Our Creator had an eternal plan of salvation in mind for the human race before he brought the universe into being from nothing. He created us in his image and likeness, and we were free at the beginning to live in keeping with his plan. But we had a better plan than God, or at least our first parents thought they did.
Because of their original sin and our Fall from grace, we all live at odds with God, with nature, with each other, and with our own true selves rather than living in the perfect harmony our Creator intended. But the primordial rebellion against God’s plan is not something confined to the distant past or to other people; no, that rebellion lives in every human heart, in every time and place. And that is among the reasons why, even today, we find God’s eternal plan for our happiness as implausible and difficult to accept as did our first parents.
For example, the second lesson today from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians sounds to many people, including not a few of the baptized, like misogynist nonsense which has been used for two millennia to excuse the oppression of women. But, in fact, this text is not in the least about the domination of women; it is, rather, about the sacramental economy by which the ancient covenant of marriage is changed into a mystery or sacrament of the New Covenant for those who have been made a new creation in Christ.
Along with everything else in human life, the marriage covenant was wounded by original sin, but the grace of God in Christ Jesus restores that covenant and lifts marriage up to the dignity of a sacrament. Injustices against women are real, but those injustices are the result of human sin and not of the complementary differences of male and female which are part of human nature from the beginning.
And so Paul writes: “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands.” You can already hear the chorus of naysayers: what an outrageous injustice! But read on: “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church … As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands.”
Friends, this is not misogyny; this is masculine headship in our sacramental life organized after the pattern of Christ’s perfectly ordered relationship to his Church. And what is that pattern? Paul explains: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her.” In other words, Christ laid down his life in sacrificial love for his bride, the Church, and Christian husbands must do the same for their wives.
This is not a path to toxic masculinity; this, instead, is the royal road of self-sacrifice for the salvation of other people. And for Christian husbands and fathers, that self-sacrifice is made for the sake of their wives and children. Lest there be any doubt on this point, Saint Paul concludes this brief teaching on marriage by writing that “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.”
But for anyone who does not know who Christ is, what the Church is, what the sacraments are, and what the life of grace is, this teaching will be unintelligible and dismissed as the masculine oppression of women. From this one example we can see that something in the plan of salvation will always stick in the throat of someone; something in the Gospel will always offend someone. Something in the Word of God will always be rejected by someone because, like our first parents, we have a better plan. Or at least we think we do, and that is what we see unfolding in the Gospel today.
Since July 25th we have been reading from chapter six of Saint John’s Gospel. That sequence of readings began with the Lord Jesus teaching as the new Moses and revealing his dominion over nature in his multiplication of the loaves and fishes, his control of a storm, and his walking on water.
The crowds who witnessed Christ’s glory and sought more of his teaching by chasing him across the Sea of Galilee were then astonished to hear his proclamation that he is the bread of heaven who comes down to give us eternal life. The crowd rejected this claim as absurd because they thought they knew the true identity of Jesus, supposing him to be the son of Joseph, but then Christ doubled down on the shocking declaration that he would give his flesh and blood as real food and drink for the life of the world.
Last Sunday we heard the Lord Jesus declare, “Amen. Amen. I say to you: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And then Christ went on to explain his true identity as the one sent from heaven by God the Father for the salvation of the world. And that is where our text begins today.
“Jesus said these things (John tells us) in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” The Lord Jesus then insisted that their offense at him did not falsify his words, and he continued to teach them about his divine nature. But despite all that, John tells us that “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”
So, because the crowd found the teaching of the Lord Jesus on his divine nature and on the Holy Eucharist to be a hard saying, many of his disciples stopped being his disciples and returned to their old way of life. They no longer walked with Christ, because he was walking in the Way of the Cross. They would not accept the Word of God because they had greater trust in their own wisdom and knowledge than in his. And once again we see the refusal to accept God’s eternal plan of salvation because we have a better plan. Or at least we think we do.
Many teachings in Holy Scripture are regarded as hard sayings, usually the ones which require us to change our lives to live in keeping with divine wisdom, and in our day that is true especially of the teachings on the nature and purpose of sexuality, marriage, and the sanctity of human life. But no matter what in the Gospel is found to be a hard saying by any given person or in any age of the world, the chief questions always remain the same.
Will I accept God’s plan for my life, or will I assert my own plan as better? Will I believe the inspired Word of God with the obedience of faith, or will I reject the divine Word in favor of my own concept of what is good, true, and beautiful? Will I serve the Lord, or will I refuse as did our first parents?
And questions such as these were on the mind of Joshua, the successor of Moses, as he prepared to disperse the children of Israel to their new homes where they would live among other peoples who did not know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so as we read in today’s first lesson, Joshua challenged the people: “If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve … As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
The people answered “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord for the service of other gods.” And then after recalling their deliverance from slavery and the mighty deeds of the true God who brought them safe to the land of promise, the people declared: “we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”
Then Joshua sent out the Twelve Tribes, each to their own inheritance, where in due course the children of Israel began to mingle with and imitate their pagan neighbors and then gradually forget their promise not to serve false gods. In a few generations, the covenant was forgotten, the law was neglected, and the people fell into idolatry. And so once again we see the refusal to accept God’s eternal plan of salvation because we have a better plan. Or at least we think we do.
Friends, no one will be a Christian because his parents are Christians and still less his grandparents. No one will be a disciple of the Lord Jesus because it is easy or popular to live according to Christ’s Gospel. And, yes, reading and understanding the Holy Scriptures and surrendering to the eternal plan of salvation in the obedience of faith are difficult things to do.
But if we see each part of God’s plan in relation to the whole, and if we understand each word of Scripture as an expression of the one eternal Word, then at least we can grasp what is at stake in the decision to follow Christ and to live as his disciple. Or not. And here Joshua’s words speak to us with the same clarity and force they had with the children of Israel: “If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve … As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
To find the strength and courage to serve the Lord and sustain us in the Way of the Cross, we must know that the whole plan of salvation in all its parts is none other than the one who is also the eternal Word of God made flesh, the Son of Mary who makes marriage a sacrament and who gives his flesh and blood as real food and drink in the Most Holy Eucharist.
Only when we accept the whole counsel of God because we know, love, and serve the Lord Jesus in the full truth of his Gospel will we understand and rejoice in the eternal plan of salvation as being better and wiser than our own plans. And then we can see that the eternal plan surpasses all our hopes for unbounded freedom and perfect happiness.
When most of his disciples had turned away from him, Jesus then turned to the Twelve with a direct, personal question: “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered not only for the Twelve but for everyone who will struggle with these questions until the Last Day: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Friends, not only does the rabbi from Galilee have the words of eternal life; he is the Word of eternal life. He is God the Son who calls us to be his faithful disciples and so find the freedom of the children of God in his teaching. He is the Holy One of God who frees us from the grave. He is the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation who is the forgiveness of our sins and our nourishment unto everlasting life. He is the head and bridegroom of the Church and the Savior of the world: the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily for 25 August 2024, the 21st Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman