Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-14
August 5, 2018
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry
Our first reading comes once again from the letter to the Ephesians. The letter doesn’t seem to be addressing any particular problems; it is a loving letter of concern to a Christian community to give guidance on living as the body of Christ, in love and unity. In this reading, the writer pauses in teaching to offer a prayer. Let’s listen for what the Spirit is saying to the church in Ephesians 3:14-21:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Our gospel reading tells the story of Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000 people with only five loaves and two fish. This miracle story appears in all four gospels with minor variations. John’s version calls to mind the Old Testament stories of Elisha the prophet feeding a large crowd with a small amount of food, and the provision by God for all the people as Moses led them from slavery to freedom. As Jesus feeds the people, he takes, blesses, breaks and gives, and we taste, see and feel the power of the actions of the eucharist. Let’s listen for God’s word to us in John 6:1-14:
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 toward 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. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
There was a ministry crisis at the Church of the Balanced Budget. Formed during the depression, the congregation had always done well. Thrifty, faithful people had made sure that they always made do with whatever they had, never wasteful, never risking anything. For decades, they had successfully fended any off new ideas. “Be content with such things as you have,” was the church motto.
It was written on the masking tape that held the old hymnals together, and neatly printed on every financial statement. But attendance and membership were declining, and even longtime members were not showing up for anything. They had to do something.
So when one of the small groups had suggested a new ministry, the leadership had carefully weighed the costs and demands. Finally, in a weak moment, the board approved a new outreach program, that would offered sandwiches and Bible study. It was called “Bibles and Bread,” and people loved it!
Word got around town that Church of the Balanced Budget had something everyone wanted. People were lined up at the door every morning when Jim unlocked, and every day the lines were getting longer and longer. And the church’s leadership was getting very, very nervous. Susannah and Miriam called an early morning board meeting.
“Our Bibles and Bread program is too successful,” Miriam said. “We don’t have enough staff or volunteers to assist everyone, and we’ve already spent the entire budget for Bibles. There’s barely enough bread this week to feed everyone, and we don’t have enough chairs for everyone who wants to come to Bible Study.”
Pete looked out the window and saw the crowds gathering at the church door.
“I know! We have a drawing and see who gets to come in!”
Pete was always coming up with weird ideas.
Philip rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Pete! What are we going to do?”
Miriam shook her head. “Our budget for this year is gone,” she said. “I’ve been working on the books all day, and we only have one donation. It’s from a little kid who had a lemonade stand and brought us the money.”
Jim’s face was grim as he looked at the spreadsheets.
“Irene and I went over the money situation yesterday,” Miriam said.
"We’re just going to have to send them away.”
Jim stared at the spreadsheet.
He looked like he was about to cry. He said quietly,
“The neighbors are complaining about the crowds and the noise.”
Nobody made eye contact, and nobody said anything.
Finally, Miriam said “Let’s pray,”
Philip rolled his eyes.
Miriam always thought prayer would create miracles.
But there was no objection, so they prayed.
They asked God to take what they had and make it enough,
to give them whatever they needed to continue in ministry.
After all, what would happen if they sent the people away?
That’s a parable, of course, and one without an ending. In fact, I spent about an hour searching online for an example of an actual church program that was too successful. Apparently, there is no such thing. A church program or event as successful as the one in this scripture seems rare as a unicorn – we want to believe it, but we’ve never seen it. Except in the gospel stories. Except in stories like this one we’ve just heard from John’s gospel.
It’s hard to know what to make of this story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people, especially this version which specifies that he did so with a child’s lunch: five loaves and a couple of fish. One easy way out, and a popular one, I might add, is to make sense of the story by making it a fable – a stone soup story.
In that folk tale, a hungry stranger came to a small village.
The villagers, seeing him approaching, locked their doors and windows.
One called out to him from the doorway, “Go away, beggar!
We don’t have enough to feed our own children!”
The stranger smiled and said, “Oh, I’m not a beggar!
In fact, I’m making stone soup today, and I’ll be happy to share it!”
The stranger laid a fire and hung a soup cauldron over it. As the villagers peered out from their windows, he carefully dropped a large stone into the iron cauldron. The water began to boil, and he dipped his spoon in and tasted.
“How delicious this is! A bit of cabbage would make it perfect!”
Cautiously, a woman emerged from her house, bringing cabbage.
“Heavenly!” the stranger said as he tasted the broth.
“A piece of salt beef would make this a meal fit for a king!”
Hearing this, the butcher’s wife slipped over to the cauldron and dropped in some beef. So it went, with villagers bringing what they had – carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, onions, beans and seasonings, until the stone soup was a delicious stew for all to share.
