Twentieth Sunday In Ordinary Time
The Book of Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings, maxims, or as the name indicates, a collection of proverbs. The first line of this document attributes the book to King Solomon, 961-922 B.C. It is quite possible that some of the collections of proverbs go all the way back to Solomon who had a reputation for wisdom. There are however previous collections assembled in this book. Although individual proverbs antedate the book in its present form, the arrangement we now have is generally dated sometime in the late 6th or early 5th century B.C. The introduction defines wisdom as an enlightened mind, virtue, justice, knowledge, ability to understand proverbs. The author closes the introduction with a quote from Psalm 111:10, “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.” This does not mean a cringing fear of God but religious awe, reverence, devotion.
One might wish that the Book of Proverbs would have developed the idea of Wisdom as did the several centuries later Book of Sirach. In Sirach 24:23, Wisdom is defined as “the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the Torah (teaching, law) that Moses commanded to us.” The Gospel of John has Sirach’s definition of wisdom in mind, when it proclaims Jesus, the Word or Torah or teaching of God, as superior to the Torah of Moses. Such a definition would lend a deeper religious meaning to the content of the Book of Proverbs and the selection from this book which is the first reading of this Sunday. The reading is an invitation to a banquet of wisdom. The proverbs which then follow the invitation are referred to in metaphors of meat and wine. “She (Lady Wisdom) dressed her meat, mixed her wine, spread her table, invited her guests.” The pairing of this reading with this Sunday’s gospel reading elevates it far beyond its original intention of educating people through wise sayings. The invitation to the food and wine of the first reading find its ultimate meaning in Jesus’ invitation to “eat my flesh and drink my blood.” This is the true food and wine, the object of which is not just an education, but eternal life.
The Responsorial Psalm (34) is the same psalm, (minus verses 8-9), the Lectionary gave us after last Sunday’s first reading which was also about food, the miraculous food which nurtured the prophet Elijah in his forty days and forty nights walk southward to Mt. Horeb, (Mt. Sinai). The well-known response of the people is also the same as last Sunday, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” The second reading is the sixth in a series from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. The author is still engaged in the exhortation part of the letter, “Do this and that! Don’t do this and that!” The reading begins, “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish but as wise.” This echoes part of today’s first reading, “Forsake foolishness that you may live.” The same holds true for Paul’s advice, “Do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand….” The first reading notes, “Advance in the way of understanding.” Thus we have the unusual occurrence of the first and second readings with similar themes on an Ordinary Sunday. The rest of the second reading is sound advice. “If you want to get drunk, be filled not with wine (spirits) but with the (Holy) Spirit…, singing and praying and giving thanks to the Lord.”
The gospel opens with the closing of last Sunday’s gospel, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Thus far in our series of readings from the Bread of Life Discourse John has moved through three definitions of the “bread which came down from heaven.” The first definition: the bread is the revelation that Jesus brings from the Father. This is found in John 6:32, “It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven. My Father (right now) is giving you the true bread from heaven.” The second definition of the bread is found first in 6:35, “I am the bread of life.” Meaning: the bread of life or true bread that comes down from heaven is the revelation that Jesus is from the Father. John repeats the second definition in verse 48. In the opening verse of today’s gospel, he repeats it again, as an introduction to the third definition of the bread of life, “…and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
We have arrived at the fullest meaning of an interpretation of the manna in Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” John opened his Good News with a proclamation of Jesus as the Word or Torah or teaching of God, a Torah superior to that of Moses. He has waited until chapter six to interpret the meaning of his first proclamation. Critics of John could have agreed with the first interpretation of the Word as the Torah or revelation Jesus brings from the Father. Murmuring was heard when John gave the second interpretation of Jesus as Word or Torah of God, that he himself is God’s ultimate Torah or teaching. When John proclaims Jesus as God’s Word in the flesh, he repeats what he had proclaimed in John 1:14, “And the Word was made flesh, and pitched his tent among us.”
“Bad enough,” critics would murmur, “but now he demands that people eat his flesh and drink his blood. Can’t be done!” John replies, “Yes, it can!” He opens his response to objections with a double oath, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” As John continues his catechesis, the language he uses his so graphic, chewing, gnawing, and so insistent, that it must rule out the escape from this truth by proposing that this teaching is mere symbolism. The truth is not easy, but we join with the disciples who did not leave Jesus because of this teaching, because “You have the words of eternal life.”
