Krysallis

20th
Proverbs 9, 1-6
Psalm 33:2-7
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

21st
Joshua 24:1-2,15-17
18b Psalm 33: ad passim
Ephesians 5:21-32
John 6:60-69

The next several Sundays of August take a Eucharistic detour through the Gospel of John. In the Gospel of Mark, we have been journeying with Jesus through the Sundays of Ordinary Time. Now, seemingly, the Church inserts these verses from the Gospel of John to (1) remind us we are a Eucharistic community and (2) include John a bit more in the lectionary, since the predominate Gospels of Cycles A, B, and C are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, just as any journey includes a few interesting side trips, we take this detour for three weeks at the bidding of our "tour guide" (the Church) in its "tour manual" (the lectionary).

The responsorial psalm for each week is Psalm 34. The refrain repeated each week -- "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord" --pertains to the "afflicted in distress" (19th Sunday), "the poor who cries out" (20th Sunday), and the just, for whom God "has ears and eyes" (21st Sunday). As a Eucharistic community, we recognize our own poverty and affliction and thereby reach out to others in justice and liberation. As a Eucharistic community, we in turn become bread for others.

As detours occasionally go, the road isn’t always smooth. The Eucharistic teaching of the Christ is visited by skepticism, criticism and finally confrontation. "How can he be the bread from heaven, since we know he is a home-town boy and we know his family?" "How can he give us his flesh to eat?" "These words are hard, who can accept it?" There are bumps and curves on the road the Church has directed for our detour.

There are many who want no part of our Eucharistic ministry of justice and liberation. In reaching out with real bread to the poor and oppressed, we have to acknowledge our own hunger. A whole system of delusion hinges on the lie that power, pleasure or possession is enough to fill the human heart. To recognize that these things do not truly satisfy is to experience the collapse of what had been held dear and required so much wasted time and effort. And yet, Jesus finally confronts his followers to accept the implications of participating in the Eucharistic community, just as Joshua who summoned all the people and said, "If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve."

The readings from Ephesians for these Sundays set out a code of ethics for the detour traveller. In the face of obstacles, instead of being bitter, angry and reviling, we are encouraged to be kind, compassionate and forgiving and to subordinate ourselves to one another in love. Instead of giving into "evil, ignorance and drunkenness", we live wisely and gratefully, "singing and playing to God in our hearts." As individuals and as a community, ours is always the choice to be "bread" or to be "poison". Bitterness is a particular temptation for the old, having been beaten down so often by the forces that are set against their efforts to create change in the social order. The Eucharistic community is always young in this regard, and it is an ongoing kindness and a forgiving heart that enables it to be faithful in love and bread for the oppressed despite the negativity it encounters on all sides.

Finally, the first readings give us a taste of the pleasures of the detour. There is food to strengthen an exhausted and despirited Elijah. There is a feast spread out by Wisdom for the simple and for the community that can walk away from the foolishness that has others so strongly in it grasp. There is the "Spirit and Life" that is the Body and Blood of Christ for those who have found it "far from them to forsake the Lord". In the Eucharistic community, there is food offered to the hungry and the weary. It is bread that will be broken with the poor, and the outcast, and the marginal.

(Having recently returned from the Philippine Islands, I experienced the hospitality that so much permeates that culture. Of course, I was rich compared to their standards. We tried to be generous with what we had, but we couldn’t ignore the fact that we were "handing out" to the less fortunate. We were a Eucharistic community when we sat down together and a meal --fish, rice, leche flan, and San Miguel beer -- was shared, refreshing my weariness as a traveller, filling our mutual hunger and thirst.)

When we have taken our Eucharistic detour through John, we return to the main road – refreshed and envigorated, more aware of our identity as a Eucharistic community, acting in justice and liberation toward one another, the poor and the hungry.