The Sánchez Archives SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Year B

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Hungering For Bread and For God

2 KINGS 4:42-44
EPHESIANS 4:1-6
JOHN 6:1-15

Appalled at the wastefulness of their students, two elementary school teachers in Santa Cruz, California, planted a young sapling on the school’s campus and named it the Free-Food Tree. Rather than discard their uneaten or unwanted sandwiches, the children were encouraged to place them under the tree so that students who had lost their lunch or could not afford one could help themselves. Some children began to bring an extra sandwich from home so that they’d have one to put under the Free-Food Tree. Eventually, the supply of donated food was sufficient to nourish all the school’s hungry youngsters with enough left over to offer to the homeless who lived in the city park near the school. In addition to learning not to waste their share of this world’s goods, the students had their first encounter with hunger and began to understand what they could do to alleviate it. A valuable lesson indeed, considering the fact that every hour 1,500 of this world’s children die of hunger or hunger-related causes.

But there are other hungers which gnaw at the human heart; these also cry out for nourishment. This week and for the next three weeks, the gathered assembly is invited to consider these other hungers as well as the nourishment that God in all goodness and compassion, offers to satisfy them.

Through the various scriptural accounts of: Elisha feeding 100 men (17th Sunday); of the manna in the wilderness (18th Sunday); of Elijah being fed by the angel (19th Sunday); of Wisdom preparing a feast and sending forth an invitation to all who would share it (20th Sunday); and of Jesus multiplying bread for the many (17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, believers are reminded that God is attuned to and eager to satisfy every human hunger. In each of these events, however, those who ate their fill were also challenged to look beyond the gifts of nourishment in order to more intimately know and appreciate the Giver.

Karl Rahner (The Great Church Year, Crossroad Pub. Co., New York: 1994) once explained that the people in today’s gospel were drawn to Jesus, driven by a hunger for God. They followed Jesus into the wilderness because they were aware that their own lives were a wilderness; they hungered for the words Jesus spoke. They wanted more than their ordinary lives were able to offer them. But, while they were hungering for God, a physical hunger seized them. Hungering for God they found themselves hungering for earthly life. Then the situation turned strange.

Jesus, whom they were following, to hear the words of life gave them earthly bread and fish. When they ate and had their fill, they wanted to make him king (6:15). What was offered as nourishment to sustain them in their search for God became a temptation, prompting them to covet the “free lunch” and to lose sight of its significance. As a result, Jesus fled from them. Rahner suggests that this is a parable of what constantly happens in the lives of individuals, particularly in our technological age.

God enables us to develop the technology so that we can have our earthly bread and to be able to multiply it so as to feed the great multitudes who live in the many wildernesses of this world. Technological advances should give us more time to seek for God’s bread and to satisfy our hunger for eternity. But we, like the people in today’s gospel are tempted by the miracle and want to make God the king of our technology, or worse, technology becomes our God. And so God withdraws from us, not willing to become a part of our scheme.

Today’s readings remind us of the balance that must be struck. If we have been blessed with an abundance of earthly bread or with the technical capabilities to produce such an abundance, then these gifts are for sharing with the hungry. When physical hungers are satisfied, then we are free to attend to the deeper hungers, for love, mercy, forgiveness, companionship, peace and fulfillment. In satisfying these hungers for one another, we realize and sharpen our hunger for God who is always ready to satisfy the hungry heart.

2 KINGS 4:42-44

In a land where bread was a necessary staple of life and where an average worker’s daily wage would buy only enough bread to feed a family for one day, an abundance of bread was, indeed, a wondrous blessing. That Elisha was able to extend such a wondrous blessing to so many people (a hundred men) was accepted as clear evidence of the power of God at work in him.

Successor to the prophetic ministry of Elijah (ninth century B.C.E.) Elisha was a popular figure whose legendary accomplishments included: multiplying oil to help a widow to pay her way out of debt; granting a child to an elderly woman and then resuscitating the boy when he died; making poisoned soup edible, healing a leper; recovering a lost ax; mediating a war, etc. These actions were, for the most part, motivated by a concern for the poor who remained faithful to God in spite of the moral decadence that surrounded them. Combined with similar deeds performed by Elijah, those of Elisha served to illustrate the theological purpose of the Deuteronomic historians (authors of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings), viz., to show that those who are faithful to the covenant will be blessed by God while those who are unfaithful bring judgment upon themselves.

