A Sermon preached on July 26th,
Pentecost IX, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
2 Samuel 11:1-15, Ephesians
3:14-21, John 6:1-21
This week’s Gospel
reading from John about the feeding of the 5,000 seems quite appropriate, we
didn’t quite feed 5,000 people at last week’s reception, but it was it was still
quite a crowd and there was abundant food! Thank you.
The miracle of the
feeding of the 5,000 is the only event to be described, in a very similar way,
in all four gospels, and in Mark, Matthew and John it is combined, as we heard
this morning, with the miracle of Jesus walking on the water of the lake. At
one level therefore both stories are meant to show us the full extent of Jesus’s
power and to provide evidence of his true nature and being. Just like God, who provided
the Israelites with manna as food in the wilderness, Jesus is able to provide
food for the 5000 on this lonely mountain on the Sea of Galilee. The feast is
also supposed to remind us of the heavenly banquet that in Jewish belief was a
sign of the coming of God’s kingdom. To be able to walk on the water is, just
like the earlier miracle of calming a storm, proof of Jesus’ power over
creation. And summing it up, when Jesus says to the disciples “It is I;
do not be afraid” we are supposed to recall all the “I am” phrases the God of
the Old Testament uses to describe himself. Jesus is God, that’s one key
message.
Over the years –
and of course as the feeding of the 5000 is in all the gospels, it comes around
every year, I’ve heard a lot of different explanations for the event. One popular
account is an attempt at a rational explanation – the miracle was that Jesus got everyone to
share the food they had brought with
them, but kept hidden in their backpacks and rucksacks. What a coincidence then
that everyone had brought the same food with them … as after the meal only fragments
of barley loaves were collected! This explanation has its justification of
course – one of our problems in the world is not that we do not have enough
resources to go round, on the contrary we have plenty; we just need to share them
more justly and fairly. But if we only looked for a rational or worldly
explanation of the miracle, we would be making the same mistake as the people who
saw Jesus as a worldly ruler or liberator and “were about to come and take him
by force to make him king.”
It would however
be equally wrong to focus on the feeding as only some spiritual event that points
back to the Exodus and to God’s saving acts in the past and forward to the
messianic banquet. Christianity not a static religion that just looks back to
its foundational documents or just forward to some future promise, to a reward
in heaven for those who receive no reward today. That would truly be opium for
the masses. Our religion is also always about the present, about now, and about
action. Jesus wants and calls us to bring that wonderful future forward into
the present and the Good News that he brought was not just about spiritual, but
also about physical promises: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he
has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim
freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed
free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor" as Jesus describes his own
ministry (Luke 4:18-19) in the words of the prophet Isaiah (61:1)
Another way of explaining
this and the other accounts is to see them as allegories for the Eucharist, that
meal that is at the very center of Christian belief and practice. When we hear
that “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them
to those who were seated”(John 6:11) that is supposed to remind us of the words
of institution that we use in our Eucharistic Prayer: “Our Lord Jesus Christ
took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to
his disciples.” And in Greek the word to give thanks is “eucharistein.” Like the feeding of the 5,000 the Eucharist is another
event that looks back to all of salvation history and especially to the Last Supper,
and of course also forward to the heavenly banquet.
The theologian Tom
Wright, who as you might have noticed I often quote from, picks up on how
Andrew brings the boy and his bread and fish to Jesus’ attention. When we have
no idea of what to do, when we see no solution to a problem, “the
starting-point is always to bring what is there to the attention of Jesus. You
can never tell what he’s going to do with it – though part of the Christian
faith is the expectation that he will do something we hadn’t thought of,
something new and creative.”[1] He
does and I would like to share a story with you from a letter I received this
week. It’s from a member of our congregation and came with their donation to
the capital campaign. They had decided to sell some shares they owned to
finance a child’s college education and made the decision to donate to the
church anything over and above the last valuation of the shares dating from the
end of the previous year, not expecting this to be a huge amount as they had
not been performing particularly well. But to their surprise and joy the excess
turned out to be €1,250 – which is what we, St. Augustine’s, have now received.
You can never tell what Jesus is going
to do with what you give him …..
These are all good
and true and helpful explanations of a passage rich in meaning. I see it also as
an illustration of the message Paul has for us in the letter to the Ephesians.
What Jesus shares with the people on that mountain, what Jesus shares with us every
week in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, is his very being, LOVE. Everyone
is fed – and more is left over than was there before, because Jesus’ love for
us is, as Paul tells us, limitless. “The love of Christ surpasses knowledge”
(Eph. 3:18-19) so although Paul prays that we may have the power to comprehend the
breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, we cannot, that is just
not possible because there are no limits.
In our regular
feeding and sharing on a Sunday, we take Christ into ourselves, into our hearts
through faith, enabling us to be rooted and grounded in love. (Eph. 3:17) Through
the Eucharist God’s power, which is love, flows to us and through us. When we
worry about what we are called to do, as individual Christians, as this
community, or as the whole Church – when a task seems too daunting and the
resources we have seem wholly inadequate - Paul’s words and Jesus’ actions tell
us not to worry, but to trust that our resources and our abilities will be multiplied,
just as the loaves and fishes were multiplied, until they exceeded what was
required. Let us pray:
“Now to him who by
the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all
we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all
generations, forever and ever.” (Eph. 3:20-21)
Amen
