Sunday August 19,
2018 20th Sunday Ordinary Time (Cycle B)
Don’t Ask the Fish
The tie between
today’s readings: Wisdom is a gift from God
Psalm 34: 2-7, Proverbs 9: 1-6, Ephesians 5:
15-20, John 6: 51-58
The first step in
gaining wisdom is humility. The God who loves us has opened up “Wisdom House”
(Proverbs 9) and advertises to the world to come and learn His ways…free lunch
provided. Our problem is that we become more and more proud with each new
technical breakthrough to make our lives longer, easier, and better. Our heads
swell with “progress” as we unlock the secrets of the universe and push the
Almighty into a smaller and smaller corner of irrelevance. Who needs God? He is
us. Yet, despite this, no one can seem to answer the big question: If we’re so
smart, why can’t we live together in peace… or even with ourselves? Political leaders, doctors, and philosophers
give their opinions and diametrically opposed solutions for our disintegrating
culture, but to no avail. That’s because we have knowledge without wisdom.
Knowledge is awareness that a tomato is a fruit, but we foolishly keep heaping
it into our fruit salads.
If you want to know what water is like,
don’t ask the fish. (Chinese Proverb) Like the fish, we lack the
objectivity to make judgments about life because we are so deeply entrenched in
it. We can’t see the forest for the trees. Wisdom, the correct application of
knowledge, has to come from a higher, outside cause and effect perspective. It
must be true, experienced, and universal. It has to come from God. We must give
up our own self important positions and submit to Him for guidance. God, from
His vantage point judges even the wisest among us as foolish, but He has not
left us alone to our devices.
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The Gospel
reading today, once again, illustrates the foolishness of man who can’t
comprehend the wisdom of God: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” Drilling down to the core of
the issue, in a Temple sacrifice, each penitent person would eat part of the
offering as a way to be intimately connected with it. The sinner is stating the
he deserves the fate of the dead animal standing in for him. To eat and drink
the flesh and blood of Jesus is to intimately partake in His sacrifice. You
can’t have an arm’s length Communion. You need to see yourself spiritually on the
cross with Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away YOUR sin. You eat the bread,
the Body of Christ, and physically make a connection with His crucifixion. The
Bible also says to present your body as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1); in
effect you’re responding to God, “This is my body which I give up for
you.” With this communion you are a part
of a whole community of believers: the Church, in the power of the Holy Spirit,
serving one another in Christ (Eph 5: 15-20). This mandate also goes out to the
whole world as Jesus commands us to love even our enemies as we appeal to our
fellow man to be reconciled to God and eat of the Bread of Life. So Christ, the Wisdom of God, answers the
deepest problems of existence, co-existence, and beyond. When you were born,
God gave you this big box called “Life”. It has many wonderful and curious
pieces in it. If you’re having trouble fitting the parts together, why don’t
you try reading His manual? Go to Him: be humble, be wise.
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