Sunday 28th July 2024 2 Samuel 11, 1-15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3, 14-end
John 6, 1-21 A friend was telling me recently about a time when they’d been to a service where the sermon was on today’s reading and the preacher illustrated it by bringing along two loaves of bread and inviting everyone present to share. Although there was a big congregation present, and it looked unlikely that the bread would feed everyone, somehow everyone had a share. This wasn’t due to a miracle, it happened because everyone present acted thoughtfully and sensitively and adjusted their demands to accommodate those of their neighbour. Without thinking about it each person present took a little less than they might have done otherwise, with the result that everyone had enough. In his letter to the Ephesians today St Paul prays that his listeners may be filled, not with bread but ‘with all the fullness of God’, and I think that the congregation in my friend’s story were themselves filled with that same fullness; people who are filled with the fullness of God are people who live in ways which are loving and sensitive to the needs of those around them, only consuming what they need and being prepared to express their love for others by sharing what they have with others who have less.
There are contemporary resonances at work here; next Thursday, August 1st is Earth overshoot Day. There’s a day every year when experts from an organisation called Global footprint network calculate that we’ve taken more from nature than the planet can renew during the entire year. On that day we’ve overshot what the earth can provide. And every year, as we take more and more of the earth’s resources, this date gets earlier and earlier. So far this year it’s taken us 7 months to use up what Earth will take 12 months to produce. And we know that this over consumption of the earth’s resources isn’t fairly distributed either, 20% of the world's population [which includes us] are responsible for the consumption of 80% of the planet's resources. And that brings us back to the feeding of the great crowd in today’s Gospel. The five barley loaves and two fishes become a means by which Jesus shows the crowd, and us, that if we come together as a community, whether locally or globally, and share our resources there can be plenty for everyone. It’s intriguing how Jesus reacts to the crowd’s response; they want to take him by force to make him king, but his response is to withdraw alone to a mountain, to pray and be close to God. It’s as if he wants the crowd to understand that they can act fairly and responsibly even when he’s not there. By being generous to one another they are the ones who ensure that the little food there is becomes more than enough for them all. And in his retreat into solitude Jesus reminds us that we too need times away from crowds, times when we too simply focus on being with God. In Ephesians Paul reminds us of how we need to be strengthened in our inner being by taking time to listen to God, our need to do just as Jesus does and isolate ourselves from everything else and be alone with Him.
Today’s readings from Ephesians and John share a sense that communities which have Christ at their centre ensure that everyone gets fed, literally and metaphorically. In Ephesians Paul uses feeding as a metaphor for spiritual wholeness; he prays that Christ may dwell in his listeners’ hearts ‘so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ Today’s readings invite us all to reflect on what having Christ dwelling in our own hearts means. Both readings help us to see how we can understand that mystery for ourselves. St Paul tells us that we discover God’s grace through two things, through faith and through love, and faith and love are both at work in today’s readings. In John we see Jesus teaching the crowds and his Disciples what ‘the fullness of God’ looks like in a world where initially there is a very real possibility that people will go hungry. Money isn’t the answer; the crowds are looking to Jesus to answer their spiritual hunger, a hunger which can’t be fed by money. Philip tells Jesus that ‘six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ But the people in the crowd have faith and their faith is shown to be central in their deliverance from that hunger. But this isn’t just a story about hunger, whether physical or spiritual; the crowd are coming to Jesus because they are looking for a saviour, a king. They want someone who will act decisively and rescue them from oppression. John’s readers would have been aware of how full this story is of resonances to biblical tradition. They might have seen in Jesus’s withdrawal to the mountain an echo of another Leader, Moses, who was also once seen as a both a prophet and a King. And the Roman occupation meant that they were hopeful of discovering in Jesus a leader who would lead them out of oppression and into their own promised land. But Jesus has no interest in being an earthly king; he wants the people to discover God for themselves through enabling them to share together in the mystery of his presence, and perhaps that’s partly why he withdraws to be alone on the mountain.
God’s is a presence which as Paul writes to the Ephesians, ‘is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine’, and this story is full of God’s abundance. There is ‘a great deal of grass in the place’, a tiny, carefully observed detail which perhaps is intended to help us see that this is a place in which God’s creation is fertile and abundant. There are twelve baskets of leftovers! This abundance reflects something of the abundant love of God for His Creation; an abundance which will find echoes in the Last Supper and in the eucharist we’ll share together later in this service; the giving of thanks, the sharing, the eating of bread, the coming together as one body in a meal which unites, and which inspires a sense of wonder in all those present. The word ‘eucharist’ comes from the Greek ‘eucharisten’, meaning to ‘give thanks . Jesus takes the loaves, gives thanks, and everyone present comes to know and understand a little more of the boundless love of God. They come to know God through him through the compassion and love he shares with them.
When Jesus is himself present there is a sense of everyone feeling safe in His love, but immediately we’ve shared that experience of love and wonder John invites us to reflect on what it’s like when God seems far away. Suddenly it’s getting dark, the waters of the lake are getting rougher, the disciples are a long way out from shore; suddenly we’re in a much more testing place than the hill with its abundance of grass and the fellowship of the crowd. And yet in this dark and frightening place John shows Jesus as calmly walking over the tumult, coming to reassure the Disciples, who are terrified. Ben suggested a few weeks ago when we were reading a similar story from Mark’s Gospel that we should imagine the Disciples’ boat as being symbolic of our own selves, with Jesus resting deep within us and waiting for us to call for him to awake and steer us to safety, and today we hear that ‘immediately’ the Disciples recognise Jesus ‘the boat reached the land’. It’s as if by acknowledging Him, by being open to his love, his reassurance that they don’t need to be afraid, they discover a way of overcoming the fearsome world in which they’re at sea, literally and metaphorically.
John leaves us finally with a sense that we, like the disciples on the lake and like the crowd who are fed by the loaves and fishes, can experience for ourselves the abundant and mysterious love which God shares with us through our knowledge of Christ . In his letter to the Ephesians St Paul tells us that this is a power at which is at work within each of us, that through the lives we lead every day we can be the means by which God accomplishes far more than all we can ask or imagine. So, in our quiet time after the sermon perhaps we might reflect on that extraordinary promise, and pray that we too may, in St Paul’s words, be strengthened in our inner being through his spirit.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen
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