JESUS: HUMAN AND DIVINE! HOW INCREDIBLE!
NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - YEAR B
August 09 2015
August 09 2015
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch
1 Kings 19:4-8 Psalm 34:2-9 Ephesians
4:30-5:2 John 6:41-51
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
Sometimes we hear incredible statements that
astound us, that are simply not believable based on what we know. We react by thinking
the person who made the statements knows more than we do, or is something more
than what we are, or we dismiss that person and/or the statement altogether, as
simply crazy. In all those situations, we encounter concepts beyond our level
of understanding. We don’t know how to react, because we, as human persons,
have limitations, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, no matter how
well-educated we are, and no matter how many other people think we have our act
together. Those limitations are a part
of the human condition we must accept.
Jesus in today’s Gospel proclaims that if we
eat His Body, we will live forever. What
an incredible statement! Many of us wish that were so. I would like to think
that if we go to Holy Communion, where we physically receive the Body of Jesus,
we will not die. And, in today’s Gospel, Jesus made another incredible
statement: that He “came down from Heaven.” Does that mean He actually
descended out of the sky? Human
responses to both of these incredible statements disclose our limitations in
ascertaining Jesus. The branch of theology that focuses on the nature of Jesus
is properly called “Christology”, a field of knowledge that deals with, “what is
the nature of, and what are the characteristics of Jesus?”
Last
week, we heard about how Jesus was an ordinary person, formed of ordinary flesh
and blood, like bread formed from ordinary earthly ingredients. This week,
however, we see the other side of Jesus. He identifies Himself as the Son of
God the Father. So which is He? Is Jesus human or divine? The answer is, both
together, at the same time! The early
Church struggled mightily with that question, and it is still grist for
the discussion mills of modern theologians. The question was discussed at the First
Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople, the First Council of
Ephesus, and was finally settled, at least for a while, at the Council of
Chalcedon, from which emerged a definitive statement. The Council of Chalcedon declared that Jesus
Christ was simultaneously perfect man and perfect God, and that those human and
divine natures were inseparably joined, embodying the substance of God and the
substance of humanity at the same time, without confusion, change, division, or
separation. Although the human and divine natures of Jesus are distinct, their
distinctions are not taken away by being united. Those two natures concur in
one person and one substance. That’s about the best I can do to put the
concepts of prosopon, hypostasis, and homoousios in ordinary people language.
Christology continues to challenge us today
as it did the crowd that heard Jesus address them in today’s Gospel, which
describes their reaction as “murmuring.” What is “murmuring”? The dictionary
definition is “a subdued or private expression of discontent or
dissatisfaction,” but I don’t think that definition really captures what’s
going on here. According to Strong’s Concordance, the underlying Greek word in
this text is “gogguzon” which is more like grumbling. My sense of how the crowd
was feeling, is along the lines of, “who in heck is this guy?” The crowd
recognized that Jesus was making some incredible statements. Jesus said he came
down from Heaven and that His Father was God. The people whom Jesus was
addressing, however, thought He was the Son of Joseph, an ordinary mortal
person just like you and me. The crowd was in a state of disbelief and
frustration. They had seen a demonstration of His divinity in the miracle of
feeding five thousand people from five barley loaves and two fishes. Some of
them had seen him walk on water, as described in the portion of John six that
was not read this year at this time. But
that was not enough to definitively convince them that Jesus was divine as well
as human, as they continued to grumble. They still considered him an ordinary
person, born of a human father, and indeed, Jesus demonstrated his human side
when empathized with human hunger, which motivated him to feed five thousand
people. However, they did not truly understand who Jesus was. The
concept of someone simultaneously God and human was still too complex and
mysterious for them to grasp, as it continues to be so for us.
The person of Jesus presents many dimensions,
then and now. Among theologians, an emphasis on the divine character of Jesus
is known as “high Christology of the Alexandrian school,” while that most
strongly convinced of the humanity of Jesus is called “low Christology of the
Antiochene School”. This debate among scholars has, literally, gone on for
centuries. To give you just a few examples, the Church has recognized the divinity
of Jesus as someone we adore in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, whom we
receive in the Eucharist, who saves us by His incarnation, death and
resurrection, and the humanity of Jesus as one who teaches us, sets an
example for how we should live, and who loves us as a friend. The contemporaries of Jesus were simply unable
to get a grip of certainty on who He was. In trying to do so, the crowd
mistakenly placed a great deal of emphasis on the possible human origins of
Jesus. But this level of inquiry missed
the mark. Jesus is a mystery. Jesus continues
to be mysterion to us, far greater than the human mind to fathom. For me, the
core identity of Jesus is, and always will, remain a mystery, not fully capable
of human analysis.
