Today’s readings: Exodus 16, 2-4. 12-15; Ephesians 4, 17. 20-24; John 6, 24-35.

Exodus stands for exit. Exit from a condition, from a situation of slavery that may be political as much as social, or cultural as much as one of personal character. These can all be forms of slavery with which it is never worth being complacent. They all call for change which can be liberating. This applies to the political as much as to the spiritual.

The passage of the Jews from slavery in Egypt to the land promised by God has always served as a most powerful metaphor in the so-called theology of liberation. The Book of Exodus is in itself a condensation of a journey towards liberation which, in the details and metaphors it offers, surpasses the limits of time and cultures.

This journey always develops between two poles, one being the easiness with which we as humans become enslaved, the other being the longing for freedom that is innate to our being human. On the level of our personal lives, this always stands for the exit from an old self to a new self.

In today’s Scriptures there is a very powerful symbolism of meaning between the Jewish exit from slavery, the kind of aimless living we can easily fall into today, and believing in Jesus Christ, who can still give life to the world. This is also the richness that underlies the Christian commitment and which unfortunately very often is not brought out.

The typical spiritual journey in any faith always takes place between the two poles of exit and entrance. To experience freedom, which we all desire, there has to be an exit from all that denies or hinders that freedom. This involves phases of awareness of one’s own being, acknowledgment of all that in life, from inside or from outside, can be enslaving, and the will to move on, to boldly take decisions and make the right choices about what makes life more meaningful.

The exodus story of the Jewish people still has this symbolic power for us. The theologians of liberation in Latin America were the pioneers who brought about this historical consciousness in Christian theology and in the revolutionary understanding of Christian life itself. If theology is not about liberation, then I wonder what that theology would be. And if religion is not liberating, I wonder what the sense of religion in life could be.

The times when the theologians of liberation were provoking this radical perspective were the times leading to the Second Vatican Council. They were the times when the Church itself was becoming aware, to use a metaphor so dear to the instigator of the Lutheran Reform in the 16th century, of its own Babylonian captivity.

That was the springtime for Christianity that made us open our eyes not to leave the Eucharist locked in our tabernacles, but rather to struggle to make more explicit the intimate link between the Eucharist and liberation, between political and spiritual slavery, and to place the commitment to justice and freedom in Christian life right at the centre.

That was for Christianity a point of no return. We cannot go back to a Christianity closed in upon itself, immune to the evolving political and social scenarios around the world. We cannot go back to an understanding of the Christian life and commitment translated mainly in terms of ritual and Church practice, or worse still, in terms of blind obedience to rules and laws.

In John’s gospel today we read about Jesus’s lament with the people following him because they were following for the wrong reasons. We may be misled in our following. That makes it a must on our side to constantly be in discernment mode as to the right reasons that make us opt to be Christians.

It is no longer the case, in the context of how western Christianity has been evolving in the past centuries, to be Christians by default. Being Christian always involves a choice, and one that needs to be reasonably undertaken and intelligently sustained and lived.

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