Faith

A rejected gift – Wednesday, 3rd Week of Easter – Acts 8:1b-8/John 6:35-40

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/dont-shut-shop/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles.

The Gospel has narrated how Jesus heads to Capernaum, his de facto headquarters in Galilee and is quickly followed by the Jews. At first Jesus confronts them. “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (John 6:26), I do not think Jesus was scolding the crowd for seeking bread because they were hungry. I think Jesus was disappointed that the crowd did not expect more, not more bread but something more. Sadly, because they found a source for food, they were not looking for Jesus, they are looking the man who could keep feeding them. One would have also thought that the multiplication of the fish and loaves would be a sign enough for them to realize that Jesus is the Messiah.

Like us too, who have experienced the Lord, the crowds have many questions as they have doubts. When did you come here? (Vs 25). What must we do to perform the works of God? (vs28) What sign will you give us? What work are you preforming? (vs30).

Jesus refuses to answer the question which they have asked, but instead redirects the conversation to more important issues. Because they have focused on the wrong “bread,” Jesus redirects them toward the bread which “endures.” Then they ask Jesus to perform a sign, like Moses did when God provided the Israelites with a miraculous food in the desert. It seems strange for the Jews to ask for a sign considering that Jesus has just performed a sign like the one they demand. Jesus was offering them what they needed; they were focused on what they wanted.

Jesus does not give up on these disbelieving crowds who want their kind of answers. Jesus answers with a different kind of information. He seizes the opportunity once again to teach. Jesus uses the bread that filled their stomachs to become the primary extended metaphor in order to stretch their understanding.

Think about it, we have a God who never tires of us, never tires of the questions we have and of how often we question him. We have a God who bears our iniquity and carries our sorrow. The question is, how long will we try his patience?

To all these questions, Jesus responds to us as he did the crowd: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom God has sent” (John 6:29). To believe is to trust that God is doing something new; that human-created conditions and circumstances cannot undermine or negate. To believe is to submit everything, even our highest-stake issues, to God’s saving work in Jesus. To believe is not so much what we do as being open to what God is doing. Yet we know from today’s Gospel that Jesus is aware that the Jews do not believe in him.

Today, Jesus declares, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Jesus is clear; it is he who sustains life, he does not sustain bread in our lives and because he sustains life, he will declare in verse 39, “and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Jesus is the gift of the Father a gift that he wants everyone to truly embrace. It is not God who drives us away, it is we who reject the gift of God, Jesus.

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Faith

So little has changed; perhaps much is the same! – Monday, 3rd Week of Easter – Acts 6:8-15/ John 6:22-29

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/hate-rid/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles.

The narrative of today is a continuation of the narrative on the multiplication of the fish and loaves. While the text of yesterday was a chronologic flow of Jesus’ life, the text of today is what a story book would entitle as, ‘meanwhile…”

Jesus has fed the five thousand and sent the twelve away….meanwhile the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea (the side where the multiplication had taken place) saw that there had been only one boat there. We are told in 6:41 that the ‘crowd’ is a reference to the Jews who not only noticed that that there was one boat but his disciples had taken the boat and gone away ‘alone’. They assume that Jesus is in the vicinity unaware that he has walked on the water to his disciples during the night. When boats were made available, they went to seek him in Capernaum.

It’s interesting to note that the Jews knew where to look for the Lord even though as we will be told in verse 26 that they don’t seek him as much as they seek the food he provided. Ironically, the children of light (hopefully that is you and me) also know when and where to seek the Lord. Sadly, and mostly the reality of our seeking him is when our stomach is empty or a need has to be fulfilled. So little has changed; perhaps much is the same!

Jesus is open in his confrontation (of the Jews and us). There is no ‘CAREfrontation’ for it is clear that Jesus does not believe in mollycoddling the Jews to appease them; that sadly seems to be the order of today; appeasement politics, both in government and in Church. Jesus is direct and decisive.

