Eighteenth Sunday Ordinary Time (Cycle B)

The tie in between today’s readings: God wants a personal relationship with you.

Psalm 78: 3-4, 23-25, 54, Exodus 16: 1-15, Ephesians 4: 17-24, John 6: 24-35

In today’s reading, Exodus 16:1-15, the Hebrews can’t grasp that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. After 400 years of praying to be released from slavery, God responds. He plagues Egypt, parts the Red Sea, and makes polluted water drinkable in the middle of the desert. Now hungry, they’re whining about the “good old days” when they were slaves. Seriously? Instead of praying to their Redeemer God, who brought them this far, and trusting Him for help, they complain. “C’mon God, you’re slacking. You’re not meeting expectations.  Maybe we should just leave you and go back to Pharaoh.”  Complaining to God is never a good idea. It shows a self-centered contempt for the Almighty and blinds you to the bigger picture of what the Lord wants to accomplish in your life. Despite the insult, God in His mercy gives quail and manna to sustain them. He sets up the Ten Commandments and the Law, whose foundational underpinning is love.

God is reaching out for a relationship, but they don’t get it. They know that they’re going to the Promised Land, but don’t understand that it is a mere representation of what God really wants for them: eternal life with Him in heaven. Their minds never penetrate the ceremonies and commands to get the deeper personal connections: grace for failure, obedience in love, forgiveness for sin, and trust in trial. All they see is a God as a boss; just another master with an agenda and rules to follow. You can tell because they act exactly like us: if we don’t like something at work, we complain to management, if we dare, and certainly murmur amongst ourselves.  So, what do you do if you don’t like what the boss is doing? Well, you try to get a better deal somewhere else. When your stomach is empty, it’s easier to go back to the devil you know than to march forward by faith into the unknown. The Lord had an intimate relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, after 400 years of slavery, all that their descendants see is a God who has them under contract.

Fast forward to our gospel, which places us at the morning after Jesus feeds the 5000. Christ and the apostles had crossed the Sea of Galilee during the night, but the crowd tracked Him down in a determined mission to make Him their Caterer-King. Jesus’ statement sets the stage for their conversation, “You look for me not because of the sign I gave you (pointing to Him as the Messiah), but because your bellies are full. Don’t work for food that perishes. I’ll give you food which endures to eternal life.”  

      “That’s a good deal,” they say, “Food for eternal life that doesn’t spoil. What do we have to do for it, Jesus?” 

     “Nothing, it’s a gift. Just believe in Me.”

     “Well, Jesus, we don’t know…yesterday was a good start with the fishes and loaves and all, but Moses fed the whole nation with manna in the desert for forty years (Psalm 78: 3-4, 23-25, 54).  We’ll give you the job if you can top that.”

     “My Father, not Moses, gave you the manna. I come from Him and He’ll give you the true bread out of heaven that will give life not just to you but the whole world.”

     “OK! You got the job, Jesus. How are you on supply?”

     “Guys, I’m talking about ME! I AM the bread of life. Come to me and hunger no more. Believe in me and never thirst.”  (Check out a similar conversation Jesus had with the woman at the well in John Chapter 4)

They remain still stuck on the contract, while Jesus is trying to take it up a notch and reveal a personal relationship with God that the physical bread only points to. There’s a greater need that He is trying to address: the need to be reconciled back to the Father.  Just like their ancestors, Jesus’ teachings fall on deaf ears because they see with their bellies and not their souls.

Does your situation mirror the Hebrews? Do you see God as another boss with rules to follow? Do you gladly and whole-heartedly participate in the worship service or simply endure it for an hour every Sunday (or maybe just Christmas and Easter) to keep “the boss” happy? Is this whole church thing stale and dry? Are you searching for a better deal? Be careful! You may be on the way, as Paul says in our Ephesians 4:17-24 reading, to “being excluded from the life of God because of personal ignorance and hardness of heart.” Paul encourages all of us to be renewed and put on a new self in the likeness of God by a born-again life through faith in Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. Think about it. Before you throw up you hands and walk away from the God who loves you and His body the Church, perhaps, you need a new approach. If the God under contract thing isn’t working for you, then maybe it’s time to…date the boss?