Today’s gospel is one of my favourites: a foreign, female, infidel has the audacity to ask Jesus for help. Another woman who doesn’t know her place!

This is a tricky passage though, because it uncovers in Jesus a strand of nationalism which sits uncomfortably with us. Here is Jesus, Saviour of the UNIVERSE, suggesting that God’s favour should be kept for just one nation, one people; his own.

Today’s readings are about law and the spirit of the law. In Deuteronomy the people of God are instructed to keep God’s commandments strictly, but this instruction is within the context of a close relationship with God “for what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?”. All obedience flows from this intimate relationship with God that comes, as Jesus explains in Mark, not from the outward obedience to rules but from the heart. Those who are moved to act through love of God will be obedient even if their actions can seem at odds with the normal rules and conventions.

Today's readings are about the nature of an immanent God who desires to dwell in us and with us.

In Joshua 24, Joshua asks the people to choose: do they want God or not? The people recall that God accompanied them from slavery, through the wilderness, into the promised land: that God has been present among them and dwelt with them.

In our gospel this Sunday (John 6:35, 41-51) Jesus and the crowd cannot understand each other: they cannot see beyond Jesus’ earthly status (poor, illegitimate) to see the divine within him. Jesus calls us to a new way of seeing which will transform the way we see the world, one another and ourselves.

In our gospel this Sunday (John 6:35, 41-51) Jesus and the crowd cannot understand each other: they cannot see beyond Jesus’ earthly status (poor, illegitimate) to see the divine within him. Jesus calls us to a new way of seeing which will transform the way we see the world, one another and ourselves.

It is easy to have faith when our bellies are full and life is good, but not so easy when times are tough.  In our Exodus reading, the people of God are wandering around in cloud and dust. They don’t know where they are going, they don’t know when they will get there, and they are sugar lowed.  God complains about their lack of faith but still provides them with the food they need when they need it. In the gospel Jesus has already fed the people but they demand further proof before they will believe.