We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Ben Hicks

July, 1974-Celebrating 50 years of women’s ordination

The Philadelphia Eleven were the first eleven women to be ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church on July 29, 1974, two years before the General Convention affirmed and explicitly authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood.  A film was produced about their ascension to the priesthood for the 50th anniversary in 2024.

The 1974 ordination was seen as an act of civil disobedience and was highly controversial at the time.

The 11 women ordained in Philadelphia were the Revs. Merrill Bittner, Alla Renée Bozarth, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield Fleischer, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig. From the Philadelphia Inquirer “While all were previously deacons, the women came from all over the country and from many different backgrounds, ages, walks of life, and political worldviews.”

Links

1. The Philadelphia Eleven: Courage and Change . Three minute Trailer

2. Article from “Religion Unplugged”

3. Film conversation. Filmmaker Margo Guernsey, and the Rev. Nancy Wittig (one of the eleven women ordained in Philadelphia) and others for the first public conversation about the film.

4. Watch the film online Jul 26, 12:00 PM EDT – Jul 30, 12:00 PM. $11

5. Timeline of women’s ordination

Several dioceses are promoting screenings of “The Philadelphia Eleven” documentary to coincide with the anniversary, and special worship services are planned.

In the Diocese of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral has committed to a yearlong celebration of women in the church, starting July 28 with its Holy Eucharist. Heyward, as one of the Philadelphia Eleven, will preach. A screening of the documentary will follow.

The 81st General Convention, at its meeting last month in Louisville, Kentucky, also passed several resolutions recognizing the Philadelphia Eleven and the 50th anniversary of their ordination. Resolution D055 invites commemorations over the next three years, marking an anniversary triennium.

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Lectionary, Pentecost 10, July 28, 2024

I. Theme –   Providing for each other out of our abundance 

"Feeding of teh 5,000

"Feeding of the 5,000" – Daniel Bonnell

The lectionary readings are here  or individually: 

Old Testament – 2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm – Psalm 145:10-19 Page 802, BCP
Epistle –Ephesians 3:14-21
Gospel – John 6:1-21  

How do we provide out of our abundance ? What is hunger ? In this week’s lectionary, multiplication of food given to Elisha demonstrates God’s power to provide abundantly in the Old Testament. Paul exhorts the Ephesians to use their spiritual gifts to build up the Body of Christ. Jesus multiplies five loaves and two fish to feed the hungry crowd.  The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle of Jesus’ ministry recorded in all four gospels. As so often emphasized in John, Jesus takes the initiative, even before the people arrive. 

Hunger is multidimensional. People are hungry not only for bread but also for dignity, meaning, and happiness. Thus, we might ask the same question Jesus did: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

It’s a tricky question, as John implies with his parenthetical comment. The things which most satisfy our deepest hungers can’t be purchased. Still on the literal plane, Philip despairs: no amount of money could assuage the vast crowd’s hunger. (While they may well be physically hungry, remember that they followed him initially because of his compassion toward the sick.) Jesus’ silence directs us to look toward our own resources.

Faith is what helps us to understand the incomprehensible. Faith is what holds us to the path of God, the way of Christ. We are faced with temptations every day to live for ourselves, to satisfy our own greed and desires, and we forget the needs of others and God’s desire to live for others. In living for others, we find that we have life. In living for Christ, we find that we have lived for others. In thinking of the needs of others, we are reminded that we can be overwhelmed, as Elisha’s servant and Jesus’ disciples felt, or we can have faith, as Elisha and Jesus did, that the needs will be met when we serve and give out of what we have. It is not easy, but it is what we are called to do—and God always provides enough. We may not be able to solve the world’s hunger problems, but we can do our part to help those around us—and we may be surprised at what God can do with the little we have.

The child’s lunch box and the mother who probably packed it are a delightful reminder that “those who would be a blessing for others must bring what they possess to Jesus.” Without a scoff, a snicker or a doubt, Jesus takes the bread and fish into his hands with all confidence. Ignoring Andrew’s concern about scarcity, he provides an abundance. His action reassures those of us who deem our efforts too meager or skimpy to ever count as ministry, or to have any significant effect within God’s design. Instead we can count it, as did St. Ignatius of Loyola, “a toweringly wonderful thing that you might call me to follow you and stand with you.”

