WHAT WE NEED
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
August 21, 2021
For about 25 or 30 years, every fall I went off together
with 4 of my buddies from high school to a cabin in the deep woods of Northern
Wisconsin for a weekend of fun, and food, and boating and disassembling the
dock on the lake before winter came on.
We did a lot of laughing and savoring of stories and old
memories.
But then, just a few years ago, the host of our annual
vacation died of cancer relatively quickly. The rest of us vowed to continue our gatherings somehow because it
seemed important, and his wife still needed us to help take out the dock in the
fall.
I haven’t seen or spoken to any of those guys since the
funeral, so I’ve learned that those experiences- while always enjoyable – were
really not as important to us as we all presumed they were. Or maybe I’m not so important?
That’s not to be self-pitying, but it is to call the
question of what really is of lasting importance to me, to us, and
why? There are a lot of things in life
that can be merely pleasurable, but ultimately not very important or
necessary. When they cease to be, life
goes on in much the same way that it ever did. I learned that.
But there are other things- other relationships- other
people and experiences- that are the foundation of our souls, without which we
cannot exist in a healthy way, and the threat of losing those can be a matter
of life and death, or at least a matter of enduring security and enduring
hopelessness.
We are wise to recognize the difference between what we
enjoy and what we need to survive.
And that’s the question which our scripture calls us to
consider today. What is of ultimate
necessity, as distinct from that which we merely like, or prefer? I appreciate my old high school friends, and
I found joy in being with them for all those years in Wisconsin. But I didn’t depend upon them as a life
source for me. And I was rather
surprised by how quickly those bonds dissolved after our friend died, now 3 1/2
years ago. I may once have had a
mistaken understanding about what is the difference between essential
relationship and nostalgia.
In today’s first reading (Joshua), the Israelites are being
invited to consider the same question. They are challenged both to remember what happened long ago-back
in Egypt and on Exile-and to embrace what the Lord was calling them to
do and to be in a new time and place. It’s the same God, the same life source, but not the same situation.
“Decide now!” says Joshua, who you are going to serve, to whom you are going to
cling, in whom you will entrust your destiny. The people had been presented
with a whole buffet of pagan Gods from which to choose to pledge their loyalty
in their new home of Canaan, and it was time to take a stand. Will they serve the God’s of the popular
culture? Or will they serve the one true Lord?
At the time it was a choice between Yahweh and the gods of
the Amorites.
For us in 21st Century America it is more often a
choice between the God of Jesus Christ and the gods of money, power, sex,
success, reputation, political influence.
The question remains the same. In the end, who or what matters most? We are speaking of God here, which
means a decision about that to which absolutely everything else must give
way. Who or what is God? Who or what gets absolute deference and
worship?
And today’s gospel of John is the last of what has now been
several weeks of the so-called “Bread of Life” discourses from Jesus. He’s been framing that ultimate choice in a
similar way for his audience-for us.
We did not hear him say “take and eat this bread if you want
to, or if it pleases you.” No, he said,
“unless you eat this bread and drink this cup, you have no life in you”. There is something absolute about this
teaching-something of God involved here. In the language of this particular gospel, it’s the difference between
things of the flesh and gifts of the Spirit, things that do not endure and
those that lead us to eternal life. Jesus is not damning to hell all those who, for whatever reason, do not
partake of the Eucharist. But he
certainly is issuing a warning about what is the danger in deliberately
absenting ourselves from the Christian community around this table.
There are simply too many other false gods out there that
confront us and tempt us and allure us every day, and it’s too easy to be
seduced by them if we are not regularly called back together to experience who
the true God is. The proof of that is in
the first sentence of today’s gospel: “Many of Jesus’ disciples who were
listening said, this saying is hard; who can accept it”?
It often can be hard to understand how passing pleasures are
not more important than doing the difficult work of self-sacrifice for the sake
of the kingdom.
Jesus did not despise pleasure or relishing the good things
of this world. He merely kept his priorities
straight- and requires his followers to do the same. In the end there is exactly one God, and one
mission to which every other desire must give way. We find it right here in our Eucharistic
gathering.
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