It is possible that just such a thing happened, that day on the hillside.
It is possible that everyone, seeing the boy share, put in their own lunch.
It is possible that the baskets were filled by generous sharing of the people.
It is just as possible, I think, that Jesus made something miraculous happen.
It is just as possible, I think, that Jesus took what was generously shared,
Miriam shook her head. “Our budget for this year is gone,” she said. “I’ve been working on the books all day, and we only have one donation. It’s from a little kid who had a lemonade stand and brought us the money.”
Jim’s face was grim as he looked at the spreadsheets.
“Irene and I went over the money situation yesterday,” Miriam said.
"We’re just going to have to send them away.”
Jim stared at the spreadsheet.
He looked like he was about to cry. He said quietly,
“The neighbors are complaining about the crowds and the noise.”
Nobody made eye contact, and nobody said anything.
Finally, Miriam said “Let’s pray,”
Philip rolled his eyes.
Miriam always thought prayer would create miracles.
But there was no objection, so they prayed.
They asked God to take what they had and make it enough,
to give them whatever they needed to continue in ministry.
After all, what would happen if they sent the people away?
That’s a parable, of course, and one without an ending. In fact, I spent about an hour searching online for an example of an actual church program that was too successful. Apparently, there is no such thing. A church program or event as successful as the one in this scripture seems rare as a unicorn – we want to believe it, but we’ve never seen it. Except in the gospel stories. Except in stories like this one we’ve just heard from John’s gospel.
It’s hard to know what to make of this story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people, especially this version which specifies that he did so with a child’s lunch: five loaves and a couple of fish. One easy way out, and a popular one, I might add, is to make sense of the story by making it a fable – a stone soup story.
In that folk tale, a hungry stranger came to a small village.
The villagers, seeing him approaching, locked their doors and windows.
One called out to him from the doorway, “Go away, beggar!
We don’t have enough to feed our own children!”
The stranger smiled and said, “Oh, I’m not a beggar!
In fact, I’m making stone soup today, and I’ll be happy to share it!”
The stranger laid a fire and hung a soup cauldron over it. As the villagers peered out from their windows, he carefully dropped a large stone into the iron cauldron. The water began to boil, and he dipped his spoon in and tasted.
“How delicious this is! A bit of cabbage would make it perfect!”
Cautiously, a woman emerged from her house, bringing cabbage.
“Heavenly!” the stranger said as he tasted the broth.
“A piece of salt beef would make this a meal fit for a king!”
Hearing this, the butcher’s wife slipped over to the cauldron and dropped in some beef. So it went, with villagers bringing what they had – carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, onions, beans and seasonings, until the stone soup was a delicious stew for all to share.
It is possible that just such a thing happened, that day on the hillside.
It is possible that everyone, seeing the boy share, put in their own lunch.
It is possible that the baskets were filled by generous sharing of the people.
It is just as possible, I think, that Jesus made something miraculous happen.
It is just as possible, I think, that Jesus took what was generously shared,
and made it into abundance for everyone there.
Enough to fill everyone, with twelve baskets left over.
About 20 years ago, writer Sara Miles walked into a church one morning and for the first time ever in her life, she received communion. “up until that moment I'd led a thoroughly secular life,” she wrote, “at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. On my walks in the neighborhood, I'd passed the wood-shingled building with its sign: ST GREGORY OF NYSSA EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
Now with no more than a reporter’s habitual curiosity— or so I thought—I opened the door. What happened a few minutes later is a mystery. I still can't explain my first Communion; it made no sense. I was in tears and physically unbalanced: I felt as if I had just stepped off a curb, or been knocked over, painlessly, from behind. The disconnect between what I thought was happening—I was eating a piece of bread; what I heard someone else say was happening—the piece of bread was the “body” of “Christ,” a patently untrue, or at best metaphorical statement; and what I knew was happening— God, named “Christ” or “Jesus,” was real, and in my mouth— utterly short-circuited my ability to do anything but cry.”
Sara continues: “Raised in a secular family, ignorant of the whole historical sweep of Christianity, I held no particular affection for this figure named "Jesus," no echo of childhood friendly feelings for the guy with the beard and the robes…
So why did Communion move me?
Why did I feel as if I were being entered and taken over, completely stirred up by someone whose name I’d only spoken before as a casual expletive? I couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told. But neither could I go away: for some inexplicable reason, I wanted that bread again.”