When Jesus confronts his ‘seekers’ he picks his words very carefully. “You are looking for me not because you saw the signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” They have missed the point of what Jesus was doing. They have seen the things that Jesus has been doing but have missed the ‘sign’; the deeper meaning behind what he did. The food they are looking for is not the food that counts and it is but this that they seek Jesus for.

For those who followed my teaching on the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, last Friday, will remember that I said that in the Gospel of John the multiplication is not a miracle as much as it is a sign. A sign points to something and in this case to Jesus the Messiah; the new Moses. Yet it is the food that ‘Jesus could provide’ (the human Jesus) and not the ‘Son of God who he was’ (the divine son of the father), that the Jews sought after. For them it is one not the other, for us it must be both and.

Jesus is emphatic; simply working for the food that perishes is futile but not if one also seeks the food of eternal life that endures. In the Gospel of John, in the bread of life discourse, Jesus will declare, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35).

Jesus asks us not just to ‘believe’ but to ‘believe in’. It is not just a question of accepting certain statements about Jesus and who he really is. ‘Believing in’ involves a total and unconditional commitment of the whole self to Jesus, to the Gospel and the vision of life that he proposes and making it part of one’s own self. This is where the real bread is to be found.

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Faith

Is your voice recognition turned on? – Saturday, 2nd Week of Easter – Acts 6:1-7/ John 6:16-21

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/cafeteria-management/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles

Some time ago I wrote an article on ‘do we know that God is really speaking to us?’ The Gospel of John addresses this topic in both direct and subtle ways. Jesus is emphatic when he says in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” It is this voice that Mary of Magdala recognized at the Easter Garden when Christ called her by name and she, recognizing his voice calls out to him, “Rabboni.” Till this point of time, she thinks he is the gardener!

The text of today has Jesus encountering the disciples in a storm on the lake of Galilee and like Mary, they too are terrified, for they think he is a ghost until he speaks to them and they recognize his voice when he says, “It is I, do not be afraid.”

While we hear the comforting voice of God and recognize it, we also must confess to hearing the discomforting voice of God. Genesis 3: 8 speaking of the sin of Adam and Eve says, ‘then they heard the voice of the God walking in the garden toward evening.’ They knew they had done wrong and they heard it in the voice of God. Yet there are those who do not want to hear or recognize His voice no matter what the tone of his voice may be; they simply choose to reject it. As Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

We live in a world of voice recognition. Voice or speaker recognition is the ability of a machine or program to receive and interpret dictation or to understand and perform spoken commands. If a machine is clever enough to recognize our voice and obey it then how much more do we owe God when he desires us to hear his voice and obey it.

So, what’s with voice recognition and this reflection? The end of chapter four finds Jesus in Galilee. Chapter five moves to Jerusalem. Chapter six (from where our text is taken) sees Jesus move back to Galilee. In chapter seven Jesus will return to Jerusalem. It is in chapter six that we are told the disciples get into a boat row for about three or four miles. Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus made or ‘compelled’ (anankazo) His disciples to get into the boat (Mark 6:45). Perhaps he saw that they were being infected with the crowd’s excitement.”

We are told that it was dark. John uses “dark” or “darkness” nine times in his gospel.
In John’s Gospel, darkness is more than the absence of physical light, it signals evil or danger. It is now dark, and Jesus is absent. Jesus has not yet come to them when the sea becomes rough and a strong wind begins to blow. There is no indication yet that the disciples are in danger but what is clear is that their journey will not be easy. It is in this unsettling moment that they see Jesus, walking on the sea and coming near the boat and it is now that they were terrified (v. 19). The Synoptic Gospels tell us that the disciples are afraid because they think that Jesus is a ghost (Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:49; Luke 24:37).

The sea of Galilee is 13 km east to west and about 21 km north to south. The point being made here is that the disciples are somewhere in the middle of the lake and the middle of a potential storm. They have rowed a considerable distance in the storm, but have a considerable distance left to go. Their group includes experienced fishermen who have surely been on the lake during storms. Yet it is not the storm that they are afraid of but Jesus who they think is a ghost. So many fears we face are not the ones that surround us but the ones we create in our head.

