My question for today concerns food. You don’t need to respond out-loud, but only think about your answer for a moment. My question is this: what is your favorite “comfort food?” Yes, comfort food – the food you long for when you’re under stress, when you’ve had a really bad day. Food you crave when you’re lonely and from which you seek comfort. For some of you, the answer might be “ice cream.” That seemed to be the response of the “Golden Girls,” who can be seen in old re-runs. But for me, my comfort food is more substantial. Even though I do like ice cream from time to time, my comfort food is “meatloaf.” But not just any meatloaf. Mine is the meatloaf my wife makes from a recipe she’s developed some 50 years ago.
“Comfort food” has an important role in our lives. Of course, food, itself, has a very important role in our lives. We’ve all heard the old statement: “you are what you eat.” However, that doesn’t mean some of you are bowls of ice-cream – and I’m not a meatloaf, even if there may be a few of you who think I am.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you I’m beginning this reflection by reminding us about the importance of food in our lives – as both a source of comfort and a need for our nutrition and ultimate well-being. For the next several weeks our gospel readings from John the Evangelist will be about a particular food, the bread of life, the food of life which brings us comfort and provides for our own consolation and our well-being.
Over three thousand years ago, the Israelites, on their Exodus from Egypt to a new Holy Land, craved their own comfort food. For them, it apparently was leeks and onions, which would be far down on my list of comfort foods. Of course, back then the wandering Israelites would have settled for any food – claiming Moses had led them into a wilderness, where they were starving, a place far from the meat and bread they left behind in Egypt.
In today’s reading found in the Book of Exodus, we heard the response the Lord God made through Moses. He gave them quail for their meat and manna for their bread. Manna, a word that means: “what is this?” They soon learned what this manna was. Manna was a means of keeping them alive for a generation, for the forty years they were lost in their long journey from a land of bondage to a land of freedom. This manna, this bread from heaven, became their new “comfort food.”
A thousand years later, the one who they thought might be their new Moses, perhaps even their long-awaited Messiah, this preacher appeared before them and brought about a new miracle. He had just fed thousands of Hebrews, using only five donated barley loaves and two fish. It’s no wonder they wanted to make him their king, for surely, here was a man who could feed them daily. No longer would they need to work for their daily bread. All they needed to do was to follow him as he traveled from place to place.
But this Jesus, this new wonderworker, recognized this was not what the Lord God had called him to do. Rather, the Lord God had called him – to be. To be the bread of life, the new bread given daily as the food to sustain his people, to nourish his people beyond a mere forty years, but rather, every day of their lives, until the end of the world.
He spoke these words to those immediately present – those who were looking for the miracle of a free hand-out of food for which they did not need to labor. He instructed them they must turn away from the past, from a time when the Lord God gave them food in the desert. They must turn to the present when the Father gives them the bread which in turn – “gives life to the world.” He went on to say, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
Over the next several weeks we will be asked to ponder his response to those who follow him. We will learn how those who heard these words reacted, how some rejected them, and others accepted them. We, too, will be asked about our own rejection or our own acceptance of his body and blood under the appearance of bread and wine. We will be asked about our own acceptance of his being the food of life, itself.
For now, we are being asked if this can be our own comfort food – the food to consol us when we are stressed, when we are feeling deserted and lonely. We are to recall that we are, indeed, what we eat – that by partaking of this holy meal, we, ourselves, become holy. Is it possible we can consume his body and drink his blood and in doing so truly become the Body and Blood of Christ?
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time; August 5, 2012
Ex 16:2-4, 12-15; Eph 4:17, 10-24; Jn 6:24-35