This is the scene, and when you think about it, it is kind of hilarious but it is also very familiar.  Moses has just crossed the Red Sea with his band of followers.  Moses is played by Charlton Heston.  And he’s left behind the Egyptians and the Pharaoh, played by Yul Brenner, stuck in the mud behind him.  What really happened is this band of Hebrew people had been freed from slavery for the first time in centuries and now they’re well on their way to the Promised Land and the first thing they think about is their stomach.  They complain, “Why did you take us from the meat stews and the familiar breads of Egypt?”  They’re surrounded by the riches of the Sinai Desert which provides flour in the morning that can be pounded into bread cakes and flocks of quail in the evening that can be used as an entre and they look at all this and they say, when Moses invites them to dine on that native and natural foods of the desert, they say, “What is this?”

Now, Americans are famous for cruising all around the world, to various peoples and cultures and they land in alien ports and they get off the ship and they take an excursion and they look at the local cuisine and they say, “What is this?”  Then they head right back to the ship for an American menu and an American meal.  American tourists in Paris are famous for spending their days and rights in Paris and having good French food but getting filled with that rich food very soon and very soon you see them making a B-line to the big Burger King on the Champs Élysees. 

Now I can give you an example closer to home.  Fr. Donie O’Connor was with us for seven weeks.  He was a delight, he was a gift, he even came and sang to us at this Mass.  He was raised on Irish meat and potatoes and he adapted quickly to the native cuisine of Kenya and then of Uganda.  And then, he sat down to eat with us, and we served him a California delicacy, steamed artichoke.  Now you have to understand, Donie is a fast eater.  He’s the first one to eat, he’s the first one to be through, but he just sat there and stared.  And then he said, “What is this?”  And we carefully coached him how to eat his first artichoke and he ate it and he finished and then he said, “It’s not worth the effort.”

In the Gospel, the people are well on their way to become followers of Jesus but their stomachs get in the way.  And Jesus says, you’re not looking for signs that point to me but because you are filled with bread and our God sends bread that gives life that really lasts and then he says, “I am the bread of life. . .” and we’re likely to say, “What is this?”

Well, at one level it refers to the Eucharist, but at a deeper level it refers to how Jesus teaches us and nourishes us to know what it means to be fully human and fully alive.

I’m going to give you three simple amazing steps from the teaching of Jesus of what it means to be fully human, fully alive.  The first step is to be a people who wonder.  Jesus says you’ve got to become like little children if you’re going to be anywhere in to the Kingdom of God.  Little children who are delighted and amazed at everything they find from the creation of life, beginning with their fingers—just amazed.  And Jesus himself looks around at creation and sees how awesome it is and then he prays, “Abba—Daddy, my own dear Father.”  Whether we’re looking at a gorgeous sunset or amazed at a newly born baby or staring through the Hubble telescope at the vast stretches of space with billions of galaxies out there, our first role as God’s people and God’s children is to wonder. . . to be stupefied day after day.  And when we’re people of wonder and when we’re stupefied, it leads to awe, it leads to reverence, it leads to thanksgiving.  A tried and true religious word for that is “it leads to Eucharist.” 

The second step is to always seek the truth.  When we first meet Jesus what is he doing?  He goes to the temple at age 12, listening to the teachers and asking them questions.  He grows up and then he goes to the Scribes and Pharisees and asks them questions.  And then, he tells stories—story after story that makes us think and makes us to ask questions.  We’re called to be people who always ask questions and who are life-long learners—learners our whole life long.  The Catholic author, Mary Gordman writes, “Faith without doubts, faith without asking questions, is either superstition or nostalgia.”  Let me repeat that again, “Faith without asking questions is either superstition or nostalgia.”  And we even have a saint named for it.  We have the Apostle St. Thomas, “Doubting Thomas,”  because he asks questions he ended up meeting the risen Lord and saying, “My Lord and my God.” 

The third and final step to be fully human and fully alive is to care.  Jesus says, “I was hungry…I was thirsty…I was needy.  What did you do and where were you?”  And, he’s speaking for the people who are needy on our earth and for our earth itself.  “Where were you and what did you do?”  But remember, to care means to walk on two feet, on both feet—on both sandels, you might say, or more modernly, on both shoes, or more recently, if you want, on both Pradas.  But it means one foot is charity and compassion which is absolutely necessary but on that second foot is justice and wise and effective politics—what a concept, our politics—and that foot also is absolutely necessary. 

There it is, nourished by the teaching and the life of Jesus, the bread of life.  We are simply called to be a people who wonder, people who seek the truth, a people who care—and not to worry, because Jesus, the Word of God, the wisdom of God, the bread of life has been there and done that already up to and including death and resurrection and he invites us to do the same.

 

Amen