Ninth Sunday After Trinity
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Readings: 2 Kings 4: 42-end; John 6: 1-21
The calendar of the Book of Common Prayer has the word ‘Lammas Day’ against the date of 1st August. This feast was celebrated prior to the Reformation, and was a thanksgiving for the first-fruits of the wheat Harvest. Traditionally, a newly-baked loaf from the wheat harvest was presented before God within the mass of that day – hence ‘Lammas’. Our forebears and the ancient Israelites celebrated several agricultural festivals, including the feasts of unleavened Bread, Weeks and Tabernacles. In the C of E, we have, or have had, Plough Sunday, Rogationtide, Lammas, and Harvest.
All these liturgical observances recognise our dependency on God for the food we eat, and celebrate the mysteries of growth and the abundance of his provision.
Today’s first reading gives us a very short passage from 2 Kings, and it would be easy not to give it much attention as we home in on the more familiar reading from John. But the 2 Kings reading was presumably chosen to echo the better-known verses from John. In both passages, somebody questions the possibility of a small amount of food being able to satisfy a very large number of people. But, in both instances, the Lord provides. Through the faith of righteous Elisha, in the first reading, and through the divinity of Jesus in the second, not only are the crowds fed, but food is left over.
Now the passage from Kings is only three verses long, hardly enough for us to appreciate the context. There is a famine. Elisha and some fellow prophets were suffering from hunger in Gilgal. A stranger arrives, having travelled some distance, crossing from the coastal plain over hills to the valley of the River Jordan. This was no simple journey, and the man made it to fulfil the law by offering the first fruits of his harvest to the man of God. This faithful worshipper went to considerable inconvenience to fulfil his religious duty. Elisha ordered that the food be shared, but his servant complained it was not enough. However, there was enough, and some left over. But this abundance was dependent on the generous faithfulness of an unknown man who made a miracle possible, probably without realising how urgently his gift was needed. Rather like the boy’s five barley loaves and two fish in the next story. Something to think about there.
Now the account of the feeding of the five thousand by Jesus is found in all four gospels, making it one of the best attested of Jesus’ miracles. But John, always the theologian, considers it one of the ‘signs’ by which Jesus confirms his identity, and John adds some detail the other evangelists don’t have. So, for instance, he adds that the feast of Passover was near. This is not just a mention of another Jewish festival. Rather, John is emphasizing that what God is doing in Jesus is similar to the divine action that brought the people of Israel safely out of Egypt. But, as people read the story in the early years of the life of the Church, they would make the link between Jesus’ broken body, given for the life of the world at Passover time, and the sharing of bread. So John tells us carefully that Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed: the same actions found at each and every Eucharist.
But the miracle, or sign, doesn’t end there. Jesus charges the disciples to gather up the fragments left over, and twelve baskets are filled. For people hungry to see the twelve tribes of Israel restored to political power free from the Romans, this was almost too much. The crowds exclaim, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” But, as so often in the gospels, they misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ Messiahship. They assume, rightly that here is God’s chosen, but they have no idea how he will bring salvation. They are more concerned with what the miracle-worker could do next. And Jesus was worried that they might come and take him by force to be king, so he withdrew. It would have been easy to accept the acclaim and take the way of worldly power.
But there were to be further signs of Jesus’ divinity before the day was out – the stilling of the storm on the lake. Sudden ferocious squalls on the Sea of Galilee were not uncommon, and sailors associated such phenomena with the forces of darkness. So, when Jesus comes to the disciples on the lake, it’s as if he is combatting the very powers of evil. When John says that the disciples were terrified, it seems that it was the sight of Jesus walking towards them, not the storm itself, that made them so. No one was afraid when Jesus shared the loaves and fishes, but to walk on water is another matter.
In fact it is interesting to see the movement of the disciples in these two sections of the story. When the large crowd appear, Jesus says to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, the evangelist comments ‘for he himself knew what he was going to do.’ Not unnaturally, Philip protests that six months’ wages wouldn’t be enough to buy bread for them all. But God is generous, and all are satisfied, with twelve baskets left over. Then, when Jesus thinks the crowd are coming to take him, he withdraws to the mountain by himself. Later, the disciples take to the water on their own, but only seem to want to take Jesus into the boat once he has announced himself. It’s all part of a growing realization of who Jesus really is, and of how far they have travelled with him. We will be hearing the following part of the story next Sunday.
Meanwhile, we are left to contemplate the meaning of the two parts of the story for us.
We started by thinking of the religious festivals, both Jewish and Christian, which centre on the agricultural year. That those festivals are not so significant today reflects the distance many people find between the food we eat and the process that goes into producing that food and the labour involved. We become so used to full supermarket shelves, and numerous choices in what we buy, choices that would have astonished even our grandparents, that we easily forget the utter dependence on God our forebears had, and that people have largely forgotten today. Of course, it only takes something like the suggestion of a hosepipe ban, or a difficulty in the supply chain, or war in the world’s bread-basket, to remind us that we are not totally in control.
Generally speaking, we do not expect to witness the sort of miracles that the crowds in Jesus’ day witnessed, miracles that occurred because of his very presence. So in a way we have to work harder to acknowledge the dependency we have on God and to keep our faith vibrant. The fruits of faith and witness may unfold only slowly as we patiently seek out God’s will for our lives.
In today’s society everybody seems to want a quick fix to their problems; we want faster broadband connections – or some people do; we have drive-thru coffee outlets so that we don’t have to stop. Football managers need results quickly, or they will be ousted. And the dangers of racking-up credit, so that we can have what we want quickly, have been well-exposed. Society generally admires and rewards successful people, and, sadly, many young people just want to be celebrities – whatever that means.
Jesus could have pandered to this trend. He was achieving celebrity status, but his only desire was to do the will of God, which led him to the kingship role the people didn’t understand – a suffering, self-emptying king whose body was given for the life of the world.
So may we learn to follow the servant king, and rather than expecting him to be the instant miracle worker, ask what we can do in his service with the gifts he has given us. The boy’s five barley loaves and two fish were instrumental in something miraculous, and it started because Jesus felt compassion for the crowd. Opportunities for doing good are all around us; may we be kept from the self-centredness which shuts others out and denies the divine power from working in us.
I often come back to a rather lovely prayer attributed to Cringleford Mothers’ Union:
Help us, O God, to live this day quietly, hopefully;
To lean on your strength trustfully, restfully;
To wait for the unfolding of your will patiently, serenely;
To meet other people peacefully, joyfully;
To face every task confidently, courageously; In the name of Christ our Lord.
Amen.