Our Gospel reading today ends with the great affirmation of Jesus, that he has done all things well. He has come down from the heavens and has been bringing about physical order as was promised.  Jesus has met the Messianic test.  We have proof.  Jesus heals the deaf man’s ears and ability to speak, and in other situations, the blind to see. In the Jewish communities of those times, this man’s being “out-of-order” separates him. Having hearing difficulties in itself can distance the hearing impaired from others as well. So this man was at a double-distance which naturally results in his feeling inferior, or less of a person. The physical healing is secondary then to how he will hear his truth. Jesus came to give us back our selves, our truth, his truth within us.  Perhaps we listen to “old” voices whose sounds are so familiar that they drown out “new” voices which are like newly-purchased shoes - not comfortable when first tried on. This healed-hearer lives with who he now is, and part of that is who he was in his eyes and those of the community.  This re-entering his true self takes healing-time too. When Jesus prays, “Be open” he is speaking both of the physical and interior ears. He is speaking of how the man is to listen to what he is now free to speak having had his mouth opened as well. He is invited to be open to what Jesus is saying about his past, present and future.

A person who is hearing-impaired, touched by Jesus, lets go of being confined by the defining name, “deaf man, deaf woman, deaf child”. This “person-who-was-deaf” is now newly named and he is renamed and is called to live that “redeemed” identity.  As long as this man defines himself by his being deaf he was injuring himself.  None of us is defined by an easy adjective.  He, along with the others, is told not to say anything about Jesus’ identity, but it seems this man and the others didn’t listen and spoke well of the man who had done these things well.  If this man really heard who Jesus had told him he was, then he could not have kept silent any more.  If he continued listening to the “old” voices then he kept quiet according to his “old” definition. We are primarily who God has said we are, and we take time to hear it over and over again.  In prayer, in the sacraments, we are invited to be “open” to our true selves and name.

We hear, in today’s gospel, the Pharisees and their scribes who know both the original laws of Moses and those added to by the ‘elders’ or rabbis during the centuries, question Jesus about his disciples not observing exactly the traditions.  The Pharisees have the evidence of the non-conformity of the disciples and so there is a tension and a teaching moment.

The outside actions are important for personal and communal well-being. What Jesus wants us to understand is that the outward is to be a reflection and display of the inner relationship with God. Then these actions will be holy themselves, because of that interior relationship. External actions by themselves are nothing but external actions. We are inside-out human beings and Jesus states things very clearly. What makes a person unclean is not from outside, such as not washing one’s hands or face, but the uncleanness is inside already and as long as that is not tended to, unclean actions will display the inner disorder. Jesus describes quite a list of human tendencies toward evil and disorder. Most of us have experienced the attraction we have to such evils. Take your pick; you do not have to look up in a dictionary the definitions of these basic human tendencies. Jesus is saying that they lie within us and washing cups and hands will not remove the reality of our human fragmentation. The ‘elders’ have piled up so many externals that the observance of them had become what religion was. The external became disconnected with the interior relationship which is the basis of holiness. 

Jesus works to bring order into the human experience of being human. We are not abandoned to the forces of greed, theft, murder and various forms of envy, but accompanied by God’s grace through the saving work of Jesus.

In today’s gospel, we hear the continuation of John’s account of Jesus trying to explain to his Jewish kinsmen that he is more than they know.  He is more than the bread which fed their ancestors in the desert.  He continues to make ‘I am’ statements about his true identity and his listeners continue their struggling with this new concept.

Jesus, who set the table with six loaves and two fish in order to feed thousands, now sets the table of faith containing a new wine.  He invites those who lack understanding to turn up and eat.  The Jews are hungry for wisdom; they are people of good hearts and minds.  They resist their being fooled.  They continue to shake their heads as Jesus continues nodding his, insisting that he can give them eternal life through their taking him interiorly, as one does when eating.  As long as they argue and grumble, their mouths are filled with that which they are serving; they demand immediate proof and understanding.

With Jesus, everything is an invitation to ‘come and see’.  The murmurers have followed Jesus across the lake after seeing the miraculous distribution.  He is urging them into the sacred desert of belief where their ancestors grew deeper in their trust of the one God.  They keep tripping over their feeble senses and their limited abilities to eat.

Two weeks ago we heard the gospel relating the miracle of Jesus multiplying five loaves and two fish to feed a multitude.  After that, Jesus sent his disciples across the lake while he prayed.  A storm came up and he came up alongside them and calmed their fears and the storm.  When they arrived on the other side, a crowd who had been fed, met them wanting a little more of the action.

The remainder of this sixth chapter of John’s gospel centres around the murmuring and arguing about Jesus’ words about his being from God and his being nourishment for eternal life.  It is the beginning of the debate we hear in today’s gospel.

The feeding of the multitude forms a stage setting for this debate with the Jewish leaders who religiously remember the feeding of the Israelites in the desert after the Exodus.  Jesus knows this too and reminds them of a past deed, once done, and the ever-present nourishment which he is.  They believe they know him, but he knows them too and speaks to them the new words of God’s old love.

John’s gospel presents Jesus often as making ‘I am’ proclamations.  When he came to the floundering boat on the lake after the feeding, Jesus calmed their fears by saying simply, ‘Fear not, I am.’  Jesus tells his friends that he is the bread come down from heaven, the ‘bread of life’, and that those who do eat of his absolute totality will have eternal life.  John does not present  a narrative of Jesus’ instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper.  This was not an important issue at the time the gospel’s being written.  What was important, and still remains important, was the acceptance or taking into one’s life, the person and life of Jesus.  Jesus is presented as offering himself as human and divine and his loving desire for all men and women to take him into the boats of their journeys.  The living in Christ and Christ living in the lives of all humanity is why he came.  The past deeds of God are being continued in Jesus who came that we may have life, and life is this: believing that he was and is sent into the world.