Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time

by Deacon Michael Hoonhout  |  08/25/2024  |  Weekly Reflection

“This saying is hard; who can accept it?” A hard saying of Jesus is one that his own disciples find difficult to believe or accept. Not everything he taught is “hard,” yet any believer who finds everything Jesus says pleasing and agreeable has not truly heard the Jesus revealed in the Gospels. A man rejected by his own people who in the end clamored for his crucifixion was not one who simply told people what they wanted to hear. More than once they took offense at what Jesus said, whether it was the townspeople of Nazareth saying, “Where did this man get all this?” (Mark 6:2-3); or the Pharisees affronted by Jesus’ indictment that they nullify the law with their traditions (Matt 15:12).

His own disciples had trouble accepting Jesus’ prohibition on divorce (Matt 19:10), or believing how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God (Matt 19:25). The truth of the Gospel is confirmed in that the hardness of Jesus’ teaching has not faded, since believers in the many generations after the apostles continue to object to what Jesus laid down. We need to examine our own willingness to accept all that Jesus says, from the comforting to the challenging. Our own response to a hard saying of Jesus reveals a lot about us: the strength of our faith and perhaps some resistance to fully submitting to Christ’s authority in everything he teaches.

In today’s Gospel Jesus describes the disciples who find his teaching hard as those “who would not believe.” The hard saying here is: “For my flesh is true food and my blood true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Now these words are hard, their meaning objectionable and difficult to accept, only when taken at face value, with “flesh” and “blood,” “eat” and “drink” not reduced to a mere symbolism. Yet Christians who reject the plain meaning of these words are not few, including Catholics who regard the Eucharist as “the Body and Blood of Christ” in only a symbolic sense.

Some Christians even use two lines from this Gospel to justify their assertion that Jesus was speaking metaphorically: “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” First, they interpret Jesus as referring to his own flesh as being “of no avail” in giving life (hence it is not what Jesus wants us to “eat”). Secondly, they have Jesus implying that the words he has spoken have a spiritual, not literal, sense. Not only does this interpretation directly contradict Jesus saying three times that the one who eats his flesh has life, but it violates the fundamental saving truth that we are redeemed because Jesus’ body (not spirit) was nailed to the cross, and by his blood our sins have been forgiven. If even his saliva mixed with dirt could heal blindness, who would dare say Jesus’ flesh is powerless? No, in the context of this passage, “flesh” here refers to our natural powers. We do not make ourselves believe by rational effort, and if we do believe it is only because “it is granted by the Father.” Faith is a gift given by the Spirit, not a deduction reached by human reasoning. This gift is available to those willing to submit to the authority of Jesus to teach us what to believe even when we find the teaching hard.

If we are honest with ourselves, we would have to admit to a general aversion to the act of submission. Will not the shorter form of today’s second reading from Ephesians be widely preferred over the longer form primarily because the latter does not contain (repeatedly!) the command: “be subordinate”? How many Christians excuse themselves from another hard saying of Jesus: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23; 14:27)? Far more than a symbol can signify, the Eucharist, as the memorial of Christ’s suffering and death, contains the mystery of his very humble and loving submission to the Father’s will in his for love of us. As such, the Eucharist is medicine for our stiff necks and hard hearts, if only we are willing to accept Jesus’ word on it.

Gratefully, this Gospel ends with an act of faith in and submission to Jesus’ words by Peter and the apostles: “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” This is the Johannine equivalent of Peter’s confession in the Synoptics to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” The author of the fourth Gospel is implying that the catholic faith in who Jesus is cannot be separated from faith in the Eucharist, confessed by those who are willing to submit to Jesus’ command to eat his flesh and drink his blood. This teaching of Jesus on the Eucharist is words of eternal life, for those who remain with Peter and the apostles in their Eucharistic faith remain with Jesus, and in the breaking of the bread come to partake in the eternal life the Son has with the Father and shared with us.