Sermon for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b Ephesians 5:21-32 or 5:2a, 25-32 John 6:60-69
You know you’re reading a great novelist when you think, “Yeah, that’s exactly how I saw it.” Claire Messud is one such writer.
Listen to these thoughts about God from Chloe, a 7-year-old Australian girl, in Messud’s latest cross-generational novel, This strange, eventful story. Doesn’t that reflect your thoughts at the same age? Chloe thinks of a little boy who drowned in his family’s pool and the trouble she gets over the squashed banana at the bottom of her school bag. As she puts it, “I have so many things to worry about.”
I believe in God, if only secretly. I can’t say if Mom or Dad does, and maybe I believe for all of us. He sees into our hearts and he knows all the wrong things we think and do and have ever done. But if we are good and try very hard, we can hope that he will protect us. Every night I pray the Lord’s Prayer and a special prayer for the safety of everyone in my family. Nothing feels safe unless I am vigilant. I remember a time when I was not afraid; and then suddenly the time came when I was afraid of everything, when I saw death and disaster lurking around every corner. I long for the time when I felt free; I think it was like Adam and Eve in the Bible, except I don’t know when I ate the apple. I can’t remember what changed or when, for me I just know it’s different now. When I was younger I thought maybe I was God or a part of God, but now I know that’s not right. Is God in us? Above us? With us? If he is all-powerful, then why do such bad things happen?
Mum and Dad are not God, of course, but if Loulou is my boss, Mum is our boss and Dad is everyone’s boss. They can both get very angry and it feels like God’s punishment, like when Mum baked my birthday cake but it burned and she threw it on the floor with all her might – the crumbs flew everywhere like confetti and the glass dish shattered – and she said, “I’ll never bake a cake again in my life,” and of course it was my fault because the cake was for me; and I also sinned by secretly being selfishly saddest that I didn’t have a cake after all. Or when I was six and Dad was screaming because he had come back from a long trip and Loulou and I ran down the stairs all excited to greet him and the first thing I said was, “What have you brought us? What have you brought?” That was the sin of being spoiled. Of course, I didn’t care about my presence as much as Dad did, but I took him for granted, as Dad said later when he wasn’t so angry. But you can’t take anything for granted, because anything can disappear. Like Michelle’s little brother. He was here, so sweet. I remember him with honey-colored curls and big amber eyes, and now he’s gone. Maybe she took him for granted, and that’s why God took him away.
Chloe sees God as the great Father in heaven, the boss of everything – even Dad. When God gets angry, something is wrong with you; conversely, when something is wrong with you, God must be angry. So the goal in life is not to make God angry, even if you sometimes feel a certain injustice in life. They just wanted a birthday cake. Was that really selfish?
The problem is that we never completely get rid of our childish thoughts about God, no matter how hard we try to correct them as we grow older.
It is foolish to think of God as the parent we must not anger, and it is even more foolish to think that the solution is simply to get as far away from such a God as possible in the hope that it will not be noticed. To reject the God of childhood without finding something truer is to run away from a parent. And no one can run far enough away.
Today’s Gospel contains the words that are most dear to my heart in the Holy Scripture and that say a lot.
The crowd has abandoned Jesus because they cannot understand what it even means that he is “the bread of life.” I hear deep discouragement in his voice when Jesus turns to the Twelve and says, “Will you also go?” Then Peter, who almost never says the right thing, answers, “Teacher, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68).
Peter doesn’t stay because Jesus has proven himself to be all-powerful, the biggest boss there is. The resurrection is still in the future. Whatever demonstrations of power he has seen – Christ just fed the crowd and walked on water – Peter still sees Jesus as a human being, someone who can be walked away from as easily as walked towards. The crowd has seen his acts of power too, but they are walking away from Jesus.
But Peter speaks for the rest of the chosen group when he says that he didn’t even know where to go, because “you have the words of eternal life.” Peter loved Jesus, not because of what he could do for him, but because of who he was. That is the way of true love.
When we think we have to be someone and behave a certain way to earn God’s love, we are still thinking like a child who is afraid of losing his parents’ love. “Maybe she took him for granted and that’s why God took him away from her.”
You only know the true God when you see the beauty and goodness of the world as such a gift that you are convinced there must be a giver. So much cannot come from nothing. You know the true God when you reflect on the face of Jesus revealed in the Gospels, and you cannot help but love and adore the beauty and goodness you see in it.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux said that the only thing we can truly share with God is love. The true disciple does not love God to gain something; love is its own reward. Bernard wrote, “For when God loves, he desires nothing more than to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, knowing that those who love him will be made happy by their love for him.” Are you happy simply because you love God and are loved by him, or do you hold happiness at a distance, waiting for God’s approval and subsequent blessing? If the latter is the case, you have not yet come to know the true God.
Yes, the world is a cold and dangerous place. Like Chloe, we have so many things to worry about. “I could see death and doom lurking around every corner.” But you’ve never suspected who the true God is, never fully realized what is revealed in the face and figure of Christ on the cross, until you realize that God must simply be truth, goodness and love for you, regardless of who you are and what you do.
Of course, you will continue to ask God to bless you and to assist you. God is the whole; we are the fragment. God is the source; we are the dependent stream. But you have become the mature – if still deeply flawed – disciple that St. Peter was when you can honestly say that, come what may, you are not going anywhere. You recognize goodness and truth and beauty and, above all, love when you see it. “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
