SERMON PREACHED at St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN,
St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN and the
GLENORCHY MISSION HALL
ORDINARY SUNDAY 17 (July 28th) 2024
READINGS
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6: 1-21
Those of you who have looked into such matters will have noticed that a
feeding miracle of one numerical form or another appears no fewer than six
times in the New Testament, and indeed that it is the only miracle that occurs
in all four of the gospel records. At the very least this would indicate that
the early Christians saw this event in the life of Jesus as incredibly
important. I refuse to stand with those biblical interpreters who see this
merely as a made-up and best symbolic tale. I believe something fairly dramatic
had to happen in the lives of those witnessing and following Jesus for this
seen to take such hold in the hearts and minds of his subsequent followers.
John is a masterful writer. In his gospel account he tells of seven
miracles, and we should never dismiss the possibility that this number, seven,
which was so symbolic as the number of perfection in the ancient world is being
used very deliberately by the author of the fourth gospel. I suspect it is so
widely attested, that is to say six times across the four gospel records,
because it holds together questions of both compassion and what I'll have to
call sacramentality, by which more or less ordinary things come to symbolise
the extraordinary, the miraculous the beyond understanding.
In this vivid little story Jesus meets basic human needs. Many of you
will know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a pyramid of priority, at the base of
which, ahead of all other things, is the fundamental need for food, water,
warmth and rest. Here Jesus addresses the formative most visceral human need of
empty bellies. This is not necessarily to say that's 5000 people were going to
starve to death that afternoon if Jesus didn't address their needs, but a
powerful reminder for those of us who seek to bear Christ in our world, that
everyday millions of human beings are starving, dehydrating, brutally cold or
increasingly in a globally warming world unbearably hot, and exhausted through
overwork and exploitation. Many a commentator will remind us that we are
scorning the sacramental sense of liturgical bread and wine in this passage if
we go out and forget the visceral need for nourishment of our brothers and
sisters across the globe. And let me confess I do, and I fear almost all of us
do to some perhaps even large extent. We should never think that we are
speaking or intoning the ancient words Lord, have mercy, kyrie eleison, et te
Ariki, kia aroha mai, glibly.
But while preachers may leave us wallowing in guilt, and there is a
place for guilt if not for wallowing, John at this point wants us to see
something else. As one of the seven signs this is part of John's attempt to
tell us that in the incarnation of the one he calls, Word, Logos, not only does
the fullness of divinity dwell but simultaneously the fullness of what it means
to be truly human. Jesus, Ashley compassionate, actually committed to entering
and even alleviating the plight of human beings, and I would add, the plight of
all created beings. We do not see the outcome of that in the world around us
and so again we plead those ancient prayers, Kyrie elieson and even that Aramaic
prayer, Maranatha, come, Lord, come. And neither of those prayers can be an
excuse for us to do nothing.
And yes I've slipped back into guilt again, but there I want to open
that other great theme of John, the theme of light. Because in our flawed
humanness Christlight can shine. A small boy offers his scruffy packed lunch.
We are called to be that small boy, offering the scruffiness of our own lives
so that God may touch and transform the world God has placed us in. Some of you
will know the Paul Kelly song, from little things big things come. It's not
Plato, it's not Shakespeare, but it's pretty darned close to the essence of
this passage. We are called to be that small child an offer as best we can ah
flawed lives. At the end of the liturgy we will do that by offering ourselves
sometimes in the exact words, we offer ourselves soul and body to be a living
sacrifice in the world.
Jesus is not condemning us for our imperfections but asking us to strive
to do our best if I can put it this way, to do our best as best we can. He
invades our lives as we remember and like an electric vehicle recharge
ourselves each time we worship, invades us to take our not enough, even our not
good enough, to make it enough and good enough in the service of God.
Though it is worth remembering that like that small boy we need to take
the brave step of handing our packed lunch, the packed lunch of our lives to
the passing Christ.
