From the Daily Lectionary for Wednesday in the Eleventh Week after Pentecost
John 6:1-13
After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.
Despite its high-minded theology and its erudite philosophical categories, the premise of John’s Gospel is astoundingly simple: The human capacity for Love is the means by which God loves the world. God’s Love requires flesh and blood. That is what “Incarnation” is all about. Throughout this Gospel John gives us vignettes of what love looks like. Here the example is a meal. Much has been made by commentators over the centuries of this so-called miracle performed by Jesus; that his feeding five thousand people with such a meager amount of food is somehow testimony to Jesus’ divinity. But I think the central character of the story is the “boy” who has the five loaves of bread and two fish.
This is a story about the exponential ramifications of sacrifice, how simple, mundane acts of love have power beyond our knowing. The boy offers his family’s lunch for the good of the whole. We are told that this all happened just before the feast of the Passover. That would mean that tourists from the region, Jews from the diaspora, would be traveling to Jerusalem for the festival. These are strangers, in short, pilgrims on a journey, gathered here on the Galilean hillside. The boy has offered all that he had in a cardinal act of hospitality. Love is manifest in welcome and hospitality. Any civilized society knows this; that hospitality is the very means of well-being and dignity, an image of justice, the rudiments of salvation. So simple.
We, brothers and sisters, are that boy with the loaves and the fish. It is for us to give all that we have for our fellow pilgrims on life’s journey. Jesus will say later in this Gospel that he is food, that to have life one must drink his blood and eat his flesh, a metaphor to be sure, but the point is that our whole being as humans made in the image of God, is to be offered for the world’s nurture. John writes that we are sent as Jesus is sent, which means that our bodies and our blood, not unlike our brother Jesus, are offered for the world’s restoration and redemption.
Sacrifice, of course, is work; it takes compassionate motivation, studied awareness, and humility; but John’s proclamation is that to live in God’s abundance and joy, sacrifice is the only way. Therefore, we must set aside our indifference and our cultural predisposition to self-interest, and live for our neighbor who is poor and hungry; our neighbor who lacks in this world of abundance. We are not just loved by God, but we are also necessary for God’s mission, God’s project of raising up and nurturing the lifeless among us. Our faith is not an extracurricular hobby, a notation in our obituaries. It is the way we live; the way we love…. It is everything.
A Prayer for the Stewardship of Creation (BCP p.259)
O merciful Creator, your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us always thankful for your loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
