How did the people who listened to Joshua respond to the divine gifts of freedom, land, and wise laws? As the successor of Moses, Joshua tells them they had to decide: “If it does not please you to serve the LORD, decide today whom you will serve, the gods your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are dwelling. As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Serving one god exclusively was unknown at that time. Ancient Near Eastern peoples worshiped multiple gods with the exception of the Israelites.
After hearing Joshua, the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD for the service of other gods.” They recognized that “it was the LORD, our God, who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, out of a state of slavery.” Joshua tells us why he decided to serve the Lord alone. He knew from experience how the Lord had saved him by protecting and blessing him and his family. For him, there was only one God who acts, who has the power to save. And because Joshua stated his belief so eloquently, his people followed his example and did so as well.
The example of Joshua and the people help us understand the Gospel of John. During the last few weeks, we have been listening to chapter 6 of the Gospel of John in which Jesus as Wisdom invites all people to his banquet and nourishes them with his very self. But, like Joshua’s challenge to the people of Israel after they had experienced salvation, our challenge is to believe in the blessings the Eucharist symbolizes. We could, of course, decide to “serve the gods of the Amorites in whose country we are now dwelling,” that is, to accept what our American culture thinks is smart and rewarding. In Jesus’s day, many of his hearers took that easy route; they concluded that “the saying is hard. Who can accept it?”
What does it mean to serve Jesus, Embodied Wisdom, who invites us to his banquet and join him in his self-offering in the Eucharist? The answer: by taking a fully conscious and active participation in the mass. We begin the mass by turning toward him and away from false gods of various kinds. When we attentively hear the readings, we receive holy wisdom. As we go on further in the mass, Jesus takes the simple bread and wine of our lives and folds them into his own grand self-offering to the Father. Finally, he gives us his very self in his body and blood which we all share, as is proper in a good banquet.