A PONDERING The closest we get to true freedom is trusting God and that is the closest we get to doing or living God’s “will”. Having trust in something or especially somebody is a quite selfless act. Trusting can be the last resort after trying other options which may have failed. To have faith in another is a wonderful present of love. Faith and love are so similar that they are the same leap. In the First Commandment we are invited to “love God”. This is the prime relational request, but loving God usually does not have the same emotional surroundings as loving spouses, family and friends. Loving God is trusting within this context of doubts; it is a great act of freedom and not experienced easily. We are so insecure, frightened and self-absorbed. God is so loving that God’s will is not something we might find or not and we’d never know we were or were not doing it. God invites us to trust our senses and mental capacities and then do something in actions of trust and love. REFLECTION Joshua, in the final two chapters of this book, is having a great farewell celebration. In the previous chapter to the one from which our First Reading is taken, Joshua tells the people of Israel to follow the laws and customs of their covenantal relationship with the Lord. God has been fighting against their enemies and now the land is their own. In our reading, we skip past a kind of “victory lap” in which Joshua relates specifically the history of the Lord’s care for Israel. In those verses he calls to mind the great people and events that constitute them as God’s own people. What we do hear is the consequence or response Joshua offers his listeners. Based on all that the Lord has done for Israel, which way will they choose? They have been invited to look backwards through their national history to see God’s goodness to them. Joshua is asking them about their looking forward. Joshua, as Moses’ replacement declares that he and his folks choose the Lord. The people reply that they too know their history and they are sticking with the winner who has made them victorious themselves. In the Gospel, we have reached finally the great conclusion of the discussion about Jesus’ being the “Bread of Life”, and his being the one ”sent”. Some of His disciples find these words offensive to their senses and so boggle their minds. They have to leave and return to their former ways of seeing, thinking and believing. They did see the miraculous distribution of bread and fish and ate their fill. Their senses told them something they could grasp. Jesus stretches their minds and asks them to be as open to something even more miraculous, but which goes beyond the information provided by the senses. They choose the path of the “flesh” while Jesus is inviting them to walk the walk of the Spirit. They stumble over what they can not see or imagine. Many leave, but some stay including Peter. So Jesus puts the big question to them and him, “Do you also want to leave?” As with Joshua, Peter professes that they have seen enough to trust what they can not see with the eyes of their “flesh”. This communal affirmation comes at the end of the first half of John’s Gospel “Book of Signs” in which John presents Jesus’ doing “signs” which actions are sense-based, but intended to lead to such an act of believing as we hear from Peter. In other sections of this “Book of Signs”, there are miracles of water becoming wine, the blind and lame being healed as well as bread being multiplied. There is evidence, but just enough to allow the act of believing to be made freely, that is that non-believing is also possible. Why do some believe and others just “be leaving”? Jesus tells us that the “spirit” draws some and the “flesh” attracts others. I think faith of any kind and trust in anybody has been injured by our increased reliance on technology .We desire to the point of demand to see the replay before the play. Signs lead only to wanting clarity and conviction. It seems that faith in the “beyond” or “transcendent” or “God” was more a part of a past time when night was dark, trails and roads led “out there”, and signs were both indicators and invitations to continue. God continues to offer us invitations, “signs” which are invitations to trust, while they can also be taken as nothing more than non-“sense” and not to be followed. There are signs that can indicate there is no God, that religion is absurd and the Church an “opiate of the people”. Belief is a non-sense experience, in a sense. Faith is a human way of responding to what we sense, but our senses can take us only to the threshold where the signs say, “Go beyond!” Living with and through faith is not an easy way to go. We rely on the Spirit of God to draw us beyond what we can see, taste, touch and reason to. For us, it is the way we desire to go against our technological security-centered human inclinations. As for me, I’m with Peter who has seen enough, but not enough as his stumblings will prove. As for me, I think after finishing this, I will turn off the computer, the lights, the phones, the radio, the TV, and try to believe that there is life without them all. “Lord, the earth is filled with your gifts from heaven;” Ps. 104 |