Today's reading: Exodus 16, 2-4.12-15; Ephesians 4, 17. 20-24; John 6, 24-35.
There is a striking parallelism between the readings from Exodus and St John today. The Book of Exodus remains always the privileged connecting line between the Jewish experience of the wilderness and our experience of what a spiritual journey really involves.
In John, the focal point is the dialogue between Jesus and the crowd. Seeking to re-orientate the basic desires of people, Jesus gives a lesson on how best to listen to our interlocutors. We need wisdom to discern what lies in the hearts of people. Assuming to have the answer even before we hear the question sounds very dogmatic in style and approach.
It is true that even St Paul urges the Ephesians "not to go on living the aimless kind of life". He speaks also of "illusory desires" that often get in the way between the way people would want to live and how they actually behave. But this is the challenge the Word of God proposes: how to guide without imposing, how not to bypass what people feel, how to teach without being dogmatic, let alone arrogant.
Moses and Jesus both offer this type of leadership in the Scriptures. Both of them were not meant to be liberators from material insecurity, which was what people expected of them. We often end up with a myriad of prejudices regarding today's culture and the way people think and behave. But before judging, we need to understand what makes people behave one way rather than in another. Rigidity doesn't help here. Because behaviour is in itself a very complex issue.
Jesus is mainly intent on bringing people's heart in tune with the inner truth so they do not to give in to "illusory desires" or expectations. The central revelation of John's entire chapter six is Jesus's statement: "I am the bread of life". The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke report the three temptations of Jesus in the desert. Although this is not actually reported by John, one central issue in the temptations is that about the bread, which stands for the security of earning a living, and which can very easily dominate our daily lives to the extent of distorting our priorities.
Jesus' message in the desert is that man does not live by bread alone. Here in John, Jesus redirects the talk about bread, indicating himself as the true bread. Jesus speaks more clearly about the Eucharist later on in John's chapter six, which will continue to provide continuous reading for the coming Sundays.
But for now the issue is how to listen to Jesus in depth so that we never lose direction where our deepest desires are concerned.
It is understandable that people need securities, and that people tend to grab on to whatever offers certainty in times of radical change and elasticity, even where basic values are concerned. Like Jesus, our challenge today is how to offer guidance to people so they do not work for food that cannot last, and do not miss the true bread for the manna their fathers ate in the desert.
The problem is when we mistake what is transitory for something that is enduring. To live by faith means to be happy with the manna gathered from morning till evening, without being slaves of the security of the day after.
After all, the sense of journeying is what unites humanity and peoples, and all of us as individuals. It gives also a sense of transitoriness, of uncertainty. In some people it may bring feelings of nostalgia of the days when everything was so clear and unequivocal in both private and public morality. The times we are in are similar to a zone of turbulence.
In a zone of turbulence, where the reality around us is shaky, we are asked to fasten our seatbelts.