B Cycle – 20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Jn. 6:51-58

Each of us has watched children playing, lost in some imaginary world. There is freedom, an openness and innocence in their interaction and their conversations.  You cannot help but marvel at their imaginary world and their willingness to not judge the intentions of others.  Their play can be intense and serious as it enfolds and as they interact with each other and freely express themselves.  It is a visual reminder of why Christ said, “unless you change and become like little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt.18:3).  We must admit we do lose that innocence and freedom early in life.  Perhaps that is because we quickly learn about betrayal and how self-centered people are and how their intentions are not always innocent. 

This life lesson is learned somewhere before our fifth birthday.  We learn not to trust everyone, and we learn to guard what we say, who we interact with and what we are willing to share with others.  Some of this caution is taught to us by our parents to protect us but most of it comes from being betrayed by someone we believed was our friend.  This life lesson impacts our ability to completely trust anyone, including God.   It is no wonder those who were mesmerized by Jesus’s teaching and His miracles were shocked when He said – “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.” 

That declaration created an uproar among the crowd and many of His followers left Him saying, “this teaching is hard to take.”  Nothing had prepared them to believe eating someone’s flesh could lead to eternal life.  It shook their long held beliefs about God and what God’s laws demanded of them.  Why did Jesus make that declaration at that moment in His ministry?  We know many left Him that day, but we also know many remained, even if they failed to understand exactly what Jesus was preparing them for.  It was a challenge to depend on Jesus not the law for their salvation.  They had become comfortable with the law without realizing God wanted their hearts.  That statement was and remains a challenge to never get comfortable.  God not only wants more than our faithfulness.  He also wants our hearts and our willingness to embrace what only Christ can give us – eternal life. 

There are many sayings of Jesus which were and still are hard to take, so should we just ignore them and because they challenge our faith.  If we fail to act on those sayings we are depending on our own “righteousness” to attain eternal life.  If our salvation is dependent on our righteousness, then we have no need for a savior.  This is exactly why we need a child like faith and admit there are things we must embrace on faith. 

In our first reading today, we are told by God, “”Let whoever is simple turn in here;
To the one who lacks understanding, come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed!  Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.”  We are told to stop struggle and allow the Spirit to give us the wisdom to allow belief in Christ to give us courage to act on faith.  We need to pray for the grace to become childlike in our faith journey and for a moment in time withhold our doubts and just allow the Word of God to echo within our inner self and touch our doubts and fears. 

This chapter of John’s gospel begins with Jesus feeding the multitude and ends with Peter declaring Jesus to be the Son of God.  It ends with Jesus preparing them for an ultimate betrayal.  This entire chapter of John is filled with challenges to our ability to ultimately acknowledge all we seek is found in Jesus.  All our wants and desires can be satisfied if only we allow the Holy Spirit to transform our minds and hearts.  A simpler faith will never doubt because it believes and trusts Christ will achieve in us what He said He would achieve – to come and make His home within us.

We do not need more theology to articulate why we believe. What we need is more interaction with Jesus.  We need to tell the stories of how Jesus was with us in the storms of our lives and how Jesus fed our hunger for “righteousness.”  We need to talk about our own stepping out of the boat and achieving things we know we could never achieve without Christ.  We need to tell others how many times we failed before we learned to keep our focus on Jesus. We need to learn to keep our trust in the promises of God when we are challenged by unbelief.  We need to be honest about our own struggles with doubt and how we overcame those doubts by focusing on God’s Word.  We need the life giving presence of the Holy Sprit whom Jesus said He would send us.  We need the Bread from Heaven to continue to feed our hunger. 

A simple faith is like those times, as a father, I stood in a swimming pool and invited my own children to jump in because I would not let them sink.  A simple faith shakes off the fears and doubts of unbelief because Christ said, “come to me” or “if you open the door (to your heart), I will come to you.”  We need to confront doubt and call it for what it is – a lie to keep us from experiencing the life God desires us to experience.  Do we believe if we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we will have eternal life?  If we do, then let us discover what that life means for us here in the Kingdom of God on earth.