Readings for Sunday, August 23 / 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time:Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18
Psalm 34
Ephesians 5:21-32
John 6:60-69
“Wives should be subordinate to
their husbands.”
I laughed a bit to myself as I
was praying with the readings this week, as having this feather-ruffling
reading from St. Paul alongside the conclusion of the 5-week series on John 6
makes for a easy ‘out’ for all the priests who ‘would love to address St.
Paul’s words’ but ‘really need to focus on this last week about the Eucharist’.
But my thought is why not do both?
The words of St. Paul that we
just heard a moment ago are incredibly beautiful and powerful message to
husbands and wives. It should be the joy of two hearts to hear them on their
wedding day, and yet how rarely they are heard. Why? Because our culture
doesn’t understand them. When the world today hears the words “wives should be
subordinate to their husbands” walls immediately go up against them on account
of their supposed misogynistic viewpoint that presumes that St. Paul has as his
goal the suppression of women, particularly in their marital relationships. But
let’s look at it for a moment. If you look at the meaning of the word
‘subordinate’ that is used here the Latin root translates as ‘put under’ or ‘to
plunge into’. St. Paul is inviting wives to places themselves under the care of
their husbands as to the Lord, with complete trust. But why place themselves
under their husband? Why not alongside? To understand we simply look to the
call of St. Paul to husbands in regards to their wives: ‘love your wives, even
as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her.’
What is interesting here is that the call of a women is to place herself under
the direction or order of her husband, while the call of a husband is to be
able to lay down his life in service of his bride, as Christ did for the
Church, to make her beauty and holy. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all
to me! Recognizing the beauty of it is easy; living it is not. To live this
mutual submission to one another requires an immense amount of trust. Trust on
the part of the wife that her husband will not abuse the role of husband and become
an oppressor. And trust on the part of the husband that his self-gift will be
received by his wife for her own good and not simply disregarded. It’s all
about trust.
And this is exactly where the
Lord brings us with this last of the five weeks’ reflections on John 6. In
recent weeks Jesus has said and done some really incredible things. We saw his
authority-claiming actions of climbing the mountain, sitting, and performing
the miracle of feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves and fish. He spoke to us
of manna & quail that failed to satisfy and a True Bread that would satisfy
not only a small nation but the entire world. He took it a step further and
announced that the True Bread would be His very own flesh and by eating it we
could attain heavenly life. And then He capped it all off by saying that it was
not only His flesh that we would have to eat, repulsive enough an idea as it
was, but that we would also have to drink His blood to have that heavenly life.
After hearing this litany of absurd claims, we could easily place in this
context the command of Joshua to the Israelites: Decide today whom you will
serve!
Again, we know the difficulty of
accepting so many of the things that the Lord has spoken to us because they are
outside of our understanding, contradict so much of what seems common sense,
and makes a claim that is absolutely incredibly. Really, after hearing this
speech you have to believe either Jesus is the real deal and He can give
everything He says OR He’s a raving lunatic who needs to be cast aside and
ignored as one who has no grasp on reality. Many of his disciples, we hear,
left that day. His disciples. Not just the people who followed Him to get some
food, but the disciples who had been walking with Him for days, weeks, maybe
months by this point. It was too much for them to take; they couldn’t trust in
the words He spoke. What I find fascinating is that Jesus doesn’t go groveling,
trying to get them to come back to Him. He simply turns to the disciples and says,
‘Do you also want to leave?’
I love Peter’s response because
it’s honest. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the worlds of eternal life.”
Notice that he doesn’t say ‘No, Lord, I don’t want to leave.’ You can almost
read the confusion in his response. It’s as if he is saying ‘Lord, I don’t understand
what you mean entirely and I don’t know how you’re going to make it happen, and
it causes me discomfort to hear it, but I’m going to trust you and keep going. You
have the words of eternal life. I’m gonna trust you.’ I may be interpreting it
wrongly, but it sounds as if Peter doesn’t completely understand everything
himself just yet but that he’s willing to keep on the journey.
And the invitation is extended to
us the same. Can we every fully understand the Eucharist? No. Will we ever
really be able to wrap our minds around the mystical words that Jesus says and
the miraculous things that He does? No. Are we ever going to reach a point when
the Eucharist doesn’t require of us a radical act of faith? I don’t think so.
Because that’s the whole point. Jesus invites every human person to an
encounter with Him, particularly in the Eucharist. The question is whether we
are able to trust Him enough to believe and follow despite our lack of
understanding?
Decide today whom you will serve?
As for me an my house, we will serve the Lord.
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