Where is our desire?

Homily: 18^th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B

          As we enter into August summer begins to wind down.  This time of year always brings up memories, however, of the summer vacation road trips.  Perhaps some of you have made your own already this summer.  And these are great memories, right?  Packing up the family and heading out to a fun destination for no other reason than to relax and have a good time can be a truly wholesome and memorable experience.

          If your vacation road trips were any like mine, however, then you’re probably pretty familiar with how quickly that initial excitement fades once the reality of getting to your destination sets in.  Traffic, construction delays and detours, and even just the amount of time it takes to get there are all frustrations that quickly change the attitude of travelers.  The inevitable suffering that comes with getting to your destination changes that initial excitement into grumbling: “Are we there yet?”  “I’m hungry.”  “I have to go to the bathroom… again!”  Sometimes, this grumbling can become so severe that it spoils any desire to arrive at our destination and we begin to think that it might have been better if we had just stayed home.

          We see of course that this is nothing new.  In our Scriptures today we are reminded that, in spite of the incredible promise of happiness that awaits us at our destination, the process of getting there often causes us to lose heart and we’d rather just go back to what was familiar than to see the promise fulfilled.  The Israelites proved this many times during their Exodus from Egypt towards the Promised Land.  When the Lord had led them out of Egypt—working great miracles against the Egyptians—there was a great excitement.  “The Lord is fighting for us so that we could be freed from this slavery!”  Yet as soon as they encounter trouble along the way, they begin to grumble.  First, it was at the Red Sea.  Pharaoh’s army had pursued them and was about to overtake them and the Israelites grumbled, saying: “Better that we died in Egypt, where there were places to bury us, than to die out here in the desert!”  They had forgotten all that the Lord had done and despaired that they would realize his promise to them.  The Lord then worked another miracle by parting the sea for them to pass through and then releasing it so that it completely destroyed Pharaoh’s army when they tried to follow them.  They even wrote a great song of praise about it that is recorded for us in the book of Exodus, but that didn’t seem to matter, because not much longer after that the Israelites find themselves running out of food as they continue their march towards their destination and again they begin to grumble: “If we were back in Egypt, at least we’d die with full bellies; but now we’re here in the desert and we going to die of hunger!”  Their initial excitement about the destination wore off once the frustrations of getting there set in.

          In a way, their desire to go back to Egypt is something that Saint Paul would chastise the new Christians in Ephesus about in his letter to them from which we read in the second reading.  There he says “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do…” and “you should put away the old self of your former way of life … and put on the new self…”  In other words, like the Israelites of old, you cannot get to your destination by holding onto what you’ve left behind.  You must put that away, for it is futile!  Rather you must pass through the frustrations in order to get to the new life that God has promised you.

          I wonder how many of us have fallen victim to this temptation of turning back to what we left behind to follow Christ because of the frustrations that have come to us along the way.  We became so dismayed with the work of getting to heaven that it has completely extinguished our desire to get there: so much so that we say to ourselves “It would have been better if I never knew Jesus and I could just live my life however I want.”  Perhaps, however, this isn’t explicit.  Perhaps this manifests itself in how we approach the Mass.  “I go, I read the bulletin before Mass (instead of praying), I barely participate in the responses, and I’m mostly thinking about what I could be doing if I wasn’t here.”  We see the Mass as one of the frustrations that we have to put up with along the way.  Meanwhile we cling to our “old way” of life, not really leaving it behind as we seek God.

          The Mass, however, is so much more than an “interruption” in our lives.  Think back with me, if you will, to three Sunday’s ago where the Gospel reading described how the apostles returned from their missionary journey on which Jesus had sent them.  They were excited for all that they had accomplished in Jesus’ name.  They gathered around Jesus to share what they had seen and done and Jesus calls them away to rest and to have some fellowship together.  After this, Jesus would eventually send them out again.  My brothers and sisters, this is an image of the Mass!  We—all of us here who have been baptized—are Jesus’ apostles—those whom he sends with a mission—and the Mass is his weekly invitation to gather back around him to rest, to share what we have experienced and what we have accomplished in his name, and to receive from him instruction and our next commission.  Do we really see it like this?  Or do we see it rather as an interruption to be tolerated because we feel like we owe God at least this much?

          My brothers and sisters, if we feel that the Mass is a drudgery and that we’d rather be doing something else, then perhaps we are still in the “old self” that Saint Paul talked about: desiring slavery to our stuff—the modern equivalent of the fleshpots and bread—instead of being in the “new self” in which we live with abundant blessings from God’s promise—the quail that he sends to us and the manna that he rains down from heaven.  God has freed us from our slavery to our stuff and he calls us here each week to celebrate that fact, yet we grumble and desire, instead, to return to our fleshpots and our slavery to things because they are more “comfortable” to us.

          But the “old self” is futility, Saint Paul says.  And so, if we desire true joy and happiness, we must be renewed in the spirit: for there is only one thing, Jesus says, and that is to believe in him.  Anything else is futility: it will leave us empty.  Thus the question for us today is, “where is our desire?”  Is it on the “fleshpots” of our slavery to the material world?  Or is it focused on the bread that truly satisfies?  The people who came to Jesus eventually found where their desire needed to be.  When Jesus reminded them that it was God who rained down bread for Moses and the Israelites and that it is only bread from him that will give life to the world, the people asked “Give us this bread always.”  Once they knew that only bread from God would satisfy, they abandoned their desires for earthly bread and placed their desires on the bread that God would provide, and their faith in Jesus to provide it.  And so, do we place our desire on this bread?  And do we believe that Jesus can provide it?  Regardless of whether or not we do, he has provided it: and it will soon be made manifest here on this altar.

          My brothers and sisters, to receive this bread worthily—and fruitfully, I might add—we must put off our old selves, with their desires for the things of this world that enslave us, and we must put on the new self, created in God’s righteousness and ready to be sent as an apostle so that others might, too, come and eat the true bread of life: the bread from God that ends all grumbling: the bread that truly satisfies.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – August 2^nd, 2016