And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise the fishes as much as they would.
In John 2:13 it is written:
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Some of the most memorable events of Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem are recorded for us in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of John’s Gospel: There is the first account of Jesus cleansing the Temple & and declaring that his body was the only Temple; there is his mysterious conversation with Nicodemus, in which he spoke of the New Birth, the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of God. And who can forget that it was then that Jesus compared himself to the serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness?He left Jerusalem and in the 4th chapter he met the woman at Jacob’s well and then he returned to Cana where he healed the son of a government official. Then Jesus returned to Jerusalem for another feast (not the Passover), and he healed a cripple man by a pool they called Bethsaida. The Pharisees were offended that he had healed the man on the Sabbath and Jesus did seemed to have almost go out of his way to pick a fight with them. After that, the Pharisees began a program of harassment against Jesus because, in their words, “he made himself equal to God.” He left Jerusalem again and at some point he went to the “other side of the Sea of Galilee… and a multitude followed him.” We have this textual information: “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.” That is evidence that one full year has elapsed between John 2:13 and the 6th chapter of John – which contains the Gospel for this Sunday.
Well, that is certainly appropriate given that next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, and the beginning of the Church’s new year, thus we mark the passing of a whole year in the life of this little catholic parish of the Church of God.
I have pointed out in the past, that we, the Church of God, mark time differently from the world, and we are about to embark upon a new Church year in just a few days. While other nations and kingdoms and cultures have fixed the rhythm of their life to the waxing and waning of nature’s seasons, or to the fiscal year, we have taken our common rhythm, not from nature, or our earnings, but from the historic Life of Christ himself. So we begin with Advent, which centers upon his Nativity, always mindful that saturating our celebration of Advent is the Incarnation. It might seem natural since we begin the Church year with the Man of Heaven descending and entering the natural world, we would end the year with the Ascension of our Lord back to Heaven and his Father – but we don’t. Why not? Because the story doesn’t end with our Lord’s ascension – 10 days after that the Father sent the Holy Spirit and the Church was born. Frankly, since that time we have been living in the last days and the Church has a Christ-given mission to fulfill:
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…
When that work is done to the pleasure of God then the fullness of time will have come and Christ, the Man of Heaven, will again descend from his Father’s abode, and the world, as we know it, will come to an end. Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, and then to celebrate what is foreshadowed over and over again in the Gospels: the great Marriage Feast of the Lamb. Then will be our true homecoming, the last enemy death will die, we be with our friends and loved ones who are with our Lord now, and we will all serve him in a new earth which also will be raised from corruption to incorruption:
Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in Heav’n we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
At our Lord’s 2nd Advent, ours will be a universe at peace with our Creator; a peace, a state of being that may best be understood as Prayer. Being at Prayer will grow into being Prayer itself; that is worship will go from something that we do to something that we are. The prayers of the saints are working a wonder in us right now: forming us and shaping us into a state of being one great Eucharistic Prayer to the Blessed Trinity.
As we feast upon the Eucharist, we are becoming what we eat, and we worship the Blessed Trinity, we are recreated into that which we love – individually and as a community. After Christ’s judgment of the living and the dead, the distinction between Being and doing will fade as the children of God actually become the habits, the virtues, and the charity, and especially as they become the Church’s Eucharistic Prayer made resurrected flesh.
Prayer is at the heart of the heart of Jesus and therefore prayer is at the heart of the heart of his Church. Prayer is the means of our participation in the Life of God. Prayer is how we commune, communicate, the means of community with God and God’s people. Prayer embodies our trust and loyalty to God. Prayer embodies and manifests our complete dependence upon God, as well as our unwillingness to set out on our own as though we already know what is good for us. Prayer is the way we know the will of God and prayer is the only way we will ever abide in the will of God. Everything Jesus taught Nicodemus, every promise he made the woman at the well, every healing, every act of mercy and forgiveness was either about prayer or was and is a result of prayer. And realize this as well, the conversations of Nicodemus, the woman at the well, his own disciples, the crippled man, and the man whose son was healed — each conversation is a prayer. The pure and unadorned exceptions are the conversations of the Pharisees that were neither conversations nor prayers, but rather accusations — self-justifying and self-congratulatory soliloquies.
But we are not as they. We are in the process of being fitted for Heaven – or not. We are what we eat and we are becoming what we practice. Therefore we receive the Body and Blood of Christ with thanksgiving and we practice prayer. We practice prayer privately and publicly –- without ceasing.
And this brings us to our text for this Sunday:
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise the fishes as much as they would.
There is more to learn from this one passage than we will know till we see Jesus face-to-face. But here I offer to you three self-evident lessons.
First of all, “When Jesus… had given thanks,” that is when Jesus had made Eucharist, he provided for his disciples more than they could use up. The fact that Jesus prayed eucharistically, that he gave thanks, at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes was not unusual. That is the way he lived, so much so that, “giving thanks” was and is universally understood to mean that he prayed. And he prayed without ceasing. The child of God should then imitate Christ and give thanks in all things and before all things, especially before he or she blazes some trail thought to be important or necessary. All of our plans and actions should be laid before Christ in prayer repeatedly and with thanksgiving as we seek his will individually and corporately. As your priests, Fr. Sean and I pray for you and our bishop and the other clergy of this diocese. We pray for this parish, everyday at Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. And at the daily mass Monday through Saturday we pray for you and your family by name before the Altar of God. And I know you pray for me. I know you pray for him. And we depend upon your prayers. One day I will stand before Christ to give an account of my sacerdotal activity in this parish and I will be held accountable for each of you by name as I would account for my own children. That is sobering. But listen, my prayers for you will not take the place of your own prayers. My very real accounting in the Last Day of my shepherding this flock and each of you will not take the place of the personal account that you will give to Christ.
Secondly, there will always be that voice, sometime from within the Church itself, that speaks in purely natural terms, and declares “but what are they among so many?” From the natural point-of-view 200 denarii could not begin to feed 5000 men plus women and children; and from a purely natural point-of-view, 5 barley loaves would do even less. “But what are they among so many?” There will always be those voices that take account only of the breadth and height of the mountain and declare defeat.
Listen to what Jesus said:
Truly, I say unto you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to yonder,’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.
And again:
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise the fishes as much as they would.
This is the third and last point: Christ does not honor the standards of this world. He is not at the beck and call of those who possess clout and power in this world. Our world caters to the powerful who possess social and political influence. “Win the powerful to Christ and they will influence other powerful persons to come to Christ. Think of what we could do then!” That is not the voice of Christ. Look, a sure short cut to going from being a somebody to being a nobody, in the eyes of this world, is to take Jesus Christ seriously and behave that way. Where were the influential persons that day by the sea of Galilee and all the other days of our Lord’s ministry? Where were the wealthy of Israel who came forth with open hands of generosity to feed this mass of people? I can tell you where they were — they were all busy at being a somebody in their own eyes and the eyes of this puny world. It was a little boy, a nobody with no power or influence at all, who offered up all he had — a few loaves and fishes, who Christ used to move the mountain.
I have three words of pastoral advice for the new Church year: say your prayers and if you have not been saying your prayers start saying your prayers. Attend the Holy Communion every Sunday and during Advent try to attend the daily mass once a week or make time for a short devotion in your life. And finally, don’t base your life on the person who says, “but what are they among so many?” And instead of wasting your time trying to be a somebody, try being a nobody for the Kingdom of God.
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise the fishes as much as they would.