Loaves, Fishes, Hope

Sermon. 26 July 2015. Trinity 8/Proper 12. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

2 Kings 4.42-44

John 6.1-21

Brothers and sisters, I was going to tease you, and pretend that I thought that you must be in shock – in shock by the fact that although we are in Year B, or the year of Mark, and there's no particular festival to complicate things, yet today's gospel comes from John. Of course, you are not in shock and have no reason to be. One of the things that happens in all three years is that John does get a look in at different points.

But I still think it may be significant that it's precisely now, this week, that we switch over to John. In Mark's gospel, we were due to hear of the feeding of the five thousand, and so it is now that we instead hear that same story from John.

'So what?' you may say. Well, we preachers probably don't say this as often as we should: until we get to events around the Last Supper and the Cross and Resurrection, there are actually very few stories which are found in all four gospels. Most people find three, or at most four. So that the double story of the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on the water are together found in all four gospels (and that there are two miraculous feeding stories each in Matthew and Mark) must mean that all gospel-writers thought this: you could not truthfully tell the story of Jesus without telling how he wonderfully fed others.

Let me ask two questions. First, how many people did Jesus feed? 5000? Well, as you have the English before you, it does indeed look like there were 5000 persons. Jesus says: 'Make the people sit down', using the word anthropos, meaning a person, of either gender. But the Greek – not the English but the Greek – tells us that there were around 5000 andres – or men, male persons there. So there may have been another 5000 women and at least that number of children, as indeed the other gospels imply.

Second, what actually happened? Actually that is a rhetorical question, and you are right not to answer. The simple truth is that we are not going to work out what actually happened. We have no way of getting back behind the story to the history. Some would stress that what happened was a miracle from heaven at Jesus' divine hands. Yes, but the obvious problem with stressing that Jesus was the Son of Gd because of his miracles is that the sceptic can reply: 'how do you know he wasn't just a good magician?' And there's no one knock-down answer to that question (and note it doesn't really matter what you think magic is, whether some mysterious power or tricks of misdirected attention). If we place our trust in Jesus, we do so because of his character, and not from wonder-working incidents in isolation.

Others, then, speak instead of 'the miracle of generosity'. The miracle is that the boy was able and willing to share his few morsels of food. This in turn – so the interpretation goes – made others be honest about the fact that they had food secretly stored about their own person which could be shared. And so it turned out that there was plenty of food all along. The problems with this include that, if the message were truly one about having the courage to be generous, why is that never mentioned in any of the accounts of this story? And, beyond that, how to explain the superabundance of leftovers?

We cannot get behind the gospel accounts to the so-called historical facts. But, in truth, if we tried to, we'd lose more than we gain. For John (like Matthew, Mark and Luke of course) crafts the details of the story as he has them into a narrative that is rich and deep. And it's especially rich and deep with resonances with the earlier story of faith, the Hebrew story, which comes to us in the book we call the 'Old Testament'.

And so another question (my last): Who are the people in the Hebrew Bible through whom Gd provides food miraculously? There are three obvious ones (there may be others). Gd feeds through Moses, through Elijah and Elisha. You were given the biggest hint about Elisha, of course – as there he is, acting as Gd's agent, in our First Reading. Moses also famously guides the people to the bread of Manna in the wilderness. And through Elijah's presence the widow of Zarephath finds that her meal and oil do not run out. To people who knew those stories like the back of their proverbial hand, today's gospel is full of echoes. Some details:

1. Jesus goes up a high mountain. Both Moses and Elijah did this, and discerned the will of Gd from the top of it.
2. Passover is near. Passover consists of a festival meal, and a retelling of the story of freedom, from slavery to freedom, and from the bread of affliction, to the manna of miracle in the wilderness.
3. That the loaves are barley loaves reinforces this point – as Passover is also the barley harvest festival. And it equally reminds us of the miracle at Elisha's hands, as in the First Reading.
4. That the disciples are doubtful and complain that the provisions are pitifully small is also an echo of what Elisha faced from those around him (and may also be resonant of the People of Israel murmuring in the wilderness).
5. That nothing of the food is lost is a reminder of the Manna in the wilderness, where, however much a person gathered, they always had just enough. When Jesus in John goes on to speak about this wonderful feeding, he refers to Moses and the Manna explicitly.
6. That said, that there is some (actually a great abundance left over) might differently remind us of the Manna too (where there had to be a double portion each Friday, so that the people did not have to gather on Shabbat) and of Elisha, as we have heard.
7. Actually, even the story of Jesus' walking in the water echoes what Elisha did soon after Elisha's own miracle with the food – someone drops their axe deep into a river; Elisha makes it float to the surface, and be recoverable.

Now, if you remember what I was saying about prophets a couple of weeks ago, you will remember that not only Elijah and Elisha but Moses too are all prophets, and that Moses prophesied that Gd was raise up a prophet like him. So it isn't too much of a surprise that the well-fed people think that Jesus is precisely that prophet, the Prophet of the End Times, and so want to make him King. (Why and how a prophet can also be a king is something we'll leave for another time.) For Jesus does all that Moses, Elijah and Elisha did, but exceeds their actions. This is seen supremely in the twelve baskets of leftovers. Whether they symbolise the twelve apostles, and so the new community, or the twelve tribes, and so the original community of faith, the point is the same: here is abundance, new abundance, an abundance before now unimaginable.

Much more can be said, but I doubt if the core message would need to change, or would be changeable. For that core surely says that Jesus feeds us, nourishes us, gives us - and is - the bread from heaven, the Manna, the food for our strengthening and healing. But! But woe betide us if we seek to grasp hold of Jesus and try to make him fit into our story of the way things should be.

And there is one more thing. If you visit the Holy Land, you can go to a traditional site for the wonderful feeding of the multitude. It is called Tabgha in Arabic or Ein Sheva in Hebrew. There is a Benedictine Church, known as the Church of the Multiplication (of the Loaves) with a distinctive mosaic.

I am pained to report that it was torched and vandalised in June of his year. The criminals who attacked it left some graffiti, and it pains me even more to say that that graffiti quoted a prayer against idolatry from the Jewish prayer book. (I am afraid that I am bit proud that I could actually make out what they wrote: ve-ha-elilim karot yikkaretun' - 'and the idols shall surely be cut off'.) They were claiming their violence was in the name of faith. But, thanks be to Gd, the story does not end there. The government and other Jewish leaders condemned the attack. But some Orthodox rabbis have gone further. They have explicitly said that this act of violence so contradicts Judaism that Jews must raise funds for the restoration of this Church and they are doing so.

So out of the destruction comes a new hope, and a new hope for Jewish-Christian reconciliation (and let us in turn hope for Jewish-Christian-Muslim reconciliation) in the place where it is likely to prove hardest, in Israel-Palestine itself. This act of good will is not of course as dramatic as the original miracle. But it may be that the cumulative weight of such minor miracles, about which most people will never hear a thing, is what will feed us all, as we make our way, care-fully but also hopefully, in this needy, hungry world of ours. Amen.