Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

This Sunday, we come to the end of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. For weeks, we have been reflecting upon Jesus as the Bread of Life, come down from Heaven, to give life to our souls. The question about how to live from this great gift remains to us this week.

Our readings this week are particularly rich for such a question. The answers provided have to do with making a choice, a fundamental orientation of life toward imitating the self-gift of Jesus in the Eucharist and striving to live that in our day-to-day lives. Let’s take a look at the readings and see what they have to teach us. As usual, the first reading and the Gospel are intimately connected as a foreshadowing and a fulfillment, while the second reading gives us practical ways of living out the Gospel message.

The Israelites in today’s first reading are gathered at Shechem, the place of God’s Covenant with Abraham. Having mourned the death of their leader Moses and poised to enter into their inheritance pause to renew the Covenant God made with them at Sinai. As is right and proper, this must be a free choice, something that should well up from within and profoundly affect their lives and their behavior in their new land. They are to choose between serving the Lord who has brought them out of slavery and given them the land that lies before them, and the serving of other gods, whether from Egypt or the land that they have entered.

Joshua lays a stark challenge before them: there can be no neutrality, no third way, and no indecision. The truth of the matter is that we all serve someone or something by giving our heart, time, energy and enthusiasm. Either the Israelites will be faithful to the Lord and the Covenant and receive his blessing or reject Him and suffer great consequences, including exile (unfortunately, the blessings and curses have been cut out of our reading today). Joshua exhorts them: “Decide today whom you will serve!” You will serve someone, who will it be? To motivate them to make the right choice, to encourage them, Joshua gives his own personal witness: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The Israelites respond in kind. Yet, we know from the Book of Judges and the later history of Israel that this is short-lived. They are still in need of God’s mercy and a further redemption.

This further redemption, of course, comes through Jesus. The first reading foreshadows today’s Gospel because the disciples, curious on-lookers and even the apostles, the inner-circle, are forced to make a similar decision: to believe Jesus and his teaching concerning a “hard saying” or to return to their former way of life. This “hard saying” of Jesus, concerns the giving of his flesh and blood as true food and true drink, the future Eucharist. The listeners, and people throughout the ages, find this a “hard saying” and don’t even want to listen to it, let alone accept it.

Yet, this teaching is obviously critically important to Jesus because he draws a line in the sand, so to speak. He forces his listeners to choose, he allows them to leave in great numbers without softening or nuance of his words. He even asks his closest followers, “Do you also wish to leave?” In other words, this teaching is so important, I will simply start over again. He even connects disbelief in the Eucharist with the betrayal of Judas (see the last verse of the chapter, unfortunately left out of our passage today).

Now, he does offer a warning, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail.” He warns them not to look at this with the “flesh,” with human eyes or human reason because it is unable, of itself, to comprehend the gift he offers. Instead, we need to see with the Spirit, with the eyes of faith.

Many draw back from him at this point, they return to their former way of life. Jesus doesn’t chase after them, he allows them, in their freedom, to choose whom they will serve. (There was one who stayed who should have left, namely, Judas.)

Peter’s response, as usual, is the right one; it is the model even though it isn’t that flattering! “Lord, to whom shall we go?” In other words, we would go, but “you have the words of eternal life. We are convinced and have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter submits to Jesus’ teaching despite not understanding completely. He is convinced of Jesus’ origin and therefore his authority. He trusts that someday he will begin to understand, that he will be led deeper.

Like the Israelites in the first reading and in the Gospel, we are also asked to make a choice on whom we will serve—Jesus in the Eucharist or our former way of life. We have a daily miracle far greater than the ones witnessed in Egypt or the desert! Whom will we serve? To whom shall we go? Do we also wish to go away? These questions should confront us every Sunday when we decide whether or not to go to Mass. But they should also confront us in our day-to-day lives.