Sara Miles went back for more of that bread, again and again, like the people following Jesus and said, “Give us this bread always!” After she had come to that table many times, feeding her own hunger, she began to respond to the hunger of others, starting a food ministry at St. Gregory of Nyssa church that now feeds about 400 families every week.
It was not easy.
She encountered resistance, complaints, budget restrictions, anger.
But people were hungry, and she would not send them away.
She experienced the gospel.
She writes: “All of it pointed to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions—eating, drinking, walking—and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others. The stories … spoke of a communion so much vaster than any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in the sharing of food, particularly with strangers.”
Sara Miles’ experience reflects the power of the gospel story – the power of this story of Jesus feeding five thousand people. On that Galilean hillside, as the baskets were passed among the people and they ate, there was food left over -- 12 baskets full! The abundance of that provision was enough to convince the people: "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."
Like Sara Miles at that first communion she experienced, they took in the breadth and length and height and depth, of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. As they ate and had their fill, they were filled with all the fullness of God. Gathering at the table with Jesus is at the very heart of our faith.
Father Richard Rohr says that if Jesus hadn’t given us the Lord’s supper, we’d have created it! “The Eucharist – the Lord’s table - is an encounter of the heart…In the Eucharist, we move beyond mere words or rational thought and go to that place where we don’t talk about the Mystery; we begin to chew on it.”
As we gather at Christ’s table, we are fed in ways that go beyond anything we can ask or imagine. Joining together in eating this bread, drinking from this cup together, we are strengthened in our inner being and receive power through his Spirit. When Christ is within us, dwelling in us, when we are rooted and grounded in love, we recognize the abundance of all we have been given, and we are ready and willing to share it with this world that God so loves. Then, Christ is at work within us and among us, able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.
Let’s go back to that imaginary Church of the Balanced Budget.
Let’s envision what might have happened:
After they prayed, Jim said, “There has to be something we can do.”
Miriam said, “Well, we do have that 700 dollars in reserve.
Why did I feel as if I were being entered and taken over, completely stirred up by someone whose name I’d only spoken before as a casual expletive? I couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told. But neither could I go away: for some inexplicable reason, I wanted that bread again.”
Sara Miles went back for more of that bread, again and again, like the people following Jesus and said, “Give us this bread always!” After she had come to that table many times, feeding her own hunger, she began to respond to the hunger of others, starting a food ministry at St. Gregory of Nyssa church that now feeds about 400 families every week.
It was not easy.
She encountered resistance, complaints, budget restrictions, anger.
But people were hungry, and she would not send them away.
She experienced the gospel.
She writes: “All of it pointed to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions—eating, drinking, walking—and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others. The stories … spoke of a communion so much vaster than any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in the sharing of food, particularly with strangers.”
Sara Miles’ experience reflects the power of the gospel story – the power of this story of Jesus feeding five thousand people. On that Galilean hillside, as the baskets were passed among the people and they ate, there was food left over -- 12 baskets full! The abundance of that provision was enough to convince the people: "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."
Like Sara Miles at that first communion she experienced, they took in the breadth and length and height and depth, of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. As they ate and had their fill, they were filled with all the fullness of God. Gathering at the table with Jesus is at the very heart of our faith.
Father Richard Rohr says that if Jesus hadn’t given us the Lord’s supper, we’d have created it! “The Eucharist – the Lord’s table - is an encounter of the heart…In the Eucharist, we move beyond mere words or rational thought and go to that place where we don’t talk about the Mystery; we begin to chew on it.”
As we gather at Christ’s table, we are fed in ways that go beyond anything we can ask or imagine. Joining together in eating this bread, drinking from this cup together, we are strengthened in our inner being and receive power through his Spirit. When Christ is within us, dwelling in us, when we are rooted and grounded in love, we recognize the abundance of all we have been given, and we are ready and willing to share it with this world that God so loves. Then, Christ is at work within us and among us, able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.
Let’s go back to that imaginary Church of the Balanced Budget.
Let’s envision what might have happened:
After they prayed, Jim said, “There has to be something we can do.”
Miriam said, “Well, we do have that 700 dollars in reserve.
And there are the pew Bibles that nobody really uses.”
Susannah and Philip went to the kitchen and brought back some bread and juice.
They prayed again, and shared the bread and juice,
Susannah and Philip went to the kitchen and brought back some bread and juice.
They prayed again, and shared the bread and juice,
and Jim went to unlock to doors to welcome the hungry crowds.
“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.”
Now to him who by the power at work within us
is able to accomplish abundantly
far more than all we can ask or imagine,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen.
“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.”
Now to him who by the power at work within us
is able to accomplish abundantly
far more than all we can ask or imagine,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen.
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