Writing at a time when his people had been conquered and enslaved by Babylon (soon after 587 B.C.E.) this religious interpreter of history helped his contemporaries to learn a lesson from the rubble that was their world. By interpreting the demise of life as they had known it in terms of covenantal infidelity, the Deuteronomist attempted to awaken in his contemporaries the will to repent. By relating the wonders performed by Elijah and Elisha, he renewed their hope for a reconciliation with God and for the restoration of their covenantal privileges. Later Jewish eschatology associated the great works of Elisha (healings, feedings, resuscitation) with the messianic era of salvation.

In today’s first reading, it is significant that a man from Baal-Shalishah (modern days Kefr Tilt, fifteen miles north of Lydda on the costal plains southwest of Samaria) offered barley bread to Elisha, made from the firstfruits of the grain harvest. Firstfruits were the prescribed offering for God alone (Leviticus 2:12); to present these to the prophet underscored his position as a man of God. The fact that Elisha worked this wonder in the land of Canaan, where Baal, the god of fertility was credited with providing bread for the people, affirmed the fact that Yahweh alone satisfies the hungers of the people. By specifying that the bread was made of barley grain, the Deuteronomist affirmed the special predilection of God for the needy, since barley was an inexpensive grain and its bread was the customary fare of the poor.

Because of the emphasis on the miraculous character of the bread (feeding so many with so little), the satisfaction of those who ate, and the fact that there were leftovers, Christian authors recognized this action of Elisha as a type and prelude of Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes in today’s gospel and, the action of Jesus, as preparatory to his gift of the eucharistic bread which continues to nourish believers. Perhaps the church should also see in these events a challenge to continue in this tradition by being a provider and multiplier of bread for the poor. Surely, God whose special concern is for the poor and hungry would not mind if more of the “firstfruits” offerings, were funneled in their direction.

EPHESIANS 4:1-6

Noblesse oblige! Nobility obliges! In a sense, this was what the Ephesians author was telling his readers when he advised: “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (v. 1). Called to salvation by God and baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, believers are thereby responsible for reflecting their relationship with Christ in every aspect of their day-to-day existences. Previously in this letter, the author had described the essence of Christian vocation in terms of unity among believers established by union with God through Christ and in the Spirit (1:3-3:21), especially 2:18). In this pericope, he explains how the believer can translate that ontological unity into a moral or ethical expression.

Citing what William Barclay (“Ephesians”, The Daily Study Bible, St. Andrew Press, Edinburgh: 1976) has called “five of the great basic words of the Christian faith,” the author of Ephesians painted a portrait of a model disciple. Humility (v. 2), or tapeinophrosune in Greek, is actually a word which was coined by Christians. The Greeks had a word for humble (tapeinos) but this was a pejorative term, descriptive of a servile person, cowering and cringing before others. How could this ignoble quality become one of the foremost Christian virtues?!

Rooted in truth and an awareness of one’s unworthiness, Christian humility begins to evolve when a person compares his/her life to the life of Christ and begins to accurately assess the demands of God. True humility is not obsequious kowtowing but an acknowledgement of the need for conversion and a trusting in the power of grace to transform who we are into what we have been called to become.

Second of the virtues is meekness or praotes in Greek. Meekness strikes the balance between two extremes. As Barclay (op. cit.) explained, the meek person is kindled by indignation at the wrongs and sufferings of others but is never moved to anger by the wrongs and insults he, himself/she, herself has to bear. Animals which had been tamed or domesticated were also called meek (praus). For the Christian, this meekness comes from surrender to the power and will of God.

Patience (makrothumia) or long-suffering (v. 2) is that quality of spirit which never gives in to weakness. “Golden-tongue” John Chrysostom defined patience as the spirit which has the power to take revenge but never does so. Patience does not retaliate; it is the spirit that bears injury and insult without complaint. In the Christian scriptures, it is God who is continually characterized as patient (Romans 2:4; 1 Timothy 1:16; 1 Peter 3:15). Since believers have become one with God in Christ, it devolves upon them to strive for similar patience.