It seems to me that this passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was chosen to go along with this Gospel for two reasons. The first is because of the connection between the Eucharist and the spousal relationship between Christ and his Church. You see, after our washing with water and the word in Baptism, the Eucharist is the consummation of our spousal relationship with Jesus. It is the time where the two become one flesh through mutual self-giving. Jesus gives us himself, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity and in response we receive him and give him ourselves. In other words, there is a profound analogy between the mutual self-giving of Jesus and the Church in the Eucharist and the mutual self-giving of spouse during intercourse. In both acts, the two become one flesh through a reciprocal gift of self.

The second reason is that this reason tell us how we should “live the Eucharist” in the state of life that most people are called to, namely, marriage. (This also applies, in analogous ways to those who are celibate for the sake of the Kingdom, but that is for another time.) But before we get to this, we need to understand this reading properly. In fact, it is so often misunderstood that the Church gives us the option of a shorter reading, leaving out all that talk of subordination!

Our culture rightfully rejects inequality between the sexes and the unjust treatment of women by men down through the ages and so it is natural to see some of the same in today’s second reading. But I want to claim today that it is a grave error to see St. Paul’s teaching as misogynist or anti-woman. In fact, this text actually contains the keys to the redemption of male and female relationships not a further solidification of injustice towards women. In other words, this text is counter-intuitively liberating and elevating for women.

Now, I can see some of you smiling, asking yourselves: how is he going to pull this off! Well, the ancient world saw women as property, to be used and disposed of when no longer pleasing or useful. St. Paul is confronting the prevailing customs where husbands often reigned like tyrants over their wives and families by exhorting husbands and wives to MUTUAL or RECIPROCAL submission to one another. This was and is a radical and beautiful solution. The only way this text is misogynist is if you ascribe to a false feminism that sees the proper task of women as usurping and imitating the injustices perpetuated by men throughout the ages.

No, St. Paul teaches reciprocal submission to one another out of love and the desire to see the other become what they are meant to be, saints. Notice, I am using the word “submission” rather than subordination. I find “submission’ to be more helpful because it literally means to be “under the mission” of the other.

Now that that is out of the way, lets try to get at what St. Paul is really teaching. He says that there is a profound analogy between the relationship of Christ and the Church and that of spouses and that spouses should model their lives and behavior on that of Christ and the Church. Just as there is a reciprocal submission of Christ to the Church and the Church to Christ, so husbands should submit, or be under the mission of their wives, and wives to their husbands. If husbands do this, they will be modeling themselves on Christ, and wives on the Church.

This submission, or being under the mission of the other, is free and voluntary, undertaken in the marriage vows. It is a non-degrading, non-servile and non-coercive submission. Nor is it unconditional; rather it is dependent upon the proper fulfillment of the mission given to each.

So what is the mission of husband? Of wives? Husbands, your mission, should you choose to accept it is to love your wives as Christ loved the Church. And how did Christ love the Church? On the Cross and in the Eucharist! Your task is to die to yourselves, to lay down your lives for your bride and your children. Build up your marriage and your family not for selfish ends but for the sake of their flourishing, their holiness. Doing this acts against the great temptation for men to stand back, to not act, to be selfish, like Adam who was with his wife during the temptation but did nothing.

The second part is to submit to your wife’s mission of being fruitful, both physically and spiritually, generous, kind, inclusive, empathetic, always creating room for others. This is what Pope John Paul II called the “feminine genius.”

Wives, your mission in addition to the above, should you choose to accept it, is to be under the mission of your husband: to allow, encourage and facilitate your husband’s action, his death to self, his taking a lead as a servant, to “man up.” This last part acts against the great temptation for women to do everything, to act because no one else will, rather than calling forth the energies of your husband to take their proper role.

Like the Israelites in the first and third reading, we have a choice on whom we will serve and it will affect our lives. If we choose to serve the Lord and imitate the Eucharist in our daily lives, it should impact the household. If we choose to live from the Eucharist, it should change everything. Maybe not all at once, but little by little.