The miracle adds a new dimension to the picture of God given in Psalm 145. There, the people look hopefully to God as the source of their food. The opening of God’s hand satisfies their desires. In light of John’s gospel, we enter more directly into that process. No longer does God stand on one side of an abyss and we on the other. Now, Jesus takes our barley loaves into his hands and blesses them. In a co-creative act, we bring the food, share it with Jesus and each other, then gather the left-overs.

Those who are, as Ephesians calls us, one in body and spirit, cannot blame God for world hunger, neglected children and all our other social ills. For God has called us to partnership, graced our efforts, and made us abundant blessings for each other.

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Voices – “Feeding the 5,000”

1. Church of Scotland – The Most effective leader

The most effective leader is not necessarily the one who is most qualified on paper, the one expected to step up due to experience, but rather the one with the essential qualities, the one who steps out in faith, the one who expects God to act and doesn’t rely on their own expectations.

The world would see the young boy as the least of them, yet he was one Jesus chose. Age or experience is no barrier to Christ’s lesson for us all to offer what we have and see what Jesus will do, in abundance. Jesus could have performed this miracle and fed them without the boy’s offering, without asking the disciples to solve the problem of how to feed them, without having so much left over. But as with most of Jesus’ miracles and teachings, He worked through people, teaching valuable lessons about living a life of faith for God, with God. All through Jesus’ earthly life He stayed firmly rooted in His Heavenly Father and has taught us to do the same

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“The Chosen” dramatizes the “Feeding of the 5,000”

An estimated 12,000 men, women and children from 36 countries and all 50 states have journeyed to Midlothian, Texas, to be extras over several days in “The Chosen” as the faith-based series films scenes of Jesus Christ feeding the 5,000, according to a news release (2022).

“The majority of the people here have made their own costumes. They’ve come at their own expense to be here,” Derral Eves, CEO and executive producer of “The Chosen” told kltv.com. “It’s really great to see the diversity of costumes and the diversity of people, and it’s just a blessing to see all the support.”

Additional links”

1. The site in Texas

2. Behind the scenes from YouTube

3. Facebook link

Here is how is turned out in the 10 minute scene:

The Art of the “Feeding of the 5,000”

The Visual Commentary on Scripture featires 3 paintings that depict the scripture in three periods -early 1500 1671, and 1796. From VCS (Visual Commentary on Scripture). The link to the paintings and then the discussion.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand can be found in all four canonical Gospels (Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:32–44; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15), and the Feeding of the Four Thousand in two (Mark 8:1–10; Matthew 15:29–39). The miracle emphasizes Christ’s caring concern and compassion, but also his hospitality and his generosity as a host.

In all three paintings in this exhibition, the central motif is Christ’s gesture of blessing and the baskets in which food will be distributed and leftovers collected. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo follows John’s version of the miracle, while Lambert Lombard’s interpretation is a more complex blending of narratives, and Francisco de Goya’s sources are less clear. Their approaches to the representation of the crowds are also different. Traditionally, Jesus’s followers are depicted either as a gathering of individuals whose diversity provides the painter with an opportunity to display his originality and skills, or as an undefined multitude.

Artists like Lombard suggest the breadth and universality of God’s message by showing its recipients as individuals of varying ages, genders, status, and ethnicities. In Murillo’s and Goya’s works, lack of definition turns these individuals into a mass, which evinces the magnitude of Christ’s following and the extent of his miraculous powers. Both Lombard and Murillo divide the crowd into small groups: Luke refers to ‘groups of about fifty each’ (9:14–15), while in the Gospel of Mark ‘they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties’ (6:40). The wide sweep of Murillo’s landscape is populated by a large, expectant congregation, which in Goya’s interpretation becomes a barely sketched crowd agitated by a threatening, simmering sense of unrest.

Lambert Lombard – “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes”. First half of 16th century.

