Sunday: the 29th July: Trinity 9: (Proper 12)
2 Kings 4:42 - 44. The
context for this piece is a man bringing food from a place of plenty to a place suffering from famine. The
Barley harvest in Palestine is the earliest (Late March/early April). There is
no explicit miracle, but it is definitely implied.
Ephesians 3:14 - 21. The intensely personal nature of this prayer carries on the theme
of connectedness that underpinned the feast of Mary Magdalene last week. This
intensely moving and powerful prayer prays that we be filled with the Holy
Spirit to realise the ongoing work of being transformed into the likeness of
God.
John 6: 1-21. The
feeding of the 5000 is one of the best-known stories in the New Testament. The
significance of this "sign" for John is made clear when he writes,
"The Passover was near"(verse 4), another meal of profound religious
significance. The other sign is a walking on the water incident. Indeed, this
indicates Jesus' divinity, but this happened in response to the fact that they
wanted to "make him King by force" (verse 15) and he was escaping
from the crowd. Jesus was indeed divine, but the nature of his kingship was yet
to be revealed.
Let us start with that powerful and moving prayer
that stands at the heart of our readings this morning.
I have heard some people say over the years that
they don’t like St. Paul or the Pauline tradition for this or that reason. Perhaps
he does speak in often very long sentences and getting to grips with his deep
theology is indeed taxing for anyone who has ever undertaken any Bible study
but he is also responsible to some of the finest and most profound prayers and
theology I have ever encountered.
But think of 1 Corinthians 13, mainstay of a million
weddings, some parts of Romans, particularly chapter 8 and today this wonderful
prayer from Ephesians.
When the undivided church put together the canon
that is the New Testament, they intuited, recognised, that while this at one
level is just a letter to a church in Ephesus, on another level it is divinely
inspired and is a letter that can be addressed to anyone across time and space
who calls themselves a Christian.
This is a prayer made for us.
In saying that scripture is divinely inspired we
are saying that the very Spirit of God is recognisable, palpable, can be almost
taken hold of physically, and can spiritually feed us.
Remember what Jesus said in Matthew, reiterating
what had been written originally in Deuteronomy.
So let’s feast on this prayer which continues this
intensely personal understanding of God. Let us feed on it.
Through God, every family is named which means that
there is an intimate and profound connection between God and the human family,
and in fact the writer extends the scope of family to include families “in
heaven” as well as on earth.
So, the writer says, no matter what other
connectedness exists between you and your fellow man, they only exist by virtue
of our primary connection to God and it is on that basis that the writer
articulates a prayer on our behalf.
So, he prays for us all that we be strengthened in
our inner beings by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is God’s active living presence on
earth, and he prays that through God’s Spirit we have the power to comprehend
the height, length and breadth of God’s love for us in Christ to the extent
that we are full to the brim of God’s spirit.
Completely sated. At one with God, so we spiritually
hunger no more.
It is with that at the forefront of our minds that
we approach the two feeding signs this morning. One from the new and the other
from the old Testaments.
They are both physical demonstrations of that
prayer. In Biblical theology, the physical and the spiritual are close. The
Bible understands the human being as a psychosomatic unity, Body and Spirit as
one, and not as separate entities.
In the story from Kings, the context is actually
famine relief, while in the feeding of the 5000 People are met and fed, and can
eat no more, and there are still 12 basketfuls of food left over.
The spiritual message is that Whatever your
spiritual need, God can fulfil it without ever found wanting.
Along with the Last Supper this is a story that
underpins and amplifies our understanding of our Eucharist this morning.
Eucharist is a Greek word that means “Thanksgiving”
We also know it as Holy Communion; communion
between ourselves as God’s human family and with God Himself.
Some call it the Lord’s supper which reminds us
that it is in fact a meal. A highly choreographed and sanitised meal, but
basically a meal of bread and wine, which takes us back to the Last Supper and
the feeding of the 5000.
Which takes us to the nature of a sacrament itself.
At Sunday school you probably learned that a sacrament is an earthly thing with
a spiritual meaning.
Well I don’t think I can better that. When we come
to the altar rail, we eat bread and drink wine, but spiritually we come to meet
with Jesus, who is doing the feeding, and are spiritually filled with the
Spirit of God the Father. Don’t forget we are a physical/spiritual unity.
And when you have communed and been filled, we go
out again to the world.
As well as Eucharist, Holy Communion and the Lord’s
supper there is another name used for what we are doing more associated with
catholic usage; Mass.
This term is derived from the Latin ita miss est. which
means “Go, the dismissal is made” and is a sending out in the world,
overflowing with God’s word.
Mass is therefore, some might say ironically, the most evangelical term we
have for this sacrament.
Because of the extraordinary nature of the feeding
of the 5000, some wanted to make him king by force, so Jesus had to retreat to
get away from them. Why? Because their understanding was partial and earth bound
and would have entailed them believing that Jesus was a great king (in the
traditional sense) who would fight and eject the Romans.
But the true nature of the Messiah had yet to be
revealed. Jesus was Lord and king as the walking on the water revealed, but the
fullness of understanding that Paul’s prayer prays for, had yet to be played
out in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus, that ultimate sacrament, the word made
flesh.
“Man
cannot live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of
God”
Amen.
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