The God of Moses

Homily for Sunday, August 4, 2024
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
John 6:24-35

It’s all about Moses.  And on a deeper level, it’s all about identity.  

Last Sunday we began a five-week series of readings from Jesus’ “Bread of Life” discourse in John chapter 6.  Like a slow-moving storm,John chapter 6 will be “raining” on us throughout this month of August.  If the “rain” of John chapter 6 would more fully saturate and nourish us, it helps to know 1) that John chapter 6 is all about Moses, and 2) on a deeper lever, John chapter 6 is about identity.

And I want to get back to John chapter 6 and Moses and identity, but first…  Alexander Lefebvre’s new book, Liberalism as a Way of Life.  In his book,Lefebvre argues that a liberal democracy is not merely the best political system, but that it is at heart a moral system whose values allow citizens to live the most rewarding lives, have the most satisfying relationships and to build the most thriving of societies.  Lefebvre is forthright in his book that he is not religious, and that he writes for those who likewise are not religious.

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, in an op-ed piece this past May, pushes back against Lefebvre.  Brooks writes (and, by the way, Brooks is Jewish):

Liberal morality tends to be horizontal… [Liberals] look sideways and try to be kind and decent to their fellow human beings…. [But] pure liberals don’t look upward to serve a living God...  [And] when societies become liberal all the way through [he writes], they neglect a core truth:  For liberal societies to prosper, they need to rest on institutions that precede individual choice – families, faiths, attachments to a sacred place. People are not formed by institutions to which they are lightly attached.  Their souls and personalities are formed within primal bonds to this specific family, to that specific ethnic culture, to this piece of land with its long history to my people, to that specific obedience to the God of my ancestors.

I suspect John would concur with David Brooks that, for we humans to flourish, it helps to have “bonds to this specific family, to that specific ethnic culture, to this piece of land with its long history to my people, to that specific obedience to the God of my ancestors.” For in chapter 6 of his Gospel, John connects Jesus to the family, culture, land and God of Moses. As we heard in last week’s reading, like Moses Jesus in John chapter 6 is followed by people in the wilderness (6:2);like Moses Jesus works signs among them (6:2); like Moses Jesus “went up the mountain” (6:3); like Moses Jesus fed them miraculously and in abundance; as Moses led the people on dry land across the Red Sea, Jesus led the disciples in their boat across the Sea of Galilee (6:21). For John, the prophet whom Moses himself foretold in Deuteronomy – “The Lord [said]… ‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command’” (Deut. 18:18) – [for John, the prophet whom Moses himself foretold in Deuteronomy] is Jesus.

Furthermore, for John, Jesus is greater than Moses.  For example, if Moses struck the rock and gave the people water in the wilderness (Ex 17:6), Jesus offers “living water” that, when one drinks of it, they will never again be thirsty (John 4:14).  And if Moses up on the mountain saw only God’s back (Ex 33:21-23), John writes that, “No one has ever seen God.  [But] it is [Jesus] the only Son, who is close to the father’s heart, who has made him known” (1:18).

If we would see this “more” of Jesus, and if we would root ourselves in the fullness of the identity that Jesus offers, it helps first to recognize that our hunger is for more than food.  It helps first to recognize that as human beings (to borrow from David Brooks) we have not just a “horizontal” but a “vertical” dimension.  Notice what Jesus says in today’s Gospel:

Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.

The people are looking not for “signs,” which would be on a “vertical” dimension; rather, they are looking for food on a “horizontal” dimension.  If Moses through God fed the people in the wilderness with Manna from heaven–  food on a “horizontal” dimension –Jesus feeds us rather with food on a “vertical” dimension.  For it is Jesus, claims John, who is “the true bread,” “the living bread… which comes down from heaven.”  And because the people still seem not to understand, in this morning’s text Jesus repeats himself:  “I am the bread life,” he says, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:35).

In St. John’s Gospel, including in the “Bread of Life” discourse from chapter 6 that we hear this month, John forms his community, telling them clearly who they are and giving them an identity.  And because we are not formed by institutions to which we are lightly attached, in his Gospel John roots Jesus in his Jewish family, culture, land and obedience to the God of his ancestors.  And, John presents Jesus as the prophet, the one “about whom Moses in the law and also the Prophets, wrote” (1:45).  Knowing our bonds to this specific family (for us, the Church), to that particular way of life (in our case, living as Jesus’ disciples),to this specific obedience to the God of our ancestors (which is to actively practice our Christian faith), we can know who we are and whose we are; we can know our identity.  Thus rooted in our identity in Christ and the Gospel, we can flourish and grow into the full stature of the people God created us to be, we can build richly-rewarding relationships with God and one other, and we can live in abundance the life Jesus promised (John 10:10).