Bartolome Estaban Murillo – The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes”. 1671

Francisco de Goya – The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. 1795–96

Daniel Bonnell on his painting, “Feeding of the 5,000”

"Feeding of the 5,000

"This is an important divine moment here that perhaps we miss. The scripture says that Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed the loaves and the fishes. All eyes are on Him as the crowd is instructed to sit down in the grass. He then gave thanks. In this painting all the focus is upon Jesus, the viewer looks up as if he or she were one of the crowd. Jesus raises a basket with two small fish in it to the sky. He gives thanks and before he finishes speaking the basket is filled to overflowing. Jesus is called the bread of life. We see Him performing many miracles that have symbolic meanings to those — that have eyes to see. He is victory over death. We see Him raising the dead in more than one instance. He is the water of life, as he tells the woman at the well. He is the Prophet who knew of her five husbands. Look closer and you will see Jesus not just raising a basket of bread to the sky but you will see him upon the cross. The band of white sky forms a perpendicular bar with his arms and hands, which are pierced."

The Feeding of the 5000 and the Graham cracker

 

In the mid-1800s there was a group of people in America known as the Millerites–a Christian sect firmly convinced that Jesus would return sometime late in the year 1843. He didn’t, setting off what was called "the Great Disappointment."

At least some of these folks, however, made the best of the situation by declaring that as a matter of fact Jesus had returned but that it had turned out to be an invisible, spiritual advent. Believing themselves to be living in an already-present millennial kingdom, these Adventists decided that as part of this new identity they should invent alternative foods as a sign of their not being fully in this world.

One preacher named Sylvester Graham invented a new kind of cracker for his congregation to eat. Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) believed physical lust was harmful to the body and caused such dire maladies in the sexually overheated as pulmonary consumption, spinal diseases, epilepsy, and insanity, as well as such lesser ailments as headaches and indigestion.  Graham believed a strict vegetarian diet would aid in suppressing carnal urges; to this end, he advocated a regimen devoid of meat and rich in fiber as a way of combating rampant desire.

His famed "Graham bread" was fashioned from the coarsely ground wheat flour he espoused and which came to bear his name. Convinced that eating meat and fat leads to sinful sexual excess, the good reverend urged total vegetarianism. He also warned that mustard and ketchup cause insanity, urged followers to drink only water, and recommended sleeping with one’s windows open regardless of the weather. More reasonably, he touted the merits of a high-fiber diet and promoted the use of homemade unsifted wheat flour instead of refined white flour.

Some sources assert Graham himself invented the snack in 1829; others claim the graham cracker did not come into being until 1882, 31 years after Graham’s death. Many bakers tried to market the crackers, but it wasn’t until 1898 that the National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco) made any real inroads into the market with their Nabisco Graham Crackers product. Nabisco achieved even greater success with their Honey Maid line, introduced in 1925, which boosted the original graham flavor through the addition of honey. 

Today’s graham crackers are made with bleached white flour, a deviation that would have set Sylvester Graham to spinning in his grave — he regarded refined flour as one of the world’s great dietary evils. 

Another Way to Feed the 5,000 – in a Chevy!

From Ft. Worth City Magazine

"Fort Worth has an unusual new entrant in the food truck scene: Arlington Heights United Methodist Church.

"The West Side church on Sunday officially launched Five & Two – a take on Jesus’ feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes – in a refurbished 1996 Chevy plumbing truck.

"’It’s a full commercial kitchen on wheels,’ Allen Lutes, associate pastor and director of the church’s new food truck ministry, said after a dedication ceremony with hot dogs and chips.

"The church sees the food truck as a way to take its ministry to people, rather than rely on them to come to the church. “How much more meaningful if we meet them where they are?” Lutes said during a Sunday sermon.

"Beginning June 18, and on the third Thursday of each month, Five & Two will begin serving dinner to the 30 homeless veterans who live at the Presbyterian Night Shelter’s Patriot House off of East Lancaster Avenue.

"In July, the truck will be at the Night Shelter’s women and children’s unit once a month. ‘This is going to be an opportunity to do more,’ to serve as mentors and work with children, Lutes said."