Homily
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
1 August 2021
AMDG +mj
Who is for dinner?
Yes, you heard me right. The pivotal question is not what's for dinner. It's not who is coming for dinner. It's who is for dinner! For I think it's the ultimate question from today's Gospel, and the Eucharist. Just so, it can also serve as the ultimate question of life. Who is for dinner?
The Israelites questioned the gift of manna - what is this? Thus the precise meaning of the word manna - what is this? Apparently it was a strange, if not also disappointing, replacement for the savory bread left behind in Egypt. They grumbled. What is this? Yet as Jesus points out later, the better question is who is this?
Who is for dinner? There's nothing more human than eating and drinking. So it's a key and essential piece of the incarnation. Jesus says it's why people are looking for him. I feel badly for my poor mother. We never stopped asking her relentlessly. Mom - what's for dinner? It's a question that sometimes made her cry, for she could never escape it. Jesus invites his disciples to see food differently, and to relate to it not ultimately as a what is this, but as a who is this!
Jesus invites us to be in touch with a deeper hunger, for food that only serves the body perishes every time. It's the food that feeds relationship that endures to eternal life. So who is for dinner? It can easily be the central question of your life. To have companions is to have those you break bread with.
Yet Jesus is offering more. Much more! I am the bread of life. You feed on me. Ultimately in the Eucharist, it's much more a question of who than what. This is the work of God, to believe in who Jesus is and how He offers the gift of Himself.
I can't believe that I am a wine snob! Nothing is farther from my German wheat farming blue collar roots. I like bread, mind you, but my favorite, most life-giving conversations now are usually over a glass of wine. I have friends who love to explore wine, even the theology of it. Sometimes in the hope of a great conversation a rare bottle is savored, and we are intensely interested in what is it! How is it? Which makes me a snob. My poor mother who used to clip and save her way to feeding a family of 8 on $50 a week, would roll over in her grave at some of the bottles I get to share with friends.
I'm a snob. I don't really know as much about wine as I pretend to. Yet again, it's not ultimately about the wine. It's the who I am with, and the persons I am thirsting for. For life is nothing more, and nothing less, than thirsting for that conversation that brings life.
Make sure you get the ultimate question right, and be super intentional about how you answer it. It's not what's for dinner. It's who is for dinner!
