Homily for Sunday, 5 August 2018

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. 

What is a sign, and how might a sign point toward the quality of our relationship with somebody?

When we think of signs, we might start with the simplest examples: Traffic lights, for instance. Regardless of where we are in the world, or the language spoken there, the colours of traffic lights and their order are consistent: Red, yellow, green, from top to bottom or left to right. Another simple example of signs might be when we are in an airport in a foreign country with a different language. We need simple picture signs to point us toward the baggage claim, through customs, to our connecting gate, to the bathroom, and so forth.

Yet it is difficult to form a relationship with a sign at the airport or a traffic light. That is, unless I were to consider my impatient grumbling of a few days ago as I sat in front of an interminable red light, with the crossing arms down, lights on and bells sounding (speaking of signs) as three LRT trains passed in front of me. It is difficult to consider this to be an example of a relationship with a sign, unless maybe one of disdain! But this is not usually what we mean by relationship.

When we enter into relationship with somebody, more complex signs allow us to gauge the health of the relationship. When my mom and dad, after forty-two years of marriage, embrace lovingly in what we call public displays of affection, totally focused on each other and the moment, those PDAs are a clear sign that their relationship is healthy. When my brother Basilian priests gather together with joy in one another to pray, eat, or to recreate in community, we see a clear sign that relationships among us and with God are healthy.

One especially important, and undeniably complex, sign of healthy relationship, is the giving and sharing of food. Our Scriptures offer us many instances of the giving, receiving, and sharing of food, and our readings today from Exodus and John’s Gospel are no exception. The ability to give, receive, and share food is an essential measure of the health of relationships in Scripture. The sharing of food is at the centre of our celebration of Eucharist here and our Christian living by works of kindness, mercy, and justice that flow from this celebration. There may be no greater sign of the health of relationships, of love and trust among people and between us and God, than the frequency and quality of our fellowship around food.

Food is essential to love, bonding, and building trust from the first moments between a mother and her newborn child and maybe even before then, while the child is in the womb. Moms and dads: Your children’s dislike of broccoli and love for the Sunday brunch here at St. Joseph’s College probably goes way back! As an uncle, I think of the first time I met my nephew Liam, when he was about two months old, at Christmastime. While the amazing smell of Christmas dinner wafted through the house, my sister Deanna, Liam’s mom, handed Liam and a bottle to me so that I could feed him. How delighted and relaxed Liam was! A few years passed and, once again, my family was together at Christmastime. Liam had developed a taste for corn tortilla chips (a boy after my own heart). My then-toddler nephew, who is now almost seven years old, made a game of repeatedly circling the living room, charming and soaking in the love from everybody, and then, with great anticipation, opening his mouth wide in front of me so I could fill it with a chip. Deanna made the astute observation to me that the way to Liam’s heart was through food. This was nephew-uncle bonding time at its finest!

If only the people of Israel in Exodus or the crowds following Jesus in John’s Gospel had been as appreciative of what God fed them as Liam was of tortilla chips! Instead, when God feeds the people of Israel with a dewy, “flaky substance” in the desert, they look at it sideways and ask “What is it”? They call it “manna.” This strange name the Israelites give God’s food to them is one of the fairly frequent instances in most if not all languages in which a word used one way—in this case “man” or “manna” introduce a question, as in “What?” in Hebrew—may be used in another way, as in the name for something. Here, the Israelites’ question on encountering the food God gives them becomes their name for it: Manna? What is it?

At least by this point in their exodus from Egypt, the people of Israel have progressed beyond complaining about being hungry, longing to sit “by the fleshpots” and to eat their “fill of bread” they had enjoyed in Egypt. But they still do not understand the sign value of the manna in the desert: What did the manna signify about God’s relationship with his people?

God could have abandoned the people of Israel when they “complained against Moses and Aaron” and God, or scolded them, as God did at other times when they complained. But God does not abandon his people or scold them. Instead, God tests them: “Alright, Israel, your constant complaining is driving me crazy! But if I give you food, even a strange kind of food you will not know I gave to you or what it is until you try it, will you recognize me as the God who delivered you out of slavery, who has sustained you for forty years in the desert, and who will lead you back to your homeland? Will you at last learn to trust me”?

And Israel still does not quite pass God’s test. They do not quite understand the sign behind the manna from heaven: That this nourishing if strange food is yet another sign of God’s promise to be with them always, to sustain them, and to save them, whether from slavery or their own ignorance and complaining, no matter what. God’s promise, called a covenant, is greater than the bread that only points to God’s promise of salvation. And so, even if the people of Israel fail the test; fail to understand the covenantal sign of the manna in the desert, God and God’s salvation, and not the people’s failure, will have the last word.

The same is true of Jesus’ encounter with the crowds in John’s Gospel, who continue to look for him after the sign of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. The crowds look for Jesus “not because [they] saw signs, but because [they] ate their fill of the loaves.” Again, they fail to understand the covenant value of Jesus’ sign of the multiplication of loaves; how this fits into God’s ongoing promise to us of sustenance toward eternal life. They fail to understand that God has upped the sign ante, so to speak: Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves shows that Jesus, in our human form, is the same God who saved the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, formed a covenant relationship with them and guided them through the desert under Moses and Aaron to their homeland. Again, the sign points us to something, or better yet somebody, beyond the sign itself: God; relationship with God; God’s continued offer of salvation. No longer should it be any question of “manna”?—“What is it”?—but of our relationship with God, who is behind these earthly signs leading us to salvation, “the food that endures for eternal life.”

The question, then, becomes how well we understand the signs God gives us today to point us toward relationship with God; toward the unbreakable covenant God has made with us to save us. Maybe if God were to try to give us tortilla chips instead of manna or loaves and fish, we might understand the promise of salvation God has tried since the first moments of creation to communicate to us. My nephew Liam would certainly understand that God wants to save us if God were to send us tortilla chips!

How well do we understand God’s signs of salvation, greatest of all our Eucharist, in our lives? Even if we struggle or fail outright to understand God’s signs, as the episodes of the manna and after Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish show us, God will keep trying to strengthen his relationship with us; to point us toward eternal life. And so our failures; our ignorance; even our sin will not have the last word. God and God’s salvation, loving relationship with God forever, will. This is God’s promise to us; God’s covenant with us.