I want to start off with the complaint of the people in
Exodus because this quote encapsulates the problem of religion. Religion offers the idea of “The Promised Land,” but when that promise comes at a time
of deep suffering and pain, we react in anger and even resentment. “Would that we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill
of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community
die of famine!” The
Israelites expressed their frustration by saying that they were willing to
return to a system of exploitation and oppression rather than struggle through
the necessary steps for them to secure freedom.
Their complaint; however, was not unexpected. Slavery in
Egypt was quite different than the slavery that we had in our country. Slaves
in Egypt had food and water and while mistreated, research about slavery in
that era tell us that that the people were not beaten in the same way Africans
were beaten in the United States. Pharaoh kept the Hebrew people alive and
happy just enough to keep working, but they would never be truly free: they
would never decide anything for themselves or for their community. Pharaoh’s system was insidious in that people
sustained their own suffering by “eating out of their fleshpots” and the “fill of their bread.” No one was motivated to ask the
deeper question, “Is this just?”
“Are we really
free?” Moses organized the the people to
resist and push back against the system
and he mobilized them to eventually leave the system entirely. Today’s excerpt is an artifact of the
struggle not only for the physical separation from the system of oppression,
but for the more complicated inner journey of liberation.
Real liberation, authentic freedom requires those who have
been freed to actually believe that they are free men and women. For
instance, if you do not see yourself as free you will never truly be
free. If you do not even see yourself as being enslaved, you will never even
want to fight for freedom. In fact, those who refuse to see the system of
oppression will resist the movement of liberation. They will call people “communists” or “do gooders” “unrealistic idealists.” They may even resort to killing the
prophet of justice. Can we think of any
examples where this happens today?
The Hebrew people were enslaved and they struggled within
themselves to accept if they were in fact slaves or not. Whether enslaved in
Egypt or Babylon, God’s people had to struggle with the responsibility that comes
from consciousness. Once they were aware that they were slaves and accepted the
concept that God didn’t make human beings to be slaves to one another, they were
faced with making a choice: to be free or to remain a slave.
One of my favorite movies of all time is the Matrix. In one of the most important scenes of the
movie the two protagonists, Morpheus gives Neo the option of being conscious or
continuing his life as it is: working, paying taxes, going about everyday
activities or knowing the truth that he is a slave and all that surrounds him
is false. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFhn_GUAhGU) This scene encapsulates the process
of conscientización that is necessary for one to take up the causa for
liberation.
The movie’s premise is that all humanity is trapped in a “matrix” of oppression and falsehood. People’s life energy was literally being
absorbed to sustain a complex of machines that really ran the world. In
exchange, these machines provided the illusion that people’s lives were meaningful. Morpheus represented a movement of “conscientización” which sought to free humanity from
enslavement, but the only way to enter the movement was to accept the truth:
that we were slaves. In the pivotal scene of “conscientización” Morpheus offered Neo two pills: one
red, the other blue. “…The red pill will answer the question ‘what is the Matrix?’ and the blue pill simply for life to
carry on as before.” Neo reached for the red pill and Morpheus warned Neo, “Remember, all I’m
offering is the truth. Nothing more.” Neo accepted the red pill and he
took the water. After, Morpheus says, “Follow me.” Neo went on to become aware of his
entrapment and became a kind of “savior figure” that led the human race to freedom.
Returning to the Scriptures, we have Jesus before the crowd, not with a red and
a blue pill, but standing before the people offering them a choice: to continue
to eat the bread of falsehood, the bread that perishes, or to eat the Bread
of Life which is given by the Son of Man.
Recall last week what I said about the bread, that Jesus
offered a paradigm different from the consumerist paradigm where the solution
to hunger is to purchase from the rich bread that would feed the people. Jesus
offered a new system, “Have the people recline together.” The paradigm of reclining together rather than purchasing
bread from a rich merchant is a paradigm of mutuality, solidarity, cooperation
and equality. Reclining position
suggests that all at the same level and that the solution is found by feeding
one another with the meal of the poor: barley bread and fish. Jesus paradigm of
mutuality ushers in a new age of justice where humanity cooperates together in
feeding the hungry by sharing equally in the harvest and labor, rather than
creating a system that exploits the labor of the worker and rewards only those
who can afford to pay for food.
After hearing Jesus speak, the people were hungry not only
for bread, they were hungry for what Jesus himself was offering. They asked, “What sign can you do, that we may see
and believe in you? What can you do?” Jesus responded, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes
to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” By identifying himself as the Bread
of Life, he offered them the choice of taking responsibility and sharing this
consciousness of the need for liberation with the world.
Let us, then, eat this bread: the Bread of Justice, the Bread
of Consciousness, the Bread of Liberation. And as we eat, we remember that we
were promised true, authentic and everlasting liberation…where all who take this bread and eat
it, will in turn become bread for others.
