The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Bread of Life/Bread of Freedom

The Poet James Russell Lowell once wrote: "True freedom is to share/ All the chains our brothers wear,/And, with heart and hand, to be/ Ernest to make others free !"

The advent of Mikail Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (re-structuring) in the mid-1980's in the Soviet Union, raised hopes that the freedom and prosperity of the West might one day be replicated in the East. Theoretically, atheism, as a major teaching of the communist State, should have rendered religion obsolete in the Eastern bloc. Instead, the churches in East Germany not only flourished in their own right but were positioned to, and did play, a critical role in the revolution of 1989-90.

Those of us who grew up in a world divided between two camps, East vs. West, who remember the erecting of the Berlin Wall, recall the tensions and the fears of those years. In 1990, when the wall came down, a very real sense of relaxation and freedom could be felt by many of those who lived through these times. It was the experience of sensing that maybe we would make it after all. It was a sense that what seemed impossible was possible. Who could have predicted M.Gorbachev? Who could have predicted the rapid collapse of the Soviet Empire ? Who could have predicted Freedom for so many almost overnight?  And yet, as people of faith, it came as no real surprise. The Father of Jesus Christ, who provides us with the "bread of life, the bread of freedom" still works in the midst of the world. Often God's work takes unexpected shapes and configurations. But the result is always human freedom and liberation from those things that oppress and enslave us.

Jesus is God's seal or signature on the promissory note to bring human beings, human history, and creation to its true identity--fullness in the life and freedom of God ! The Father of Jesus is one who nourishes not only the stomach of human beings, but their spirits as well ! That hunger for freedom and liberation that is planted in every human being, is satisfied in accepting the bread of life in Jesus. We celebrate in every liturgical celebration and in the liturgy of life that brings this freedom to others. The eucharist that we share, the real bread and drink, the reception of Jesus himself is a meal and sacrifice that sits in the larger nest of God's present and future Kingdom. It sits in the nest of the memory of Liberating and nourishing power in bringing the people of Israel to liberation from slavery. It sits in the context of God's freeing power in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is the focus of Ephesians. Human freedom is grounded and realized by putting on the new person in Christ. In doing this we experience real freedom. This freedom is the experience of dying to the old life of selfishness, self-hatred, and destructive attitudes and actions towards others. It is a dying to the human abuse of power that wants to control others or the human tendency to hoard everything out of fear of having nothing. This freedom is one of accepting God's nourishing unconditional love for all. It is the freedom to live and die like Jesus knowing, that in God's Spirit, we lack and will lack for nothing. It is knowing that I can love myself, making it possible to love others and the world. That I no longer fear the other, nor need to control them. That I may embrace and live out the quest for a world that honors the dignity of all people. It is the freedom to renounce self-centeredness and the freedom to be the nourishment of God's freedom,in the power of the Spirit of Christ, to others and our world. 

Yet such is not easy ! Freedom is often a risky venture! There is a temptation to want "to go back" to what was familiar--even though it was oppressive. This is usually the reaction when we realize that God's freeing power calls us to journey with the Lord into the newness of the future we cannot enter without trust, risky the journey. This was the experience of the Israelites in the desert/ They were tempted to go back --they grumbled against God and God's agent. God was not unresponsive to their concerns--God nourished them, fortifying them for the journey.

We know that leaving behind that which was safe is difficult and we may often look back. In such a situation the moorings of our present begin slipping away, we want to cling to the old! But God says in Jesus, come with me to the future !. That is what it means to put on the new person!

In Christ then we need not fear the future--for the future is our freedom, the real life--eternal life. Getting there though will be risky, it will mean letting go of those often subtle and not so subtle slaveries of life. Sometimes these slaveries are borne of fear of what is new; other forms come in various other types of packages like addictions, self-hatred, grudges, compulsions, physical ailment and the like. God's nourishing power can even penetrate these things giving the capacity to cope and hope, believing that God's power in breaking into my life and will dawn fully in the future. However, we know that this will require receptivity to the bread of life ! In our history we get glimpse of its power. God's freedom triumphs despite human dictatorship. God's freedom continues to challenge the right to exist any attitude or actions that crushed the human person--the image of God. In doing this God's transforming power continues to breakthrough to give life.

The bread of life which we share is given to us to nourish us and in turn for us to nourish others and our world. It is nourishment that feeds us for the journey in the Lord on our way to the future. This will be future that we taste in the bread of life, that will come to its fullness where no one will ever be hungry. By taking part in the bread of life we commit ourselves to being God's agents to bring this freedom and the promise of the future to our world. "And , with heart and hand , to be/ Ernest to make others free!"

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 14, 2000