Readings: Exodus 16:2-4,12-15; Psalm 78; Ephesians 4:17,20-24; John 6:24-35
'Let them eat cake' is a saying attributed to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, at the time of the French Revolution. As with many revolutions, it was about wealth and poverty, power and exclusion, privilege and disadvantage.
The reading from the Letter to the Ephesians calls us to a spiritual revolution, a change of mind in the first place, but which will also involve giving up an older way of life in order to put on a 'new self created in God's way'. The reading from the Book of Exodus is helpful in reminding us of just how difficult it is to change, even when something far better is promised. The devil we know is better than the devil we do not know, perhaps sometimes even better than the uncertainty that accompanies times of transition. Slavery in Egypt with meat and bread may be more immediately desirable than wandering in the wilderness without either, which is all that Moses seems able to manage for the moment.
The Lord seeks to draw them into a place of freedom and responsibility but there are these practical difficulties. So he arranges for meat and bread to be miraculously provided, quails and manna. It meets their physical needs and stops their complaining, at least for now. But there is a long way to go, and much turbulence to be experienced, as the relationship of God and the people continues.
Fast forward to the gospel reading and it seems as if the people are in a similar place, needing a new Moses to interpret for them what is happening and to nudge, even cajole, them towards a deeper understanding of what the spiritual revolution involves, what the new life created in God's way means.
'You follow me because your bellies are full', Jesus says, 'and not because you have understood the sign this feeding is'. Of course human beings need physical food to sustain their animal life but they need other kinds of food if they are to come alive, and stay alive, in other ways. The spiritual revolution requires taking to heart what Moses says later, in explaining that the people can learn through the experience of physical hunger that human beings do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8.3).
As in the wilderness, so in Capernaum. But now Jesus speaks to them of another kind of bread, the bread of the spiritual revolution, the wisdom of God which was given to the people of Israel in the law and which is now dwelling among those hearing him in the person of Jesus. For he is that wisdom and word of God made flesh, as he himself puts it here, 'I am the bread of life'. He contrasts the life that is transitory with a life that is enduring, even eternal. He contrasts the bread whose purpose is to keep death at bay, with the bread whose purpose is to initiate life, the life of the spiritual revolution, and to sustain that life forever. The wisdom writings of the Old Testament already spoke of this 'bread of life' - Lady Wisdom, an itinerant teacher, going around the streets and towns, inviting people to the banquet she has prepared. It is food and drink not just for the body but for the mind, and heart, and soul.
Ephesians speaks of this reality. You have 'learned Christ', it says, finding the truth in him. So you must leave Egypt behind, the old way, where you are held captive by illusory desires. You must embrace the revolution by changing your mind, nourishing your thoughts and imagination, your desires and memories, with food that is wholesome. This food - the word of God, the bread of life - will nourish these spiritual depths in you and will plant in you the seed of eternal life.
'Let them eat Jesus' is thus the strange cry of the spiritual revolution. Not only physically, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, but in mind and heart also. In his commentary on the passage of Ephesians we read today, Thomas Aquinas describes beautifully the life of the new self after the revolution: it means holiness in the heart, he says, truth on the lips, justice in our works.
No comments:
Post a Comment