“I am the bread of life.”
In today’s gospel, we continue to read from
this long passage in John’s Gospel called
“The Discourse of the Bread of Life.”
It is one of the largest discourses in John’s Gospel.
And we are reading it for several weeks during the summer.
The Evangelist John has multiple layers in which he always writes:
There is a meaning and then double meaning;
where there is often a meaning underneath;
there is irony and double irony that goes on.
Quite frankly, it is a fun gospel to read
because one almost has to decrypt what he is saying.
In today’s gospel reading for example,
we have to take note of the triple denial
that the would-be disciples or the hearers of Jesus are going through.
It is important to break it open just a bit
because it is the rich meaning for this gospel today.
The first denial is that the hearers of Jesus are
disbelieving or denying that God would speak to them;
they had the Torah;
they had the Prophets
but they did not believe that God would speak to them;
that they were not that special; number one.
The second denial is they did not believe that
God had anything new to say to them.
There was no freshness.
In other words, what was said in the Torah
and what was said by the Prophets was it.
That was the message.
There was nothing new to be added.
That is the second denial.
The third denial, which is emphasized in today’s gospel,
is that if God was to talk to us;
and if he was going to give us something new,
it most certainly would not be in the person of Jesus Christ.
And why?
Because we know him.
He is too ordinary.
He is from Nazareth.
He is the Son of the carpenter.
We know his mother and his father!
How could it be from him?
How could he “Come down from heaven?”
This is where it starts to really be fun to watch them;
fun in the sense that we can see ourselves in this.
If we are really honest, we too have that triple denial.
I mean we often do not believe that God would speak to us.
Why would he speak to me?
I am just a regular parishioner.
I am married.
I’ve got kids.
Or I am a priest or a child or just ordinary.
God isn’t going to speak to me!
And if God does speak to me,
he doesn’t have anything new to say to me;
why would God say something new to me?
Don’t we have the scriptures?
We do not even believe that.
As Catholics, we believe that yes
the scripture is a preeminent place
but we believe God is always talking to us
to every single one of us.
And here is the most important part:
Who is he speaking to us through?
Is Jesus going to speak directly to us?
The answer is yes.
And who does he come to us?
He comes to us in the most ordinary voices of those around us.
Just like Jesus came in the most ordinary voice at that time.
Who is that ordinary voice when God is speaking to us?
It might be just a stranger who says something kind to us;
or maybe something challenging to us that we have not heard.
Or maybe it is from a familiar voice;
maybe our spouse, who we often discount
as having anything revelant to say in our lives, right?
Or maybe it is a child and we might think;
“What would a child ever know?”
Or maybe it is a parent or a relative or a close friend.
You see God is constantly breaking open
and speaking to us through those around us
and he has something fresh to say to us every single day.
If we have ears to listen, we will hear.
If we have faith to believe, we will see how he is operating.
One of the problems we have,
and I do not think it is our generation only,
but particularly our generation is that
we believe that when God created us, it is a past-tense event.
In other words, God created us and he’s done.
You see, that is not Catholic theology at all.
Catholic theology is that yes,
God created us in his image
but he is creating us still now.
And that creation process is where we come in
because we become co-creators with God primarily of ourselves
and then of the world.
But we have to cooperate with that.
In the Eastern Church, they have a term for this;
it is called the divinization process or a theosis,
which means that we become more like God every day that we live.
Some cooperate in the opposite way and become less like God.
But we have to cooperate with God’s work in our life
to become more like God and
then we become more Christ-like in our daily life.
This is what the letter to the Ephesians was talking about
in today’s second reading written in Paul’s name.
They are saying “Be very clear;
here is how we know we are part of this divinization process
and here is how we know we are not.”
It says, if we are part of malice, deceit, divisiveness,
we are not from the Holy Spirit.
We are not participating in God’s way in the world.
Now think of what we are experiencing in our world today
and all the division; and all the words that divide us;
the malice, and deceit that is happening.
We have to say
there is a lot of nonparticipation in the divinization process.
But then the letter says
“If you want to know if you are part of God’s process
of purification, of goodness
then you will be kind and compassionate and
good towards others, forgiving, forgiving towards others
as God is forgiving towards you.
Be imitators of God.”
Wow! This shouldn’t be a surprise but it is for us.
Our role as Christians is allowing God
to continue the creation process within us
with the Bread of Life we partake in;
that we become more like God as each day goes on.
Now I do not know about you
but one of the hardest parts about getting older is we think
“What’s the point, I’ve done the best I can.
I am finishing here.”
No. The way God works is that
we are like an unfinished art work until the last day.
If you have ever watched artists at work,
sometimes the final touches to a piece of artwork
are the most brilliant of all
because they are the ones that add the color and the depth;
or that last little bit of sculpture that removes this hard edge.
And suddenly, you go “It pops!
oh my gosh that is beautiful!”
That is what you and I are.
We are unfinished art work and until the last stroke;
and until the last sort of chip off the block;
and until the last smoothing out,
the Lord is not done with us.
And we want to co-create with him the beauty and the art
that he is creating until our very last breath.
Sometimes the last strokes are the most important ones.
So today, as we come to the table to receive the Bread of Life once more,
know what we are doing.
We are participating in this divinization process
that we are becoming more like Christ and
our role is to cooperate with it;
it is to be kind;
it is to be gentle;
it is to be compassionate;
and to be forgiving and loving towards all.
That is our process.
That is the exciting process,
which stays true until the last breath of our life.
We are still being created by God, a work of art.
Today, we receive the Bread of Life
because he is the Bread of Life
and he continues his work of art within us.
