestors to eat in the desert, Jesus’ response is twofold.  First of all, he clarifies that “it was not Moses who gave you bread from the heavens; it is my Father who gives you the real heavenly bread.”  Then Jesus adds that “God’s bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” but the crowd seems to understand him literally.  They want perpetual physical nourishment.  “Sir, give us this bread always.”  With this request, Jesus climactically announces: “I myself am the bread of life. No one who comes to me shall be hungry, no one who believes in me shall thirst again.”  Jesus is proclaiming that belief in him as the revelation of the Father’s love is the way to union with the Father in an eternal life.  “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day” (6:40).  Ultimately, this life-giving union with the Father through Jesus is the community’s sustenance as it awaits “the last day.” 

17th Sunday B

17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: 2 Kings 4:42-44  Ephesians 4:1-6   John 6:1-15

This week’s liturgy begins a series of five weeks when the Gospels are taken from the Bread of Life discourse in John 6.  Throughout this period the church explores various aspects of the Eucharist.  Today’s readings proclaim how God wondrously feeds his people in time of need. God’s largess exceeds human expectations and calls those who have been fed beyond the state of physical sustenance to union with the God who gives the gift of eternal life. 

The reading from 2 Kings recounts how the Lord, through the prophet Elisha, was able to feed a hundred men with twenty barley loaves.  This miracle must be related to the major motif of the Elijah-Elisha stories in 1-2 Kings: the conflict between the Canaanite god Baal, thought by many in Israel to control the fertility of the earth, and Yahweh, the God of Israel, the true Lord of life.  To counter Israel’s temptation to worship Baal, in chapter 4 of 2 Kings, the Lord empowers the Elisha to perform four miracles demonstrating his power over life, death and fertility in time of need: the giving of oil to the widow of a prophet in debt (4:1-7), the resurrection of the son of the Shunammite woman (4:8-37), the healing of the poisoned stew (4:38-41) and the multiplication of the loaves (4:42-44). 

The very structure of this little narrative highlights the superabundance of God’s life-giving power.  The barley loaves are brought to Elisha, the man of God, who commands that they be given to the people to eat.  When the prophet’s servant objects that this amount is inadequate to feed a hundred men, the prophet unhesitatingly takes charge and, in the Lord’s name, announces: “They shall eat and there shall be some left over.”  The incident concludes with the fulfillment of the Lord’s word: “And when they had eaten, there was some left over, as the Lord had said.”  The point of these miracles is not, as in Western scientific thinking, the impossibility of such actions by virtue of natural laws, but their invitation to belief in the Lord God whose word is powerful in creation and history.

The second reading continues the Ephesians selections with the beginning of the exhortation section, urging the community to a life of unity (4:1-6). The first part of Ephesians (ch 1-3) presents a prayerful meditation on God’s choice of both Jews and Gentiles to share in the community of salvation by being members of a single cosmic body through their common redemption in Christ.  Now Paul pleads with the Ephesian Christians to live a life worthy of their calling to unity.  The virtues needed are humility, meekness, patience and bearing with one another lovingly; these are gifts already given in the community’s common faith and baptism.  Members are united in one body and Spirit, sharing one hope.  In Baptism they professed belief in one Lord and one God and Father who is over all, works through all and is in all.  Now they are called to become what they already are through their common faith and baptism.

The Gospel is John’s account of Jesus’ feeding 5,000 in Galilee by multiplying loaves and fishes.  John’s narrative is unique in interpreting Jesus’ miracles as signs that invite observers to go beyond a merely physical and earthly understanding of Jesus to belief in his true identity as the one sent from God to bring life to the world by laying down his life.  The crowd is following Jesus because they have seen the signs he was performing (6:2).  In the miracle and the long dialogue that follows (6:25-59), Jesus challenges them to come to an understanding of him as the bread of life come down from heaven to give his flesh for the life of the world (6:51).  At this first stage the crowd fails to appreciate the full significance of Jesus’ sign by interpreting it on a purely political and earthly level.  They witness Jesus, like the prophet Elisha, feeding a crowd of 5,000 with only five barley loaves and a couple of dry fish, and they respond by saying, “This is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come into the world” (6:14; cf. Deut 18:15-19).  But the crowd’s understanding of the title is purely political, as they want a Messiah who will give them their fill of bread (see John 6:26).  When Jesus realizes they want to make him an earthly king, he flees back to the mountain alone.  In the subsequent dialogue he will invite them to move beyond this earthly understanding of the miracle.

John’s loaves and fishes story bears some similarities to Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, recounted in the Gospels of Matthew (4:1-11) and Luke (4:1-13).  In both, the devil’s first temptation is to turn stones into bread, but Jesus, as an obedient son of God, refuses by insisting that providing bread alone will not fulfill his messianic mission.  He quotes Deut 8:3: “Not on bread alone does man live, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  Today’s readings are an invitation to move beyond the wonderful physical gifts provided by God to a union with the Giver who has spoken the word of love in Jesus’ redeeming gift of himself.