It is in the storm that Jesus speaks, “do not be afraid, it is I,” Here on the chaos of these troubled waters, Jesus is revealing himself on two levels. He is the leader whom the disciples have been following, but he is also the presence of God in their midst. He comes to help them in their distress as he does for us. Mercifully, they recognize his voice and invite him into the boat and “immediately the boat reached the land towards which they were going.” The Gospel does not mention that the storm has subsided but simply that once they recognized his voice in the storm and invited him in, he saw them to their destination. That’s a lesson for us to learn.

Jesus has spoken, is speaking, and will continue to speak in and to our modern world. We can be sure of that. The question is not “are people hearing the voice of Jesus today?” that is a given. The question should be, “How are people hearing the voice of Jesus today; for humankind has itchy ears! We know that Jesus has a life-giving voice. He has already proclaimed in John 5:25, “Truly I tell you, the hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Our Lord has a life-giving voice but all that is ours only if our voice recognition has been turned on.

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Faith

Be the sign not the sigh – Friday, 2nd Week of Easter – Acts 5:34-42/ John 6:1-15

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/forty-less-one/ based on the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles.

Each of the four Gospels narrate the multiplication of the loaves and fish and while the synoptics tell it as a miracle story the Gospel of John wraps it up in greater theological meaning. The Gospel of John is the only Gospel that tells us that this ‘sign’ (remember that the Gospel of John has signs and not miracles) takes place close to the celebration of the Passover and that Jesus leads the people not into a ‘deserted place’ as in the synoptics but up a mountain. Why would John give us these details if not to pique our interest?

So, in order to understand today’s text, you need to read the closing verses of the previous chapter 5:39-47. Jesus gets into a verbal spat with the Jewish religious leaders. He pointedly accuses them of a failure to see in the scriptures they read the very message pertaining to himself as the source of life. He clearly tells them that they do not have the love of God in them and that it is Moses whom they revere, who will be their accuser. It is here that our text begins with these little clues. The very word Moses would jog one’s mind to the Passover and now St John tells us that the Passover was at hand.

St John’s Gospel has seven signs, not miracles. A sign always points to a greater reality and so in the feeding of the five thousand we are called to see the greater reality. The focus therefore is not the multiplication in itself but the person of Jesus who is responsible for it and on his divine nature. Thus, Jesus is presented as the new Moses. So, let’s see the similarities and comparisons in the text.

1. Moses went up a mountain to receive the ten commandments and he went alone. In John’s Gospel Jesus goes up the mountain but takes his disciples and a crowd that followed him.
2. While Moses parted the Red Sea in a supernatural act, Jesus feeds the five thousand via supernatural grace.
3. Jesus tests the disciples in today’s Gospel; we read this in John 6:6, “he said this to test him (Philip). In Exodus 16:4 God tells Moses that he “will rain bread from heaven for you and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I WILL TEST THEM whether they will follow my instructions or not.”
4. In the Gospel of John, Jesus asks the disciples to collect the scraps. In Exodus 16:19 refereeing to the scraps, Moses says to the people, “let no one leave any of it over until morning.
5. In the Gospel of John in Chapter 6:41 the Jews begin to complain about Jesus because he said he was the bread that came down from heaven and we are all familiar with the grumbling of the Israelites in the wilderness against Moses.
6. Finally, Moses was asked to provide for the people in the book of Exodus but now Jesus was the provider for his people.

St John, in highlighting these subtle comparisons and connections, is making just one point, Jesus is the New Moses and if the Jewish authorities really knew their scriptures (5:39) and they believed Moses, they would have believed Jesus for Moses wrote about Jesus (5:46)

Yet while the religious leaders could not see the truth, it was the people who saw the sign (6:14). They joined the dots and made the connections and remembered Moses who fed the people in the wilderness just as Jesus did. We are told in scripture that they began to say, “this indeed is the prophet who is to come into the world”. They wanted to take him by force and make him king. Sadly, while they stood ahead above in their recognition of who Jesus was, they were enamoured by the bread they ate and failed to see the meaning of the sign; that Jesus was greater than Moses and that he is God. Sadly, perhaps we too see only the signs in our life and fail to see the God behind our blessings.

