21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel Reading: John 6: 60-69

60 After hearing his doctrine many of the followers of Jesus said, 'This is
    intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?'
61 Jesus was aware that his followers were complaining about it and said,
   'Does this upset you?
62 What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was
    before?
63 It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I
    have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.
64 But there are some of you who do not believe.' For Jesus knew from
    the outset those who did not believe, and who it was that would
    betray him.
65 He went on, 'This is why I told you that no one could come to me
    unless the Father allows him.'
66 After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with
    him.
67 Then Jesus said to the Twelve, 'What about you, do you want to go
    away too?’
68 Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, who shall we go to? You have the
    message of eternal life,
69 and we, believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.'

Meditation

This is the final extract from chapter 6 of John's gospel that the church invites us to meditate on at this time. We have had three rather abstract passages and, no doubt, you will be relieved to find that we have a story again, just as we had at the opening of the chapter.

The story has several characters. In your meditation, listen carefully to yourself and you will find that you are reading the passage from the perspective of one of them; stay with that per­spective so that you enter the story personally.

There is, first of all, Jesus, and you might like to focus on him as he relates with the other characters. Watch his inner freedom. Already in the account of the feeding we saw him sitting on the hillside allowing the people to come to him out of their own freedom. So, too, here he gives each group their space, those who reject him as well as the twelve - including the betrayer.

He also tells us the secret of his inner freedom: he knows he is in his Father's hands and no one can come to him unless the Father allows it. This inner freedom gives him space to see oth­ers clearly, so that he is not deceived by people.

Let your memories of great people who have touched your life confirm the truth of St John's account of Jesus, and of course, let him reveal to you how God wishes to relate with us.

Jesus' words in verse 62 are difficult, but you might want to remain with them. ‘The Son of Man ascending to where he was before’ probably refers to the painful journey through the pas­sion which would test his followers to the utmost. Jesus, then, is the great leader who gives his followers a first test and judges whether they will survive the greater ones that lie ahead.

Every word of the great confession of Peter is important: the four statements are different aspects of the one deep commit­ment. What memories does this stir up in you? Make sure not to be self-righteous as you read of those who rejected ]esus.

They symbolise us when we find some demand of God difficult to ac­cept. The use of the word 'language' is significant. When our val­ues go astray, we find the language of true believers alien to us.

The mention of the traitor might touch you. Judas is the sym­bol of the betrayal of Christian values that remains within every community and within each one of us.

Finally, there are the two sayings in verse 63 that are the kind of difficult sayings that occur several times in the chapter. As I have already urged you to do, be creative in your interpretation, asking yourself when you have experienced the truth of the sayings.

'Flesh' here is whatever in our lives or in our church lacks the true spirit of Jesus and therefore is not life-giving in the deepest sense. The second saying invites us to remember 'words' that gave us life and to see how they could be considered 'spirit'.

Prayer

Lord,it sometimes happens that when we stand up for our values our companions stop going with us
- because we will not discriminate against people of a different race;
- because we refuse to give expressions of love that are not appropriate to a relationship;
- because we criticise those in authority.

Help us, Lord, when this happens, not to become bitter, not to give up our values, but to understand, as Jesus did, that we cannot force people to come to us and that a relationship will only develop if you allow it to.

Lord, we thank you for all the times in recent years when your church has spoken out against injustice in different parts of the world, even when many of its members found this language intolerable and could not accept it.

Lord, we remember the time when we were upset because, for the first time, Jesus asked something hard of us.

Now, looking back on it, we smile.

What if we had known then how much is entailed in following him on his way to you?

Lord, we live at the surface of ourselves, and so we lack energy and creativity.

Give us the grace to withdraw, from time to time, to the depths of ourselves.
Only if we go to the level of the spirit can we really live.

Lord, many preachers are content to repeat what they have heard from others.

We thank you for those whose words have been life to us because they speak from the depths of their experience.

Lord, forgive your church for taking pride in our great achievements
- the big numbers that attend our services
- our influence with the rich and the powerful
- our imposing buildings and prestigious institutions, forgetting that the flesh has nothing to offer.

What will give life to the world is simplicity, truth, compassion, reverence for little people
- all that we know to be the spirit of Jesus.

Lord, we thank you for the great moment when we knew we had made a life commitment we met the person we should spend the rest of our life with
- we gave our whole selves to a movement
- we read the life of a great person and were never the same afterwards.

We knew then that there was nowhere else for us to go; this was, for us, the way to eternal life.

We believed and we knew that this was the Holy One of God.
It was like that when people met Jesus.

Lord, to achieve anything worthwhile in life we have to take risks.
We must go ahead and choose twelve, even though one of them eventually betrays us.
Lord, there was a time when we made a deep act of faith and became complacent.
We thank you that you sent Jesus to us
- a friend pointed out how self-righteous we had become
- we fell into a sin we thought we had finished with.

This was Jesus reminding us that the capacity to betray him is always part of us too.
Lord, send us leaders like Jesus who will proclaim their message, even if many of their followers find the language intolerable and impossible to accept; who will be free enough to turn even to their closest companions and say, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?'.