16th Sunday B

16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Jeremiah 23:1-6      Ephesians 2:13-18       Mark 6:30-34

           

 In the Old Testament a favorite image for both the Lord’s love for his people and the saving work of the expected Messiah from the line of David is that of the good shepherd who tends his flock with care.  Today’s lessons present Jesus as the fulfillment of these hopes.  Let us praise the Lord’s selfless love for us in Christ in the words of the refrain of our responsorial psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want” (Ps 23).

            The reading from Jeremiah is the culmination of a long section of oracles condemning the recent Davidic kings of Judah for their absolute failure to govern with justice and compassion (see Jeremiah 21:11-22:30). This concluding oracle contains both elements of harsh judgment but also promises of salvation.  It begins with the Lord’s “woe” against the shepherds (kings), especially Jehoiakim and Zedekiah (the last king of Judah), “who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture.”  The result of their misrule will be exile in Babylon and the temporary end of the line of Davidic rulers.  “Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,/ against the shepherds who shepherd my people:/ You have scattered my sheep and driven them away./  You have not cared for them,/ but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.”  The passage ends, however, with two promises.  First of all, the Lord himself will take up the task of shepherding his people.  He will gather the remnant of his flock from the lands to which he has driven them (Babylon) “and bring them back to their meadow (Judah); there they shall increase and multiply.”  Secondly, in “the days to come,” the Lord “will raise up a righteous shoot to David” who will “govern wisely and do what is just and right in the land.”  His reign will bring salvation and security to both Judah and Israel, and he will fulfill the meaning of Zedekiah’s name, ‘The Lord our justice.’

            The reading from Ephesians continues to celebrate the unity of Gentiles and Jews in “one new person,” the body of Christ, the Church.  Using imagery associated with the Jerusalem Temple and its sacrifices and dividing walls, Paul affirms that the Gentiles “who were once far off” from salvation “have become near by the blood of Christ.”  Christ is the Christian community’s “peace” because he has “made both (Jews and Gentiles) one” by breaking down “the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh.”  This dividing wall which separated Jews and Gentiles was “the law with its commandments and legal claims.” It has now been abolished as a way of salvation by Christ who reconciles both groups “with God, in one body, through the cross, putting that enmity to death by it.”  Our selection concludes with a beautiful Trinitarian formula celebrating God’s action in bringing all, both Gentiles and Jews, to salvation.  “He (Christ) came and preached peace to you who were far off (the Gentiles) and peace to those who were near (Jews), for through him (Christ) we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

            The Gospel selection presents Jesus as the shepherd Messiah who is concerned for both his disciples who have been on mission preaching repentance, driving out demons, and healing the sick, and the vast crowds who are frantically pursuing him and his disciples.  Between the sending out of the disciples (6:7-12) and their return in today’s reading (6:30-34) Mark has inserted King Herod Antipas’ reaction to Jesus—he thinks Jesus in John come back to life (6:14-16) and, in a flashback, the story of his beheading of John the Baptist (6:17-29).  This insertion keeps the question of Jesus’ identity before us and prepares for his violent death at the hands of Pilate and the persecution which his disciples will experience once he has gone (see 8:31-10:52; 13:9-13).  Our reading begins with the apostles gathering together around Jesus and reporting “all they had done and taught.” Jesus, the tender shepherd, then invites them to withdraw to a deserted place to rest because the great crowd of people does not even give them an opportunity to eat.  But when they get in a boat by themselves to go to “a deserted place,” the crowd from all the towns sees them leave and hastens to the place on foot so that they arrive before the apostles. When Jesus disembarks and sees the crowd, Mark tells us, “his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”      

            The scene is filled with allusions to the Old Testament.  The withdrawal to a deserted place recalls the Israelites sojourn in the wilderness as they came out of Egypt and their journey to Sinai where they receive God’s Torah.  In fact in the next section (6:34-44) Jesus will feed the crowd of 5,000 men by multiplying loaves of bread and fishes much as the Lord fed his people with manna and quail in the wilderness (Exodus 16).  But before he feeds the crowds with physical food, the good shepherd’s pity for the lost sheep of Israel first moves him “to teach them many things,” to give them the spiritual food of God’s Wisdom/Torah (See Prov 9; Sir 15:3; 24:19).  

15th Sunday B

15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Amos 7:12-15  Ephesians 1:3-14   Mark 6:7-13

The theme for this Sunday’s readings is the call of God which inevitably brings the one summoned into conflict with worldly powers and values but will also result in the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom.  In hope for the coming of God’s kingdom, let us pray the words of the responsorial psalm: “Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation” (Ps 85).

