August 14, 2009
Sunday Scripture
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
BY FATHER DONALD DILGER
Review: In a series of commentaries on the sixth chapter of John’s gospel we have traced three steps. This chapter takes to reveal three truths about Jesus Christ. John does this by composing a long homily or discourse which follows two miracles performed by Jesus. These two miracles were the feeding of five thousand in the wilderness and Jesus walking on water. The first miracle identified Jesus as the Messiah (Christ) because there was a belief at the time that, when the manna or bread from heaven again fed Israel, and did so on the Feast of Passover, then the Messiah had arrived. It also identified Jesus as God because it was God, not Moses, who fed the Israelites in the wilderness. The miracle of walking on water proclaims Jesus as God, because in the Old Testament, as noted in this column two Sundays ago, only God walks on water, (“tramples the waves”).
John refers to miracles as signs. The seven great miracles that John chose for his gospel are therefore clues or signs to Jesus’ identity. John wants to expand on that double identity of Jesus as Messiah and God. To do so he cites the story of the manna which nourished the Israelites in the wilderness. In the back of his mind is Deuteronomy 8:3, where the theologians who wrote that catechetical document give a new meaning to the manna — it was a symbol of the word of God, the Torah (the teaching brought by Moses.) At the beginning of his gospel John had already proclaimed Jesus Christ as the “Word of God,” the final Torah, a Torah superior to Moses. In his sixth chapter John expands on this theme by combining it with the manna theme, the bread from heaven.
First he taught that Jesus as teacher and ambassador of the Father brought the Father’s final Torah or teaching. Secondly he taught not only that Jesus brings the Father’s Torah now superior to the Torah of Moses, but that Jesus himself is God’s final teaching or Torah. Both are the true bread from heaven. John developed these teachings in the gospel reading of the past two Sundays. Today, he takes the final step in the revelation of Jesus as tue bread from heaven, Jesus in the Eucharist. He does this in the following words, “. . . and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
John recognizes how ridiculous this sounds, when he depicts Jesus’ critics saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” No Jew ate human flesh! But the Johannine Jesus goes far beyond this in words which would on first hearing horrify an observant Jew as Jesus himself was. With a double oath, Jesus says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” The use of blood as food or drink was absolutely forbidden to any faithful Jew because of Genesis 9:4, “You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood,” and Leviticus 7:26-27, “You shall eat no blood whatsoever . . . . Whoever eats any blood shall be cut off from his people.” Leviticus 17 explains the prohibition of blood rests on the fact not only that the life of flesh is in the blood, but that life belongs to God.” What a statement that could be in opposition not only to abortion but to capital punishment, and to the indiscriminate killing of human beings in war or terror (“collateral damage”).
Nevertheless, under the double oath that Jesus took at the beginning of these statements, and resting on the identity of Jesus as Messiah and God through the two great signs that preceded this long homily, John attributes to Jesus as absolute affirmation of the reality of his body and blood as the true bread that comes down from heaven, gives life to the world, and is a guarantee of eternal life. By combining John’s teaching in this chapter with the teaching of Paul’s letters about the Lord’s Supper, and with the three Last Supper narratives of Mark, Matthew and Luke, we as Church proclaim and believe that through the power of the Holy Spirit and the words of Jesus, “This is my body. This is my blood,” the body and blood of Jesus are truly present and received in the Eucharist.
Segments of Proverbs often serve as foundation material for our gospels. We have such material in this reading, “Come, eat of my food, and drink of my pure wine.” Proverbs thus describes Divine Wisdom, which is defined by Sirach 24:23 as “no other that the Book of the Covenant . . ., the Torah that Moses commanded to us.” In the Gospel of John, Jesus is God’s ultimate Torah in the teaching he brought from the Father, in himself as the Father’s greatest teaching or Torah, and finally in the Eucharist. All are “the bread of life which comes down from heaven.” We “eat” these gifts by faith, “No one comes to me unless taught by God;” by hope, “Those who eat . . ., I will raise up on the last day;” by love,” Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.
This reading has no connection with today’s gospel and first reading. Paul rebukes unruly christians about their personal habits. Drunkenness must have been prevalent. He recommends that his Christians get drunk on the Spirit, not on “spirits.”