EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
2 AUGUST 2015
When the children of Israel were slaves in
Egypt, they were not treated as human beings.
As a result, they learned to distrust any authority figure, especially
Pharaoh. Slowly, they learned to trust
Moses, as he pointed to the ten plagues as signs that God wanted them to be his
free sons and daughters. But when they
ran out of food in the hostile environment of the desert, they slipped back
into old patterns, lost trust in Moses, and wanted to return to being slaves in
Egypt. So, Moses used signs in the
desert to regain their trust. He
instructed them to collect the secretions of insects as food before the sun
became too hot. They called this food
manna. Moses also taught them to gather
quails exhausted from flying over the Mediterranean Sea for meat. Moses called the manna “bread from heaven,”
because it was a sign that they could trust in God as he taught them how to
behave as free sons and daughters.
Jesus used a sign to teach the
crowds how to behave as God’s sons and daughters. He fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two
fish as a sign that they could trust his power to free them from whatever
enslaves them. But just as their
ancestors could not look beyond manna as a sign that they could trust God, the
crowds cannot look beyond the loaves and fishes to believe that he is the one
sent by God. They need to trust that he
can free them from the slavery of sin and death. They want him to give them another free
lunch. Like their ancestors, they see
God as a Pharaoh who punishes when they are bad, or a Santa Claus who rewards when
they are good.
We gather for this Mass today, because
we believe that Jesus is the Bread come down from heaven. He feeds us with bread transformed into his
Body and wine transformed into his Blood.
As partakers of the Mystery of the Eucharist, we are invited to take
another step in trusting God. But we
cannot trust when we are living in any kind of slavery. We can become slaves to almost anything –
from alcohol to drugs to sex or food or bad habits. We can be slaves to consumerism, believing
that buying stuff will make us happy. We
can be slaves to popular opinion and become what others think we should
become. Television reality shows seem to
take delight at the ways people can be enslaved and sell them as entertainment.
Jesus invites us to take a closer
look at our daily lives to admit the ways in which we might be slaves. He invites us to trust him in our journey
through the desert of recovery to learn how to behave as his sons and
daughters. Anyone who has gone through a
twelve step program knows how difficult that journey can be. The first step is to admit that I am not
truly free, because I am enslaved to something.
With that honest admission, we take the next steps of learning that we
can let go of whatever had enslaved us to a deeper trust in God. Instead of seeing God as a Pharaoh who
punishes us when we misbehave or Santa Claus who rewards us when we are good,
we develop a faith in God who will always provide us with what we need.
One important way of growing in this
deeper faith is to open our eyes to see the signs of God’s love already around
us. The first sign might be the sun
coming up in the morning. In the light
of a new day, as we open our eyes to signs of God’s love in the embrace of a
loved one or the smile of a friend.
Kindness from a fellow worker can be a sign of God’s love. Special occasions like births or baptisms or
weddings can be powerful signs. The sign
might be the presence of our friend from Africa, who always lets us know how we
can make life better for the people of his parish in Uganda. When we become attentive to these natural
signs of God’s love, as the ancient Hebrews became attentive to the food they
received in the desert, we can approach the ultimate sign of God’s love in the
Eucharist with a depth of faith that enables us to trust God, no matter what is
happening.
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