18th Sunday Year A

18th Sunday Year A – The Five Thousand

Today we have the story of the feeding of the five thousand, but I wonder how many of you caught the introduction and the important points that were made before the feeding aspect took place?

Jesus heard the news that John the Baptist had been killed so he “withdrew by boat to a lonely place where they could be by themselves.” To a place where he and the apostles could take time to think, to take themselves out of the rush and busyness of the everyday, to celebrate or grieve about John. So, the first lesson from this gospel is that we need to do likewise – we need to take time to connect with ourselves and with God. And I wonder how many of us have successfully managed to do this?

We need to turn down the volume in our heads, our ears and our hearts to enable us to hear God when he talks with and through us. How many of us take or make time generally to be by ourselves and to connect with God and especially now during this pandemic?

But having taken this time-out, realising that he needed time to think, to feel and to gather himself, Jesus is then faced with a crowd of people, a very large crowd of people, all calling on him to give them his time, his energy, his attention and his saving grace.

He could have just as easily jumped back into the boat and taken off for the other side or for the middle of the lake; after all he needed this time and space for himself. But here we have the second lesson and that is that Jesus always has time for us. “He took pity on them and healed their sick.”

And this is what he does for us all of the time. No matter what is going on, no matter where we are, who we are or what we may have done in our lives, Jesus will always take pity on us and heal us. There is no situation where we cannot go to Jesus and ask him for his love, his forgiveness and his healing.

Paul emphasises this in the second reading when he tells us that, “Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ, even if we are troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking food or clothes, or being threatened or attacked. These are the trials through which we triumph, by the power of him who loved us.

And so to the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand men and the uncounted women and children with just five loaves and two fish. Five thousand strangers who had travelled from all over the country to hear Jesus speak and to be healed by him. Five thousand people from all different walks of life, backgrounds and probably faiths and religions.

 By the power of Christ, this huge gathering of people all sat down and were fed “as much as they wanted” with plenty left over. They fed as one gathering, as one body of people. Jesus fed them by blessing the bread and the fish, breaking them and giving them to the people, repeating the Jewish approach to family meals and pre-cursing the meal with his disciples at the Last Supper.

Jesus fed the crowd as a representation of humanity, its mix and its complexity. He took pity on them and healed their hunger and their need for love and understanding and their real need to share with each other the message of love that he had given them.

Did he multiply the loaves and the fishes to a degree where every one of the five thousand-plus crowd had enough to eat? Did his message and his approach encourage perfect strangers to give willingly to each other, to share the little they each had to the point where everyone had had enough? What exactly was the miracle? The miracle was all of this and more. The miracle was that they could each look at their neighbour with love, with empathy and with a wish to do more than they were doing at that point for each other.

What greater message of love, care, support and outward thinking is more relevant to our time and space here today in the middle of this pandemic; whether we are coming to the end or into a restart, this has to be our frame of mind.

Today we have the opportunity to be Christ-like, to take pity and offer healing, support, love, care and our prayers to and for all those many people who are in worse situations than us. Please do not leave it to someone else; Jesus didn’t. He took charge and took pity. We need to do the same.

What was the miracle? The miracle was that we as followers of Christ can replicate his actions two thousand years later on to a very different crowd in need of help and love. The miracle is in our taking this opportunity and showing everyone God’s love for us alive and well in our church, our hearts and our spirits here in St John’s today.