Home Coming Sunday
Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35
In North Atlantic, especially in August, with the children away from school and many parents and families on vacation/holiday, it is the season for traveling. Families journey to spend time together and away from regular routines. It is a period of bonding and sharing of quality time. It is a time to explore other climes, but with the intention to return home. Human life on earth too is characterized by journeys. There is the first journey from God, which we undertake at birth, and the second lap of the same journey begins at birth as we gradually make our way back to God at death. Times and seasons help us to mark our progress through life: “a time to be born and a time to die . . . a time to sow and a time to reap,” says the preacher. All the way and all the times, God journeys with human beings, even if they are not always aware of his presence, but he is there anyway.
Journeys too have their hazards and inconveniences, flat tires, police stops, storms and rains. This Sunday, our first reading presents us with the saga of the Israelites journeying out of Egypt to the Promised-land. Their journey was bedeviled by two problems, which the opening paragraph of our first reading puts this way: “Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” The first problem was that the Israelites believed that God was with them in Egypt by the availability of food – “fleshpots” of Egypt. So, they would rather have died in God’s presence in Egypt where there was food. The second problem, they believed that Moses was responsible for bringing them to a place without food to kill them through starvation.
It is very current in human reckoning to think that adversity shows the absence of God. The same Israelites who cried out to God to free them from slavery in Egypt now sing the praises of the food they ate in Egypt. Departure from a familiar territory, Egypt, with all its guarantees and conveniences proves insurmountable to the Israelites. “Adventure” with and “faith” in God were clearly missing from the vocabulary of pilgrim Israelites. Who could blame them after so many years of slavery, with no more souvenir of the good old days before their slavery in Egypt. The Israelites were in a “complain mode”: we need food; we don’t want to die in the desert! Thanks be to God, Moses was sure of who the leader of the mission was – God himself. It was time to experience God in a different way – the God who provides food even in the least likely places, desert!
Every Christian is on a journey towards God. As we grow and age, we are always home bound to be with God. Measuring by time constraints, some arrive at their destination earlier than others. Today, the focus of our readings is on how to sustain the momentum of the journey, so that we may arrive safe and sound in our heavenly home land.
Home coming Sunday deals with how to overcome the obstacles on our pilgrimage to Heaven, how not to yield to temptations but to remain focused on God and his Kingdom. Generally, therefore, our temptations come in two fold, either remaining captivated by the past, so much so that we cannot move forward, as it is the case in our first reading or an entanglement with ephemerals that we lose focus on the essentials of life.
One of the lessons for every traveler is the readiness to be surprised. When one abandons one’s home, adaptation to new circumstances are needed to weather the storm and strangeness of a new culture and environment. For those who are prisoners of the past, they need to know that departure from Egypt warrants a new adaptation to God differently from what obtained in Egypt; let bygone be bygone. For those mesmerized by the ephemerals of life, as it is the case in the gospel today, to request free food of Jesus presupposes the readiness to meet the conditions for receiving the bread which Jesus gives. But when human journey has Heaven and union with God as its ultimate destination, then immortal food is what is needed. According to Jesus, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (John 6:35). Heaven NOT Earth is the target.
The crowds sought after Jesus to find food, free food; they didn’t need to either plant or reap, all they needed to do was to eat. But when our journeys lead to food, the deification of the stomach, then we lose sight of the essential – God, and union with him. However, beyond the “fleshpots” of Egypt, in the first reading, and the free bread sought by the crowds, is the food prepared and delivered to Israel by God himself – Manna, and Jesus who offers himself as food to the crowds. Even food becomes a means of contact and communion with God, when we go beyond the physical to the invisible God of all that exists. While the Israelites were thinking of material food, God establishes a contact point with Israel and the crowds through food – the Bread of life.
Curiously, Paul tells us the effects of the food which Jesus gives us, when we come to him. Having eaten of the Bread of life, we begin to leave behind us our earthly lives characterized by our sins and inordinate attachments to earthly goodies to the exclusion of seeking the company of Jesus and the kingdom of Heaven. Here is Paul’s advise: “that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:24).
On this home coming Sunday, brothers and sisters, it is ours today to measure to what degree we have configured ourselves to the image of Christ, after so many Masses attended, so many Communions consumed. Remember, “we are what we consume”! Every vacation/holiday eventually comes to an end, we must return home, home to God, but what home shall we be returning to? Only those who have found God can stop journeying, because they have arrived at the last bus stop – God himself! For the rest of us who are pilgrims upon earth, let us keep moving, by moving we reduce the distance, and by moving we are sure that God is with us!
Assignment for the Week:
Could you go for Confession/Reconciliation this week, so that Christ would be welcomed into a happy home – your heart?