CorpChristiA20.   Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  Moses continued on to say to the Israelite People: The Lord “therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”  God fed his people then; he feeds us now.  “God let them be afflicted with hunger” “so as to test them by affliction and find out whether or not it was their intention to keep his commandments.”  The Lord tested them or let them fall into temptation so that when they were facing difficulties whom or what they would depend on to help them, their God or some substitute such as a golden calf.  To whom or to what did they really put their faith in or believe in?  Moses goes on to say they must remember it was the Lord who brought them out of slavery, who saved then from the saraph serpents, who saved them from starvation with the manna.

John 6:51-58.   “Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  “ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”  Science studies the material things of the earth.  Biology recognizes human beings as one of the animals of this material world.  When Jesus spoke of life, he was talking of the life that is beyond the life of this world, spiritual life.  To believe that there are spiritual beings, who are in this world here and now who are invisible, was beyond and is beyond what is acceptable to many.  To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus means that he gives his very self to us to nourish and sustain our spiritual life.  HE REMAINS IN US AND WE REMAIN IN HIM.  An animal onlly has earthly life; as material and spiritual beings, we have both earthly and spiritual life in us because Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in us and are life for us. We have Jesus’ flesh and blood as the source of that spiritual life.  As the Lord tested the faith of the Israelites, likewise the Lord tests us with the challenge to believe in his invisible yet genuinely true presence in us.  Many people find that belief to be silly, absurd and insane.  The challenge to be alive spiritually and to grow in an inner spiritual life daily drawn from the divine presence within us requires that we must always be going to the Lord to live in him a life that is well beyond our natural instincts.  Without God’s indwelling and nourishing us, we are only animals of this earth.  “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  Our God created us out of a love for us that desires that we share in his love eternally.  The family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all the saints is our family.  He has always had a place for us there, not just a grave for us here.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.  Ours is “a participation in the blood of Christ” and “a participation in the body of Christ.”  That is a participation in the sanctity of heaven while we are still here amidst the worldliness of earth.  The oneness of the loaf that is Christ himself that we share makes us one body, one people in him.