You might ask why all that is important. It is
important, because the unique identity of Jesus drives all of Christian
theology. It goes to the heart of why we are Christians and not something
else. Much of the secular world
acknowledges the historical figure of Jesus. But what separates the secular
world from the Church world, is the existence of the divine as well as human
natures of Jesus. The divine person of Jesus is what makes possible eternal
life. It is the Divine Jesus that conquers the death of the human Jesus. A
Jesus who was only human could not rise from death.
Today’s Gospel invites us to consider the
concept of eternal life as Jesus tells us that those who eat his Body, the
living Bread of life from Heaven, will live forever. Jesus demonstrated the
concept of eternal life with His Resurrection. Jesus rose from death and lives
eternally. Jesus continues to live among us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Acceptance of the Resurrection makes us the people of God. Our trust in the
reality of the Sacrament of the Eucharist means we accept the resurrected
spiritual body of Jesus. The Real
Presence of Jesus, broken and shared among us, is basic material that binds us
together as the People of God. The Eucharistic Christ makes us become “Church.”
In other words, the Eucharist makes us aware that we are united in the faith of
the Church, and that we are all one family. We are all nourished by the same
bread. The Resurrected Body of Jesus, physically present in the Eucharist, holds
us together in a common hope and conviction that life is eternal.
So what is “eternal life”? Is it our physical
bodies living forever? Or did Jesus have
a broader concept in mind? The idea of humanity surviving physical death
was the subject of debate among the Jews of Jesus’ day, who were divided into
three main groups: Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes. The Sadducees, who believed
in a written law, made up the temple priesthood. They did not believe in life
after death. The Pharisees, who
formulated law on a case-by case basis, did believe in resurrection. The
Essenes believed in a purely spiritual afterlife. However, the eternal
life about which Jesus spoke has a much larger dimension: the eternal life of
humanity as a whole. Could it be
that Jesus came to change certain behavior patterns of human persons that could
eventually lead to a finite existence of humanity? Consider those of us who
grew up in the cold war era, where the United States and Russia were at each
other’s throat, with the threat of a nuclear war that could destroy all human
life. Although that threat is history, other large scale human behavior threats
still exist. The Middle East is a powder keg with several nations there having
nuclear capabilities. Our own country is
armed to the teeth. Civilian gun ownership is, shamefully, a right. The result
has been that ordinary people are armed, with many feeling they can shoot other
people for any reason or no reason – all one needs to do is watch the news on
television to see that is true. The
United States has the highest incarceration rate per capita of any country in
the world, but violence is still with us. Violent misbehavior has,
unfortunately, become a characteristic of much of the human race, often in the
name of religion.
Elijah received
a visit from an angel with food because he was hungry. God requited the hunger of the Israelites
with manna in the wilderness. The bread
of heaven that came to Elijah, and to the Israelites, prefigures of the bread
which came down from heaven, as Jesus Himself. But Jesus, the Bread of Life, is
something different altogether. Jesus
is the bread of wisdom. Jesus is the Divine Bread that gives us life, makes us live, and teaches us the art
of living. As Jesus said in today’s Gospel, those who
listen and learn in the presence of God the Father come to Jesus, who is bread
with a message.
We all wish Jesus, in the words of the Nicene
Creed, will “come again in glory.” We could sure use Him among us once again
right now, given the state of the Church and the world. But focusing on a physical second coming of
Jesus is not going to effectuate the change our world needs. Jesus as the bread
of wisdom is more likely to do that. The human Jesus has been much more
instrumental in effectuating, on a concrete, practical level, our ongoing
salvation, than the Divine Jesus. His experience as a human person has enabled
Jesus to craft a message that makes sense: a message to change human behavior
which will lead to the long-term survival of humanity.
Saint Paul had
an insight into the content of that message in today’s Epistle. Paul interprets
the message of Jesus as asking us to put away all bitterness, wrath, anger,
clamor, evil-speaking and malice. Those are behaviors that bring death, which,
if allowed to continue, will ultimately destroy humanity. Those character traits arise from one person fearing
another. The violent Middle East, gun violence, mass incarceration, all arise
from fear. Muslims fear Christians and Jews, and vice versa. People carry and
shoot guns out of fear. America’s mass
incarceration is driven by fear of crime. But Jesus is the bread which transforms
our behavior, if we only allow that transformation to happen. The Living Bread which is Jesus is not; about the ancestors
of those to whom He spoke in today’s Gospel. Rather, Living Bread is about the
relationship between Jesus and His Father. Jesus is an instrument God the
Father sent to build up the Kingdom of God in a way ordinary food cannot. Ordinary
food perishes. That which is alive transforms. Jesus, as Living Bread,
nourishes our transformation.
Ask yourself: what if fear were transformed into love? What if we loved by becoming
kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God has forgiven
us? We would recognize that it is Jesus
who turns our cold hearts into warm centers of tenderheartedness and
forgiveness, hearts which eagerly seek a world where human life is eternal. We
get there by walking in love, as Jesus loved us. In today’s world, that’s an
incredible statement. AMEN.
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