Aug. 8: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Rations for the journey

1 Kgs 19:4-8; Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Eph 4:30—5:2; Jn 6:41-51

The opening reading from the First Book of Kings sets the mood for our readings this Sunday. The fierce prophet Elijah, in many ways the prototype of the biblical prophets, had drawn the ire of the notorious Queen Jezebel, who promised to dispatch him in the same way the prophet had suppressed the pagan prophets of the god Baal.

Fearing for his life, Elijah flees south toward the Sinai desert. This is where our first reading picks up the story. 

Exhausted from the heat and thoroughly discouraged, Elijah lies down under the shade of a broom tree and asks God to take his life. But God had other ideas and an angel gives the despairing prophet rations of a jug of water and a “hearth cake.” 

The angel gently prods Elijah to shake off his despair: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you.” Finally, Elijah perks up and, nourished in body and spirit, continues his journey “to the mountain of God, Horeb.” Later we will learn that Elijah will encounter the living God in that deserted place.

This story is obviously paired with the Gospel selection for today. We continue to hear segments from the long discourse in Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel. 

John presents Jesus as the “bread of life.” Jesus’ tender compassion, his healing touch, his inspiring words of truth are as bread to the hungry, who like Elijah are weary and discouraged.

The Jesus of John’s Gospel recalls for his disciples the long trek of the Israelites through the Sinai desert (the same destination as Elijah’s flight). As we have heard in previous Sunday readings, the people become discouraged and weary, even longing to return to the “leeks and onions” of Egypt, where they had been enslaved, rather than to die in the desert, free but suffering. So they “murmur” against Moses just as some of the listeners to Jesus in this Gospel “murmur.”

Jesus, the evangelist proclaims, is the true bread that “came down from heaven.” What is clear throughout this discourse is that John portrays Jesus as true “bread,” the ultimate nourishment for the deep hungers of the human spirit. He is the “bread of life” itself.  

Unlike their ancestors who ate the manna and yet ultimately died, those who eat the “bread” that Jesus offers will never die. They should stop murmuring like the distraught Israelites in the desert or like Elijah sulking under the broom tree. In the person and mission of Jesus, one is offered eternal life.

The last line of the Gospel moves this discourse to a new moment: “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Interpreters of John’s Gospel see a connection here with the Eucharist. 

Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John does not describe Jesus’ words over the bread and wine at the Last Supper. Instead, John presents the vivid example of Jesus’ washing the feet of his disciples. 

But in this climactic verse (Jn 6:51) we find John’s alternate version, one that reflects his fundamental understanding of the Incarnate Word’s mission to the world. Jesus “gives his flesh,” which is his very life and being, “for the life of the world.” The words recall the phrasing of one of the powerful statements of John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

At a time when there is a lot of threat and anxiety in our world — the spike in the pandemic; conflicts in our public life and in our church as well; the raging of fires and floods, to name a few symptoms — where do we put our ultimate trust? Where do we find “bread” that will sustain us on what can be a weary journey? 

For us as Christians, that bread for the journey of our lives is ultimately found in our faith in Jesus, in the God of providence and love he has revealed to us.