For the life of the world

Today's readings: 1 Kings 19, 4-8; Ephesians 4, 30 - 5, 2; John 6, 41-51.

One problematic area of bringing the Gospel and Jesus to the world today is that of cultural mediation. In today's Gospel, Jesus speaks about himself as being the living bread for the life of the world. That surely needs to be translated and mediated to make sense. We cannot simplistically and exclusively apply those words to talk about the Eucharist.

What meaning can Jesus' claim that he is the living bread for the life of the world have today? How can we live peacefully in a wounded world? When our planet is sick, when social cohesion is becoming so difficult, when talk about virtue and values is becoming less and less attractive, it is the life of the world that is at risk. That same world which for Jesus gave his life and became living bread.

In the first reading the Prophet Elijah was going through terrible times and wished he were dead. The biblical portrait of Elijah is that of a tough and fierce prophet, a destroyer of false idols and their worshippers. Yet even for Elijah times changed and with Jezebel he had to change method and probably language. New times called for a new and different experience of God.

'Enough' is just a word that means "as much or as many as necessary". But often, as with Elijah, it is an attitude, a feeling of 'I can't take it any longer', a sense of just wanting to quit. It is the feeling that surfaces when the well runs dry and we are short of resources. It was the feeling that brought Elijah to the end of the road, finding solace only in laying down and sleeping without knowing that the end of the road was only the beginning of a new journey.

All this fits in squarely with Jesus' talk about the living bread for the life of the world. Humanly speaking, there is so much that blocks our belief in Jesus. The Jews couldn't accept that Jesus "came down from heaven" since they knew him and his roots. As long as we seek to reach out to God starting merely from our needs and expectations, our faith will falter.

What change can we, as disciples of Jesus, bring about today where the life of the world is concerned? We all acknowledge that something needs to be done for the life of the world. Here comes for us the challenge to translate, to come to terms with the living bread that the world today needs.

Without mediating culturally, we hastily seek to answer these questions by directly referring to the Eucharist. But talk about the Eucharist for many is just meaningless - it may just be a form of religious consumerism on our part; precisely what Jesus was seeking to avoid with people who had a very set religious mind to the extent of being utterly resistant to learn something new from the Father.

If our talk about the Eucharist, the living bread, the presence of God, or the love of God is not connected to the pressing issues of justice, hunger and poverty, to concern with a sick planet, then we may risk not communicating at all and remaining completely alien to what the world really needs. We still approach new qustions with old answers.

While Jesus offers himself as living bread, we are still stuck in the old religion of "the manna our fathers ate in the desert". But that religion is now history, and Jesus is inviting us to move on; move on or perish. That explains why in many of us the reasons to proceed on the journey, to move on and even to combat seem to dissolve and give in to discouragement.