Sunday, August 23, 2009AD
21st Sunday in Greentime
Where Would We Go?
We end the section of John’s Gospel known as the Sermon on the Bread of Life. Jesus refers to Himself as the Bread, the Sustenance, the Mainstay of our existence. Jesus self-refers as the total package. Whatever we need to live totally human lives, Jesus provides for us in a myriad of ways.
The sermon is in two parts. The main part of the sermon speaks of Jesus per se as what we need to sustain a totally human life. (Last week’s Gospel seems to be a later addition which addresses Jesus as our Bread of Life in the Eucharist.)
Today’s conclusion tells us of the reaction of many to Jesus’ difficult words. They ask, “Who can accept it?” Jesus’ comeback speaks of the gift of faith. Faith in Jesus is a gift and faith is granted by (the) Father.
The challenge in the question is simply this, “Do you believe in Jesus? or “do you believe Jesus?” Interestingly, today, and probably always since the first century, there have been people who believe in Jesus. Politicians and others currying favor frequently protest their faith in Jesus as Lord. However, Jesus was not asking people to worship Him. Rather, He asks people to follow Him. This raises a more delicate question, viz., do we practice what He preaches? As Jesus Himself says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “Not everyone who calls Me Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom, but only those who do the will of My Father.” (Matt 7.21)
Curiously, sixty years ago, Thomas Merton, before his becoming a monk at Gethsemane, pondered his position on World War II. 1) Jesus was non-violent; 2) Merton wanted to be a follower of Jesus, viz., one who believed Jesus; 3) He (Merton), therefore, had to be non-violent as well. In Merton’s mind, it was a logical position. In addition, he was troubled by his philosophical realization that young German counterparts of his, drafted into Hitler’s Army of the Third Reich, were just as much sons of God and brothers of Christ Jesus as he (Merton) himself was. He resolved that were he drafted, he would be a conscientious objector to the point of being a stretcher bearer on the battlefield.
Peter speaks up when Jesus asks the 12 if they were going to return to their former ways and abandon discipleship and no longer accompany (walk behind) Him. Peter speaks in the name of all gifted with faith in Jesus as he answers the Master, “To whom shall we go?” …We are convinced that (Jesus is) the Holy One of God “. Because of God’s “Amazing Grace”, Thomas Merton would have said, “Amen, brother” to St Peter’s graced affirmation. Jesus does not want worshippers; He wants followers, disciples.
For many reasons, Catholic believers take a beating in the contemporary world. Catholics believe that faith in Jesus is worth the grief. Yes, we echo Peter’s words when we ask where would we go? Who knows our story better than Jesus? Who knows the truth better? Yet, sadly, how many Catholics come to treat our faith like a luxury item. Even more, sadly do we so frequently fail to condition our children to lives of following Jesus by the evaporation of faith in our own lives?
350 years ago, in France, Catholic mathematician, Blaise Pascal, combined a brilliant left brain with a gifted right brain filled with the Power of religious experience. His objective skills in math were not diminished by the gift of faith. Rather, God’s gifts enhanced one another.
He proposed what is known as “Pascal’s Wager”, viz., it is wiser to (believe and) behave as if there is a God than to behave as if there were no God.
He also spoke of the depths of the gift of faith in Jesus Christ. He said that the “heart (gifted by faith in Jesus) has reasons (to believe) that the human mind cannot understand.”
Not all his contemporaries shared Pascal’s gifted synthesis of left brain objectivity and right brain openness to faith in Jesus. First, the Enlightenment in Europe and North America proclaimed Deism. Yes, there is a God, but God is the Divine Watchmaker. God did such a good job that the world runs on its own. The Deists did not deign to include a providential God in our journey through life. Eventually, a fusion of Deism with the American stress upon the individual led to a de facto secular humanism, when we do good things whether or not there is a God. Next, this devolves into a practical atheism. Who cares if there is a God or not? Then, this devolves further into what Pope John Paul calls “the eclipse of God and the eclipse of the human person”. (Might we add eclipse of the environment, God’s primordial revelation?) We witness this each day. “Lord, to Whom would we go?” The road without You leads nowhere. 082609AD jfq