So, while we have a clear understanding into the deeper theological meaning of what the Gospel of John intended to convey there is also something we can take away pastorally and practically. I want to focus on just one take away.

When faced with a challenge, Phillip and Andrew both threw their hands up in despair. They both say a PROBLEM. Philip does a mathematical calculation to arrive at the fact that even the six months of financial reserve tucked under their belt would barely buy each one a small piece of bread let alone where they would get it from. Andrew, while identifying a little boy with five barley loaves and two fish throw his hands up in despair. Philip and Andrew see a problem while Jesus sees a hungry crowd that needs to be fed.

Sadly, the Church too has come to respond to the poverty and hunger around us the same way as Philip and Andrew did; as a problem. Yet make no mistake, while we cannot eradicate world poverty, we can make a difference to one person’s life and that begins when we stop throwing our hand up while we sigh and rather lend our hands to bring about a smile.

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John’s resignation letter – Thursday,2nd Week of Easter – Acts 5:27-33/John 3:31-36

Read also https://www.pottypadre.com/god-first/ a reflection taken from the Acts of the Apostles.

We do not know if Nicodemus saw the light or walked out into the darkness. We can safely assume that he was a follower of Christ because scripture makes know to us that he was at Jesus’ burial. With the Nicodemus discussion now behind him, Jesus walks into the Judean countryside. Scripture tells us the Jesus was baptizing people here. John was baptizing too though a distance away. There is a lesson for all of us in the ministry; God’s mission has place for all. It is co-operation and not competition that helps evangelization.

Scripture now tells us that a discussion regarding purification arose between a Jew and the disciples of John. We are not told what happened about the discussion but we are told that jealousy has set in. The disciples of John are miffed that their ‘congregation’ is thinning out to the new kid on the block. So, John the Baptist has to school his disciples whose hearts are set on earthly popularity and not the plan of the father. John is clear; he MUST decrease, Christ MUST increase!

John explained to his followers that he was like the best man at a wedding; he isn’t the bridegroom. He isn’t to be the focus of attention, but to supervise the bringing of two people together. In the Jewish wedding customs of that day, the friend of the bridegroom arranged many of the details of the wedding and brought the bride to the groom. Nevertheless, the friend of the bridegroom was never the focus of attention, and wanted it that way.

John is emphatic, you cannot usurp the plan of God or veer it in the course you want. Jesus was sent by God “from above” he is not a plan that was hatched on earth. Sending Jesus was God’s idea. The disciples of John who were filled with jealousy for Jesus and his disciples were operating with an earthly thoughts. John reminds his disciples that Jesus comes from heaven and is ABOVE ALL.

For John there is no gradual fading off. Most of us would like to gradually and slowly ease out of a post that is important and has a spot light on it. No one asks you to step down from a post that barely has a title or a typewriter. The fact is, when God sets his seal on any mission, it does not matter who on earth is in charge; God brings it to fulfilment. Yet we resist giving up posts of honour. We don’t want to give up sitting on chairs that bring us adulation and popularity. Our late Holy Father, Pope Benedict the XVI won the hearts of the world when he had the grace to just let go and let God be in charge. Sadly, that lesson has not seeped down to the rank and file of the Church; both clergy and laity.

Finally, John has another thought to share. The Son, Jesus, is the perfect image of the Father and shares generously with us what he has received from his Father. Life without end awaits all those who believe in the Son, who believe his words and accept them as their way of life. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life but must endure the wrath of God.”

Notice that one who believes “has” eternal life. Eternal life begins now with the response of faith. On the other hand we must not think that God takes vengeance on those who disobey Jesus. God can never be angry in our normal sense of the word. But rather, those who choose to go another way, the way of darkness and evil can only expect to meet death. They are the victims, not of God’s anger, but of their own determination to live in darkness. Let us remember that with God’s help, the choice is ours to make.

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