The Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time B: August 27, 2006

Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b
Ephesians 5:21-32
John 6:60-69

Dear Jesus,

Why does imposed subservience play such a prominent role in religious observance? I have watched you for many years now and have listened to your word. I’ve never heard you say anything that would indicate that power should have a role to play in communities that have you as their core. Yours are to be communities of shared responsibility and service. That’s what you modeled and the lesson is hard to learn.

I struggle with this. I’m sure you know how much I want to be in control, even of my own life. Surprises unnerve me, as do modes of acting contrary to my own. I like to be among likeminded ones. And since I think I know what is best I am most happy when others agree and are willing to do as they are told. At least that is the way I used to be. The tendency is still there but now I fight against it and realize that if a community is monochromatic it does not reflect you. If a community is not diverse, it is not in your likeness. If a community does not have in evidence multiple races, the poor as well as the materially endowed, the able and those who are disabled, the sane and those suffering from mental illness, that community is not formed after your heart.

The company you keep has scandalized people in every age. You fled the establishment and set your table for prostitutes, and publicans, and those that fit neatly under the category of sinner – all essentially untouchable in the acceptable community. You risked ritual impurity every time you sat to a meal with your guests. You served, poured the wine, broke the bread, made sure that each one’s needs were met. And you listened to their stories.

Did you touch lepers? Or did you cure them from a distance? You touched blind eyes, dead bodies, those possessed and invited them to experience God’s healing power and promise through deliverance. Seldom did you let them join the narrow band of your followers. You sent them out to witness to others still locked in bondage the freedom of the children of God.

If our community is rooted in the Gospel, must not our hallmark be the proclamation that all are welcome here?

These past several weeks, I have been hearing your challenge to eat your flesh and drink your blood and so to have life. I find myself struggling with what you mean. The teaching concludes with your ultimatum – unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. And the result? Many who were disciples turned a walked away. Was the reason they left because they saw the implication: that everyone was challenged to eat and everyone invited to have life within? And it all depended on yielding to you and the Spirit you poured out.

It is difficult not to be ambitious, not to want to climb to the top and be in charge. Our society preaches the gospel of material success, the wonders of youth, and of power. It’s very attractive, even alluring. Who doesn’t want to capture the gold? Do you wince when you read this, or do you shake your head and marvel at how much I have yet to learn? Is the best that I can aspire to is to serve? And in that service must learn that you are the source of what I do? I am dependent upon you. It is all about you.

All are welcome at your table. But I wonder if you do not say, as part of that invitation, that if you come and eat you must also then be willing to serve, to put what you have done and ingested into practice. And those ministers must not be all from one caste, the powerful ministering to the weak, the able to the disabled, the seeing to the blind, those of facile tongue to the mute, and those with hearing to the deaf. Wouldn’t you be happy if it were the other way around? And if it is not, is someone in power denying to others, the less desirable, the weaker members of society, the validity of their hearing your invitation?

Would you get back to me about this, please? There is a lot for me to think about here. And I wonder if it is possible for me to live out the implications of what I think I see. If I am wrong, please tell me. If I am right, please help me.

Sincerely,

Didymus