August 22nd - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Jos 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Eph 5:21-32; Jn 6:60-69)
Today we end the Bread of Life discourse in John 6. Jesus has just told the disciples that they must eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, and that his flesh is real food and his blood is real drink. This is a hard saying and shocking to some of his disciples. To those disciples Jesus predicts another shocker – that he will ascend back up to heaven. All this happened about a year before the Last Supper, where his faithful apostles finally learned what Jesus meant by these sayings. We have to wonder how his disciples managed to believe what Jesus said for all that time without fully understanding it, until it was revealed to them how they were to “eat his flesh” at the last supper. In modern society the idea of belief without understanding is frowned upon. It was probably difficult during the first century too, as we can see by the disciples who could no longer follow Jesus. But today's Gospel reading shows that sometimes this type of faith is needed. By staying with Jesus despite these difficult sayings, his disciples firmly decide to serve the Lord.
In the first reading from the end of the book of Joshua, the people of the Lord are also asked to decide to serve the Lord. This time it is an aging Joshua who gives his final instructions to the Israelites before he dies. Joshua anticipates the kind of temptations that lay ahead and how to avoid them. And they all agree and say they will serve the Lord. But as we know, Israel did not always serve the Lord after this. There were several times in her history the Lord needed to punish their unfaithfulness.