There is in the world hardly a more fascinating story than the history of the Jewish people.  I really believe that anyone who carefully and objectively looks at the historical account of this people, will have to say that something very unusual happened to them -- something mysterious, supernatural even.  For these people, the Jewish people, the ancient Hebrew people, seemed to have had a unique mission in the world:  to preserve and share a special insight gained by no other nation, by no other people.  They stood apart from all the surrounding peoples in that most important and most central aspect -- they had a startlingly different image of God than all the pagans that surrounded them and constantly threatened to engulf them.

     Now the pagans were, as the Jews consistently called them, idolaters.  That is, the pagans did have an idea of a superior power surrounding them, a power that demanded something of them.  And in order to try to relate to this power, or powers, the pagans often formed images of what they thought would in some way picture this power to the human eye and other senses.  But in doing so, they also invariably fell into the trap of trying to manipulate or control these higher powers through these images or idols.

     In contrast to the pagans, the Jews were commanded by their law from God to never try to make an image of God for worship, lest they too fall into the trap of idolatry, that is, trying to manipulate or control God.  God, the Jews had come to understand -- and the pagans had not -- is not contained in or limited in any way by the natural world.  The true God, rather, is transcendent, the One who had brought all the world and its peoples into being, the One who was not in any way limited by or dependent on His creation -- a God who was absolutely beyond any human attempts at manipulation.  Thus, the utter vanity of seeking to control God through created images of Him.  To try to do this, in the Jewish mind, was the worst of sins.  Now all this truth about Yahweh, the one true God of all peoples, comes to us Christians through the Old Testament Scriptures.  For us -- as it was for the Jews -- it is true revelation from God about Himself, given to us.

      But then something even stranger happens in the history of God’s chosen people, the Jews.  The beginning of this unusual tale occurs in those days, almost 2000 years ago, when Caesar Augustus was emperor in Rome and Quirinius was the Roman governor of Syria, when the Roman government decided to launch a scheme of taxation that would require people everywhere to return to their place of birth, thus causing Joseph and Mary of Nazareth to make the trip to Bethlehem.  And there Jesus was born.

     Nothing so unusual in that, you might think.  Except for the fact that the prophets had foretold that Israel’s Savior would come out of David’s town, Bethlehem; and except for the fact of what some people, moved as they claimed by God, began to say about this Child born in a stable.  And even more disturbing were the things He began to say about Himself once He was a man.  Things like what we read in today’s Gospel:  “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; I will raise him up on the last day....I myself am the living bread come down from heaven.  If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”  Strange words.

     This man, this Jewish man from insignificant Nazareth, the Son of Mary of that place, is now heard claiming to be the source of eternal life for all who believe in Him.  Or as He put it more explicitly to His disciples, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.”  That is, Jesus is saying that those who beheld Him were looking at God, their own Creator.  Or, even more extravagantly, to those who wanted to destroy Him, “I and the Father are one and the same.”

     And here is the Christian twist to the story, the really only viable explanation for these peculiar historical events:  that Yahweh, the God of all creation, the transcendent God who had revealed Himself to His chosen people in fiery cloud and peels of thunder on Mt Sinai, whose words to Moses caused the whole camp of Israel in the desert to tremble with awe and fear, the God of whom the Jews dared not even attempt to portray with idol or image -- this God of all glory was born a little, helpless baby, nestled in the arms of a humble maiden, grew up amongst the Jewish people, was acclaimed a prophet by some and noted by many to have been a miracle worker, a compassionate healer of the sick, a man who made enemies in high places and was killed by conspiracy of some of the religious leaders and the Roman authorities.

     How strange that the God who commanded His people not to try to picture Him with image or idol is the very God who came among His people so intimately as a man, Jesus.  How odd that the God who would not be controlled or manipulated through the pagan-like practice of idolatry would come as a helpless baby, grow up in a rough and tumble world of hard knocks and hard work, would spend His short life preaching and healing, and would then hand Himself over to suffer and be crucified.

     But like the vanity of trying to manipulate the Almighty through idolatry, just so could the death inflicted upon Him not hold Him.  With the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead we have God’s final answer to all the sinful human attempts to control the divine.

     Why all this?  Why such a story, such a history?  The only answer that there can be is that the God who is transcendent above all creation seeks to draw us into relation with Himself.  But on His terms.  With the Jewish people God entered into covenant with them through law and cult, by speaking to and often rebuking them through the prophets, by anointing and guiding their kings.  In these last days, God has spoken a final and enduring word to us, to all the world; that word is His Son Jesus Christ.  And through Him He invites and continually welcomes us into a share of His own life.  As Jesus Himself said it in today’s Gospel -- “If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”  God then offers us Himself in and through the humanity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  Through His very flesh, through His body and blood of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  And these are His terms:  first, no more vain attempts at manipulation and control of God; and second, receive as God’s new chosen people -- the Church -- the life He offers us.  “I myself,” Jesus said, “am the living bread come down from heaven.  If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”