The first reading from Amos, the earliest of Israel’s classical prophets (c. 750 B.C.), dramatizes the conflict between the authentic prophet and an official man of religion who has sold his soul to the political powers of his day.  Amos was an outsider in Israel; he came from the village of Tekoa in Judah, where he was a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees.  But he was sent by the Lord to prophesy in Bethel, the major sanctuary in the northern kingdom of Israel.  His oracles are a fearless and searing judgment against the social injustices and empty worship found there.  The priest Amaziah, ever loyal to the status quo, attempts to protect King Jeroboam II’s interests against the attacks of this Judean outsider.  He is a pathetic figure of a man of religion who, although the official representative of God at the sanctuary at Bethel, has made money and political favor his god.  His attempt to dismiss Amos betrays an understanding of religion as a matter of wealth and politics.  He assumes Amos is a professional prophet who earns his living by prophesying and attempts to protect “the king’s sanctuary” and the “royal temple” by driving the outsider from the land of Israel.  Amos, of course, refuses to capitulate to the priest’s threats.  He rejects Amaziah’s designation of him as a professional prophet and defends his credentials by reference to his call by the Lord himself.  “I was no prophet,/ nor have I belonged to a company of prophets;/ I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores./  The Lord took me from following the flock, and said to me,/ Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”  In the following verses which were not included in this reading, Amos fearlessly announces the destruction of the royal dynasty, the conquest of the land and the exile of Israel.

For the next several weeks the Epistles will be taken from the Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.  Today’s reading is taken from the opening doxology  which praises God for the choice of the early Christian communities to share in God’s plan of salvation to unite all things, including the once antagonistic Jews and Gentiles, through redemption in Christ.  Ephesians is a theological tract written for Gentile Christians who are now called to share with Jewish Christians the privilege of membership in the community of the saints (cf. Eph 2:11-22).  A major theme which runs throughout Ephesians is “the mystery” of God’s plan which calls both Jews and Gentiles into a single body, the Church, destined to be the cosmic presence of Christ, its head, who will eventually integrate “all things in the heavens and on the earth.”  This opening hymn highlights the gratuity of God’s favor to both groups.  The Jews were chosen “before the world began, to be holy and blameless in his (God’s) sight,” and now they have been favored with redemption from their sins and insight into the mystery of God’s plan to unite all things in the universe in Christ.  The Gentiles have also now been chosen to hear “the glad tidings of salvation,” to believe in the good news, and be sealed by the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel is Mark’s account of Jesus’ sending of the Twelve on mission in Galilee (6:7-13) after his own rejection in Nazareth (6:1-6). Jesus stresses their need for detachment from worldly goods (“no goods, traveling bag, coin in the purse”) and the threat of rejection.  The Twelve are to share in Jesus’ work of proclaiming the presence of the Kingdom of God, but they can expect the rejection that Jesus received in last Sunday’s Gospel when his own people turned against him in the synagogue in Nazareth.  Rejection does not halt the progress of kingdom, however; it simply frees Jesus and his disciples to move on to other areas.  After Jesus met with lack of faith in his hometown of Nazareth, Mark says, “He made the rounds of the neighboring villages instead, and spent his time teaching” (6:6).  Likewise, he tells his disciples, “If any place will not receive you or hear you, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them as you leave” (6:11).  Significantly, Mark concludes this section by noting the success of the Twelve’s initial preaching.  They expel many demons, anoint the sick with oil and work many cures.

Each of today’s readings gives insight into various aspects of the call to serve God’s kingdom.  It is not be identified with wealth and political power and often places the one called in conflict with those powers and their representatives (Amos 7:12-15).  God’s kingdom is mysteriously destined to unite the whole universe under the headship of the suffering Christ (Eph 1:3-14).  Finally, it will invariably lead to rejection, but this should only free Christians to move on to those fields where God’s word will find fruitful soil (Mark 6:7-13; Mark 4:1-20).

14th Sunday B

14 

14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5  2 Corinthians 12:7-10  Mark 6:1-6

            A central feature of the Christian gospel is the “scandal” or “offense” caused by those sent by God to do his saving work.  In this Sunday’s readings the prophet Ezekiel, the apostle Paul, and Jesus himself are sent to those whose hearts are hardened against God’s saving actions. All three can identify with the words of our responsorial psalm: “Have pity on us, O Lord, have pity on us,/ for we are more than sated with contempt;/ our souls are more than sated/ with the mockery of the arrogant,/ with the contempt of the proud” (Ps 123:3-4)

