The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – B July 30, 2006

2Kings 4:42-44
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:1-15

Dear Jesus,

It is not easy to believe. Somehow, I had come to think that once I started following you, convinced that you are the Lord, the difficult part was over. The leap of faith had been made. The joy of experiencing your invitation to follow me made it seem possible, even a joy, to turn away from all that was and become a new creation in you. I remember the day I was baptized and the elation I felt, convinced as I was that sin would never be part of my life again. That was the naiveté of an eight-year-old to be honed to a sharpened acuity by the time I was nine. It is easy to boast in the throes of first fervor. But to do so is to forget that even to believe requires an empowering beyond one’s own strengths and capabilities. Didn’t Paul say that no one can say you are Lord except in the Holy Spirit? Yet you always challenge with great expectations. It’s true, isn’t it? You never ask the impossible but command what can be done only in, with, and through you.

I think back on those early days of being with you on the way. How foolish I was to have thought that your invitation would result in something just for me, a relationship that was solely with you with no implications for anyone else, a solitary walk with you. I should have paid closer attention to Paul who challenged believers to live their call practically with humility, gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love. In the urging there is a warning. To follow you will always entail emptying one’s self and living with the vulnerability that you exhibited with the shedding of the last drop of your blood. It’s true, isn’t it? For you, loving means pouring out self in service. Relationships would provide the fine detail of the degree of one’s faith in you. And the willingness to be vulnerable.

Your question reverberates in my head: Where can we buy enough food for them to eat? I begin to think that you ask that question over and over again and with adaptation, in the face of every situation of want people suffer. If I believe in you, I am forced to recognize you in your suffering little ones. Sometimes, I want to plug my ears and shut my eyes and turn away. The suffering is palpable and of titanic proportions. Famine. War. HIV/AIDS. The list is endless and the numbers of those affected nearly infinite. Do you really expect me to respond to global suffering? What will the paltry amount in my possession do to alleviate the sufferings of so many?

There is another din that competes with your challenge. I live in a wealthy country and am part of a stratum of society that knows comparative ease and the comfort of material goods. Surely I am not wealthy. I am grateful and see what I have as a sign of God’s favor. I pray begging God to bring these same comforts to the suffering masses. What more can I do? I am only one person after all!

As I wrote those last lines, I felt myself cringe. I can see you looking at me. Is that pity in your eyes? What does that hint of a smile mean other than your saying that I still have a lot to learn? But then I want to ask you, “If I understand you correctly and seek to respond as I think you dare me to, what will be left of me?”

Now as I write I think I can hear you asking me, Do you even begin to understand what Eucharist is about? Do you understand what Eucharist means, what your participation in it calls you to do and to be?

You took the little that was proffered, blest it, broke it, and distributed it to the hungry throng. The point is you became the source of plenty, the sign of God’s generous love visited upon the people in the age of fulfillment. You used the little bit and made it more than enough. The action of Eucharist is taking, breaking and distributing. If I dare to gather around the Table, if I dare to approach in the procession of my brothers and sisters in the faith to be fed, I cannot think that this that I receive is something just for me empowering a relationship between just the two of us. You command me to live this action. If I take and eat, I must allow myself to be taken and eaten. It’s as simple as that. Simple? That’s an odd word to use at a time like this. Even as I struggle I yield. And I understand that just as I am commanded to recognize you in those who suffer so am I to recognize your presence in the breaking and distributing. You are in the action of Eucharist.

Can I go to where I think this line of reasoning is leading me? How can I live with that degree of vulnerability? Can I be bread broken? Can I be cup poured out? Or better put, can I enter into your dying and rising, to live solely for you, pouring out myself for others that I might live in you?

Please be patient with me. I know that if I strike out on this journey I can become the laughingstock. Others can take advantage of me making me a bigger fool than even I appear to be. But that is what happened to you, isn’t it? And it was only on those terms that you would accept followers. You fled if people saw you as a source of wealth and security. You accepted only those who came to you willing to take on your poverty and vulnerability so that you can be seen as their truth and life. It’s true, isn’t it? Following you on the way will always mean being on the cross with you.

And then I think about the massive problems and wonder how the world would change if those who have dared to share the little they have with those who do not. What if we were willing to be bread broken and cup poured out, to bear with one another with love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit?

Please be patient with me as I struggle to understand and understanding, wonder how to put this into practice.

Sincerely,

Didymus