Whom will you Serve
Homily for Twenty-First Sunday of Year B – 22 August 2021
There is a powerful scene in the 1989 film, called Romero, which depicts the life and martyrdom of St Oscar Romero. Oscar Romero was bishop of San Salvador in South America, until his murder in 1980. I watched the clip on YouTube recently again and was moved to tears. In the scene, under military dictatorship soldiers had taken over the cathedral as a barracks and entertainment centre. Bishop Romero tried to negotiate the removal of the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle but in response the soldiers turned a machine gun on the tabernacle, breaking it open and causing the consecrated hosts to fall to the ground, and they threw Bishop Romero out of the cathedral.
The next movement shows Romero re-entering the cathedral, determined to retrieve the Blessed Sacrament. He calmly walked past all the soldiers, went to the tabernacle, and knelt down to pick up the hosts that had fallen to the ground. Even while the soldiers shouted at him and kicked him, he continued to pick up the hosts and hide them in his cassock, until they dragged him out of the cathedral again. The final movement is when Oscar Romero, returns a little later, fully vested and re-enters the cathedral accompanied by hundreds of faithful, and retakes the cathedral.
“The Eucharist is God’s physical embrace of us. The Eucharist is where God touches us physically.” These beautiful words from Fr Ron Rolheiser speak to the Eucharistic theme we have been addressing for the past five weeks, as we have read from John, chapter 6, for our Sunday Gospels. Without the Eucharist, without God physically embracing us, God would remain abstract, far away, and inaccessible to us mere mortals. In the Eucharist we have the great self-giving of God to us, his reaching out to us, out of love for us.
In the light of this, we have one of the most tragic lines in the whole of the New Testament in today’s Gospel. After Jesus had given his teaching on the Eucharist, we hear that, “Many of his disciples drew back and no longer walked with him”. This was after their complaint about what they said was Jesus’ intolerable language. Remember that the so-called intolerable language of Jesus in today’s Gospel was that he said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
When the people complained about Jesus saying this, instead of making it easier for them, he intensified the language saying, “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink of his blood, you have no life within you.” The word used for ‘eat’ here is the Greek word to describe how animals eat; it means a gnawing and devouring. And not only that, but Jesus introduces the need to drink of his blood. The drinking of blood must have seemed particularly disconcerting to the Jews listening. Drinking blood was forbidden because the life is in the blood, life over which only God has power. Not surprisingly, the people were deeply shocked at this statement.
Most of us have been going to Mass for so many years now. We have become used to many of the things we hear. Again and again, we hear with complete calm: “Take this, all of you, and eat it; this is my body… Take this, all of you, and drink from it; this is the chalice of my blood…” Imagine a complete stranger to our liturgy coming in and hearing those words for the first time! So let us now hear these words as if for the very first time from the lips of Jesus as he spoke them on that day: "If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood…" Surely, these are challenging words.
And in the Gospel, we see that Jesus does not recant his words or water them down in the face of the sadness of so many choosing not to accept them. He doesn’t call them back and apologize; he doesn’t explain that he meant it only symbolically.
Jesus then asks the Twelve, as he asks us today, “Will you also go away?’ And Peter, on behalf of the others, and us, makes the statement of faith: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed; and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God”. It is almost as if the Twelve don’t quite understand Jesus’ words, and do find them difficult, but despite that they make an act of faith.
This act of faith is comparable to the act of faith, to the commitment that Joshua and all of Israel made at Shechem, that we hear about in the first reading from the book of Joshua. All the elders and leaders of Israel, together with Joshua, presented themselves before God. This event marks a turning point in the history of Israel. Joshua presented the people with a watershed decision. He challenged the people to be faithful to the covenant with the Lord.
They were to make up their minds whom they would serve or worship, whether the gods of their ancestors, or the Lord, the God of Israel. Joshua himself set the example and made a firm commitment himself to serve the Lord, saying, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” The people followed and chose to serve the Lord, recalling the Lord’s saving work in their lives.
Remember the covenant made between God and Israel at Sinai, under the leadership of Moses. A covenant is a solemn agreement between two parties, with undertakings and promises on both sides. This covenant under Joshua is a covenant renewal. Joshua and the people of Israel presented themselves before the Lord and re-committed themselves to their covenant promise.
In the same way, when we come to Mass, we present ourselves before the Lord, as individuals and as a community. And every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we renew the new covenant between ourselves and God, through Christ. In the words of institution at Mass, over the chalice we hear said, “This is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant.”
We can draw together the message of today’s readings by saying that the Eucharist that Jesus gives us, and about which he speaks in today’s Gospel, is itself a summary of the New Covenant between God and human beings. The New Covenant, bonding God and human beings is fully realized in the Eucharist. Another word for ‘covenant’ here is ‘testament’. Because the New Covenant was established at the Last Supper, the Eucharist is itself a summary of the New Testament. God gives himself completely to human beings and human beings give themselves completely to God. This is exactly what happens in the Eucharist.
In the Eucharist, we see the complete mutual self-giving that the covenant between God and human beings calls for. At this Mass we renew that covenant from our side. God is ever faithful to the covenant of love from his side; we have the guarantee of this in the Eucharist. So, today’s Mass offers us a challenge, “Whom will you serve.” There is an urgency about this challenge: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” We come here each week to be nourished by the Eucharist so that we can keep answering that challenge. In celebrating the Eucharist, we are saying that we want to deepen our relationship with Jesus, with his Gospel, and with the community which is his visible presence among us.
Today we stand with Joshua and Peter. We will serve the Lord; we have nowhere else to go, because Jesus, the Holy One of God has the words of eternal life. Let’s receive the Eucharist then as our pledge of renewing the covenant, and in receiving the Eucharist we will be given the grace to be faithful to the covenant. Let’s allow Jesus to physically embrace us in the Eucharist.