            The Ezekiel reading is part of the prophet’s first person report of his call to be a prophet to the rebellious exiles in Babylon (see Ezekiel 1-3).  This section is the first of three commissions Ezekiel receives (see chapters 2-3), and it emphasizes both God’s power in sending the prophet forth and the recalcitrance of the exiles as “rebels.”  When the prophet receives his commission, he is prostrate on his face after seeing a fiery vision in a storm wind of the Lord enthroned upon a chariot borne by four mysterious cherubim (Ezekiel 1).  The Lord then literally commandeers Ezekiel for his mission. Ezekiel recounts how as the Lord spoke to him, “the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet.”  Addressing him as “son of man” (mere mortal), the Lord then sends him to prophesy to the rebel exiles:  “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites,/ rebels who have rebelled against me;/ they and their ancestors have revolted against me to this very day.”  Although they have been punished for their sins, the Lord warns Ezekiel the exiles are still hardened against his plan: “Hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to whom I am sending you.”  Ezekiel’s commission is surprisingly simple.  The Lord merely commands him to speak the messenger formula: “Thus says the Lord God!”  Whether the exiles heed or resist, “they shall know that a prophet has been among them.”  We learn later that the Lord is sending Ezekiel as a “watchman” to warn his people to turn from their sins so that they may live (see Ezek 3:17-21; 18; 33).

            In the Second Corinthians reading, Paul is defending his apostolic mission against super-apostles who have tried to win the Corinthian Christians over to a gospel of glory which denies the centrality of the cross in the life of the true apostle (see 1 Corinthians 10-13).  Paul’s opponents have boasted of their apostolic credentials, visions, and ability to work miracles. As the founder and “father” of the Corinthian community, Paul has “foolishly” reminded them of his own credentials, especially his sufferings in behalf of the gospel—the only true sign of an emissary of the crucified Jesus.  But now Paul has just recounted that he too fourteen years ago had an ecstatic vision and revelation from God (2 Cor 12:1-6).  However, lest he be elated by “the abundance of revelations” Paul says, “a thorn in the flesh was given me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.”  We do not know what this “thorn in the flesh” was.  Scholars have suggested several possibilities: a sickness, physical handicap like near blindness (cf. Gal 4:4, 12-20), temptation, disability that weakened his apostolic mission, or even a vexing opponent (see Num 33:55; Ez 28:24).  In any case, Paul tells the Corinthians that, like Jesus in Gethsemane, three times he begged the Lord that it might leave him.  The Lord’s answer conforms to the very nature of the gospel of Christ’s cross and resurrection: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”  Paul concludes by insisting, “I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.”  He is content “with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and constraints, for the sake of Christ.”  For when he is “weak,” then he is “strong” through the risen Christ.

            The Gospel is Mark’s story of Jesus’ rejection by the people of “his native place,” presumably his hometown Nazareth.  It marks the end of a section of Mark in which Jesus has proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom of God by teaching with authority and working mighty miracles in both Galilee (1:14-4:41; 5:13-43) and Gentile territory (5:1-12).  The demons Jesus has exorcized have recognized him as the very Holy One/Son of God (1:24; 1:34; 3:11; 5:1-12).  The sick and outcast who have faith in Jesus have been healed or had their sins forgiven. The crowds have been astonished by his teaching authority (1:22).  The disciples have left their homes and occupations to follow him but also do not yet fully understand his power and authority (4:35-41). 

But Jesus has also met opposition from scribes, Pharisees, Herodians, and even his own family.  The scribes have been critical of his forgiving sins (2:1-12) and have accused him of working miracles by the power of Beelzebul (3:30); the Pharisees have questioned his association with sinners, failure to fast, and violations of Sabbath in order to heal (2:13-3:6); and members of his family have said, “He is out of his mind” (3:20, 31-34).  Already the shadow of the cross has fallen over the narrative, as the Pharisees have taken counsel with the Herodians to put Jesus to death (3:6). 

            Now when Jesus comes to “his native place, accompanied by his disciples” this theme of rejection and the cross is continued.  As he begins to teach in the synagogue, those who hear him are “astonished”; the same reaction as those who heard him in the synagogue at Capernaum (1:22) and that the crowd will have when he cleanses the temple in Jerusalem before his death (11:18).  Sadly, the people of Nazareth express their astonishment in the form of five rapid fire and disparaging questions about the source of Jesus’ wisdom and power: “Where did this man get all this?  What kind of wisdom has been given him?  What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!  Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?  And are not his sisters here with us?”   Mark concludes by saying, “they took offense (were scandalized) by him.”  Their lack of faith excludes them from the mystery of the kingdom (see 4:10-12), and Jesus responds by identifying himself with the prophets of old who were rejected by their own people: “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”  He is amazed at “their lack of faith” which limits his power “to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.”  We are reminded that the very mystery of our salvation in Jesus’ cross and resurrection is also a story of the triumph of God’s love over our rejection of his Son.