Homily on John 6 delivered at NAC 04-09-08

I am always struck by the sixth Chapter of John’ Gospel, and not just by its clear and beautiful Eucharistic theology, but by the fact that in it Jesus offers his audience everything. In the Gospel today Jesus offers us the solution to our hunger and thirst, which of course is an analogy for our souls deepest needs. Maybe in our day and age, in which extreme hunger is rare, at least in the US and certainly in seminary(!), this analogy with physical hunger fails to move us, but in Jesus’ day people knew what it was to hunger. And so Jesus offers them the bread of life the answer to man’s anxiety over his impending doom and the answer to our hunger for life without end.

So, what is the crowds response? In just a few verses we will hear it: they start to grumble and then they leave Jesus en masse, and they don’t just leave him, some even start plotting to kill him.

Ok sure, maybe they didn’t understand his words, but offering them his flesh and his blood, Jesus was offering them his very self in toto, and yet they refused it. Its not that he hadn’t earned a little bit of credibility, up to this point in His ministry Jesus had: changed 6 barrels of water to wine; cured a child at the point of death; restored strength to those born lame
and at the beginning of this sixth chapter John tells us; that He even fed the very same multitude who soon thereafter will reject him. We will have to wait another few chapters in John’s Gospel before Jesus restores Lazarus to life and its not until the end of John’s Gospel that Jesus performs his most miraculous miracle, The Resurrection, but even without these confirmations of His authority it seems that Jesus had made a good case for himself, and for his ability to deliever on his promises.

And so when today he promises: I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst, I question, how could the crowds,
who had just eaten the miraculous feast, not take him seriously, and at least give him a chance? I wonder why they so quickly rejected him?

Jesus offers the crowds hope. If only they had a little Faith in Him, He could offer them hope for eternal happiness, which begets life changing LOVE. Maybe it’s because precisely because of this, because Jesus threatened to stir things up and to change things.

People were miserable, they were hungry, they wanted more, their hearts cried out for fulfillment, as they still do today, and yet in Jesus’ day, just as today people were accustomed to things the way they were to our falleness, to the seeming unobtainability of happiness. By proposing a way to happiness Jesus is offering us our hearts desire, but with it the requirement of change. In seeing the way, they were afraid to take it and in not taking it, they feel regret and guilt. As is written in the book of Wisdom, they said: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings… merely to see him is a hardship for us,

When everyone abandons Jesus—Jesus turns to His Apostles and asks, will you leave me too? They would not; Lord to whom would we go, you have the words of eternal life. Peter confesses not understanding, but faith in Jesus, faith in the truth of His words and more importantly faith in His person. It is this faith, combined with the witness of the resurrection, that prompts the first Christians to continue preaching Jesus’ message. The result is the same: at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem. Time and time again Jesus will be persecuted for offering people their heart’s desire, and we too, the body of Christ, will be persecuted with him. As Jesus says: the servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you

In spite of this persecution, in fact by means of it, we must continue to preach Christ, and Christ Crucified. We must preach the message of absolute love, we who have received everything from God, must now give everything, AND expect some people to reject us for it. We can do this because of our Hope: I am the bread of Life Whosoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, will have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. This is the faith, the Gospel, that we preach, and the faith by which we preach it.