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Journey's Weekly Homilies

Journey Catholic Community
21st Sunday Ordinary Time
Homily: Nancy
8/24/03

Josh 24:1-2,15-17, 18
Gal 4:8-9
John 6:60-69

Our Gospel story tonight begins with a sentence that refers back to what has happened before. We read there, "Many of Jesus' disciples, when they heard his words, said, 'This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?'" The "hard saying" they speak about has to do with what we have been hearing from the 6th chapter of John for the last few weeks. John is writing about Jesus the bread of life. John is telling the story of how emphatically Jesus brought his message to the disciples. John is saying, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus gave this message: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day." It IS a hard saying. It is from the fourth Gospel, the most profound and soaring account of the first hundred years of the Jesus movement.

Every week we gather here and pass around the plate and cup. We say to one another, as we pass the bread between us: "The body of Christ." Then we take the cups, pass them around to one another and say, "The blood of Christ." And each time we do this, we are supposed to say, "AMEN."   That means, "So be it." We say our amens, and with that Amen, we speak our belief that we ARE, in fact eating and drinking of the essence of our brother Jesus whose name we believe to be "Son of God."

This act, repeated in our lives so many times that we sometimes do it unconsciously…
This act announces to the world who our God is. We have claimed our place as the People of God. We have begun to try to name the God we serve.

Then, of course, we walk away from here. We go into the world in which we live. We see the chaos, we watch the violence, we feel the hatred that is between people and all around us. We feel how small we are in the face of the enormity of the problems. We face the question of our own generosity, our own ability to give from our abundance. We face the daily struggle to make the money last to the end of the month. We feel the anger rising up in us because something or someone has so aggravated us or so insulted us that we feel we must fight back, and cannot forgive them. We watch the screens and the parade of neighbors and we know so many things that we don't have that we wish we had. The longings for more "things" or newer "things" get stronger and stronger.

And in the midst of this strong wind of confrontation with the world, we have to choose. We have to decide (consciously or unconsciously) which God we choose to serve. Will we serve the God whose body and blood is given up for us? Will we serve this God whose law is one of love, the God who never questioned but went ALL THE WAY on behalf of his brothers and sisters on this earth? Or will we serve the god of possessions, who let's us pile up and keep all our "things?" Or will we serve the god of self-protection, who encourages us to keep to ourselves or fight back, taking an eye for an eye in our human encounters? Or will we serve the god of money, the god who whispers in our ears a deadly lie that says everything will be OK if only we have enough money. These gods remind us every day that we should keep everything for ourselves. The God, the one who gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders. The God, who sent a son among us, whose flesh and blood we are invited to share, THIS GOD reminds us that nothing truly belongs to us, and that we all belong to one another.

When Mr. Shanafelt was drunk, which was all the time, as far as I know, he often climbed the hill.   He had a still on his property, on Black Creek, over the hill and a good walk away from my Grandfather's little church.   Many times in my childhood I saw him stagger down the little drive way and fall down on his knees near the porch of Pa's house. He would call out with his slurred speech and say how much he wanted Bro. Bannister to pray for him, how he wanted to be saved. My grandmother would go into the house and bring back a large cup of coffee and hand it to the pastor. Pa would offer it to Mr. Shanafelt, and take him by the hand and gently begin to walk him back down the driveway toward the road. All the while my grandfather would be saying something like this: "Now Ralph, you drink this coffee. You can bring back the cup tomorrow. You go on back to your house and you go down there by the creek and you pray to that god that you worship down there. See whether that god has any answer for you. Talk to that god until you get sober. Then, you bring your sober self back over here, and you and I will pray together to our God. Our God will help you find whatever salvation you truly need. It won't be in a bottle. But it will be good. And it will be everlasting."

Even as a child, I think I understood.

I think of that scene now, when I find myself in the midst of the chaos of my own making. I hear Pa's voice and I know that if I pray to the gods down by MY creek, the god of security, or the god of money, or the god of control, I will receive no welcome or reward. As Paul wrote, "These gods can do nothing and give nothing." I do not want to be slaves of those gods. The rewards will be temporary, and I will have to keep coming back, just like Mr. Shanafelt to the still.   I know that I need to turn from all those false gods, and seek the One, the One who sent Jesus among us, the One whose invitation is to eat and drink of the way of life based on love.

Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Once you were ignorant of God, and enslaved to "gods" who are not really gods at all. But now that you have come to know God, or rather, now that God has come to know YOU, how can you turn back to the weak and destitute powers you once served?" He goes on to ask them how they will measure their time.

In John's writing to his small and struggling community, he too knew that they were allowing the days of their lives to slip away in allegiance to the gods of things that did not matter. And so he wrote a powerful story for them, and for us, about how it was in the last days with Jesus on this earth. He tells us that after the hard saying was spoken again, many of the gathered disciples walked away. They could not eat and drink of this life of Jesus. Jesus was asking too much, asking more than they were willing to give.   Jesus was alone with the twelve and he asked them, "Do you also wish to go away?" The one who one time did go away, but came back, Simon Peter, answered him, and spoke for us a creed that we know by heart…a creed that can become the source of true change in our existences. He says: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."