Fourth among the basic words of faith is love (v. 2). Of the four Greek terms for love, eros (sexual love), philia (warm affectionate friendship), stroge (familial affection), and agape (complete altruism) the Ephesians author called his readers to aspire to agape. Agape moves beyond physical, friendly and even familial love and beyond emotion; it is a virtue of the will, mind and heart which always seeks the ultimate benefit and welfare of the other, without reciprocity.

These four Christian virtues issue forth in peace (v. 3) so that believers may live together in all the glorious one-nesses of God. The seven-fold proclamation of unity, with which this reading ends, provides the reasons for and fruits of the harmony of the Christian community. One body of believers with one hope and one faith, sharing one baptism in one Jesus, belonging to one God in one Spirit. As yet, this unity has yet to be fully realized. Perhaps, this call from our elder brother in the faith will whet our appetites and sharpen our hunger for the oneness which is to distinguish us as Christ’s own.

JOHN 6:1-15

Having followed Jesus because they hungered for the signs he was performing for the sick, the crowds were nourished by Jesus physically with barley bread and fish, and spiritually with the bread of Jesus’ word. All four gospels relate the episode of the feeding of the crowd (Mark 6:34-44; Matthew 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17) but only the fourth evangelist, called it a sign. Sign, or semeion in Greek, was a Johannine term for a wondrous deed or act of power performed by Jesus. Of all the signs Jesus worked, the Johannine author included but seven in his gospel. Each sign was to be recognized as a vehicle of revelation and means of personal encounter with God in Christ. Each sign was to be accepted as a challenge to see beyond the sign and to come to faith in the one whom the sign has revealed. In today’s gospel, through the sign of the bread for the many, Jesus is revealed as bread for the life of the world.

Reminiscent of the gift of manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16:4-31) and of Elisha’s feeding of a hundred men with twenty barley loaves (first reading), Jesus’ sign also pointed ahead to the gift of himself as bread at the last supper and ultimately to the gift of himself on the cross. Readers of John will realize that the evangelist has omitted the institution of the Eucharist from his last supper narrative and chose instead to incorporate all of his eucharistic theology into John 6. As the synoptics did before him, John related the sign of the loaves in distinctive eucharistic language. By using the same terms, viz. Jesus took, gave thanks, passed the bread, the evangelist underscored the significance and preparatory character of this event.

Unique to the fourth gospel is the directive to gather up (synagein) the fragments (klasma) or leftover pieces of bread. Both of these terms appear in the Didache (also called Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: a Christian document dated ca 100 C.E.). Synagein referred both to the gathering up of the eucharistic fragments which was understood as a symbol of the gathering together of the church. Klasma referred to the broken fragments of the eucharistic bread to be shared among the gathered assembly of the faithful. Later in John 6, when Jesus will declare himself to be bread and food for all it will become clear that all will be gathered (synagein) under the shelter of God’s saving love when he is fragmented (klasma) and shared as food and then fragmented (klasma) and broken on the cross.

In addition to the soteriological and theological overtones, there are also social implications inherent in this sign. Notice that Philip asked Jesus, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” (v. 5). Jesus sensed the many hungers with which the people pursued him; no doubt, he wished Philip to be similarly sensitive to the needs of others. As this sign is proclaimed today, Jesus poses his question to each of us. “Where shall we buy bread to satisfy the hungry?” All who eat and are filled by the bread of life and who truly perceive the sign in faith. . . all who are gathered together by that sharing. . . all of us become responsible for one another as well as for those whose hungers have yet to be satisfied. If another hungers, it is I who must buy or make, beg or borrow bread. Then when he/she has been fed, it devolves upon us to satisfy his/her deeper hunger for the bread of life who is Jesus. Sharers in this bread will have eternal life.

[NOTE TO USERS: This archive is available for use without charge, but it remains the property of the author and under copyright with Celebrations Publications. Users are permitted to print individual Sunday commentaries for pastoral use, but are prohibited from downloading or copying files or printing any portion of this for sale or distribution.]