Commentary

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

"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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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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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:

 

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. 

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."

Those of you who are scientific minded probably get tired reading all these words. What about numbers ? Quick now, using Einstein’s mass/energy conversion equation how much energy did Jesus have to muster to feed the 5,000 ?

Christian Gaffney answers that for you

Feeding the 5,000 is a program, part of the European organization FeedBack that is tackling hunger in a specific way – using food that would normally be wasted. They work to glean crops from farms that would be wasted also but host public events to bring awareness to this issue. They explain it this way "At each event, we serve up a delicious communal feast for 5000 people made entirely out of food that would otherwise have been wasted, bringing together a coalition of organizations that offer the solutions to food waste, raising the issue up the political agenda and inspiring new local initiatives against food waste."

An example is an event that took place in Vancouver, Canada on May 27, 2015.

It was grassroots “lunch and learn” on a grand scale. Everything on the menu came from industry donors. Those attending got a tasty free 3 course lunch, an appreciation of food waste in the region, connections with those already taking action to reduce waste, as well as ideas for reducing food waste in their own lives. Here is a video.

Summary – French War refugee Babette works for 2 sisters & their ascetic sect. When she cooks a feast they reluctantly eat but soon the grace of the meal transforms all, including a former suitor of one of the sisters. 

Babette’s Feast is a high regarded Danish Academy Award winning movie from 1987.

The setting of the film is a barren, windswept coastal village of Denmark in the 19th century. The village is populated by a very conservative and pious community of Protestant believers. It is led by two elderly sisters who struggle to maintain the faithfulness and the spirit of the community, which is aging and growing quarrelsome. When Babette, a political refugee from Paris, turns up in their village, the sisters charitably take her in and make her their housekeeper. They ask Babette to cook their very simple fare, for extravagance of any kind is suspect, and enjoyment of worldly pleasures (including lavish eating and drinking) is sinful. 

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“Whatever it is that we wrestle with, whatever is our struggle, God will strengthen us. God will bless us. God will allow us to prevail. And, having prevailed, we will be changed.” – Br. James Koester, SSJE

Excerpts of a sermon preached at Grace Church. Bainbridge Island, Washington, March 16, 2003. Sermon from Matthew 16:21-28

"The words we hear from Jesus this morning come from the mouth of a man who grew up under  the heel of an empire. And who saw, all around him, its cost. The Romans saw themselves as creating “a new world order.” To accomplish this, Roman soldiers burned villages, pillaged the countryside, slaughtered or enslaved those they conquered. Huge taxes were imposed on the people in the colonies. When the Roman governor Antipas built two Roman-style cities in Galilee, a rural countryside, the Galileans had to provide the resources for this massive building project. They paid a tax unto Caesar.

".. We know beyond a doubt that Jesus chose not to identify with those in power.

"Instead, this is how Jesus spent his time. Just before the section of the gospel we just heard, Jesus took a blind man by the hand and restored his sight. He fed a crowd with loaves and fish. He helped a deaf and mute man find his voice again. And, my favorite, he listened when a Gentile woman begged him to heal her daughter of demons. He bound himself to those in need. He did not even exclude persons who were collaborators with the empire: i.e. the tax-collector, Matthew. This is not an easy kingdom, folks.

"..We can say, from these stories, that Jesus was moved by compassion.
"I want to suggest to you a few ways of looking at compassion. First, it’s not a form of sympathy.

"Compassion, as you know, means to suffer with: to enter into another’s suffering. And that’s quite a way to go. But let’s take it a step farther. The theologian Walter Brueggemann calls compassion, ‘a radical form of criticism,’ a radical form of criticism for it announces that, ‘the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.’

"Jesus in his compassion says that the hurt of those who are hungry and poor, and taxed beyond their means is to be taken seriously: It is not normal for people to be without food; it is not normal for someone who is blind or deaf to beg on the street. But, ‘Empires are never built nor are they maintained on the basis of compassion…’ Empires, like Rome, like the United States, live by keeping their own citizens distracted with ‘bread and circuses.’ The Roman rulers expected their citizens to remain silent in response to the human cost of war; mute in the face of the human cost of greed. And they kept those in the colonies in check by systemic terror: the price of the prophetic  witness of John the Baptist was death. But Jesus speaks up. He acts. By and through his compassion, he takes the first step in revealing the abnormality that has become business as usual.

“Thus his compassion is …a criticism of the system… that produces the hurt. Finally Jesus enters into the hurt and comes to embody it.

"When it comes right down to it, it seems to me that Jesus invites us this morning to follow where compassion leads us, and bear the cost of what we find. Jesus asks us to follow where truth leads us, and to bear the cost of the truth we find.

"He calls us, as Nicholas Cage says in the movie Moonstruck, “to ruin our lives, to break our hearts, to love the wrong person and to die.” We are invited to ruin the old life of silence, to break our hearts with compassion over suffering, to love the wrong person–that would be Jesus–and to die. As Bill said to me last week, “ to get resurrected ya gotta get dead.” Because we know, from Jesus’s example, and from our own lives, what lies on the other side of that death. The other side of silence and distraction , of the deadly life of business as usual, is new life, resurrected life, born of compassion-awake and broken-hearted, and, yes, dangerous."

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Nora Gallagher is author of the two memoirs, Things Seen and Unseen and Practicing Resurrection and editor of the award-winning "Notes from the Field." Her essays, book reviews, and other writings have appeared in many publications including the New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader and the Los Angeles Times.

I. Theme –  God’s care for us all

"Sheep in Paradise" from Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, 549, Ravenna, Italy

The lectionary readings are here  or individually: 

Old Testament – Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm – Psalm 23, Page 612, BCP
Epistle –Ephesians 2:11-22
Gospel – Mark 6:30-34, 53-56  

Today’s readings remind us of the care that God constantly exerts on our behalf. Jeremiah uses the image of God as a shepherd to describe how God will gather the people.  Paul explains the reconciling work of Christ, who is the peace between Gentiles and Jews. Jesus has compassion on the crowds of people, who remind him of sheep without a shepherd.With compassion, Jesus saw the multitude “like sheep without a shepherd,” and he bade them to sit down in that green pasture to be rested and fed.  The story leads up to the feeding of the 5,000 at the end of the month. The event on the hillside is a prefiguration of the messianic banquet to which all people may come to eat the bread of life. This bread, broken for us, is enough for all at present, with much left over for future throngs. 

The scripture implies that a great spiritual hunger had brought the crowd to Jesus, for “he began to teach them many things,” until it grew late. He had very likely told this people that God loved each of them and that the gates of the kingdom were open to all. Whatever human condition was their own, they were not beyond God’s care and acceptance.  

These were the crowds of people who may have been poor and sick, people who suffered and had no leadership to speak for them, to bring them hope and healing, and Jesus has seen them for who they are. Jesus and the disciples had hoped to escape the crowds and have a time of rest but Jesus saw the needs of the people were greater than the needs of himself and his disciples, for the people were sick, lonely, hopeless and hungry.  

The miracle of the loaves points to the greatest miracle of all, which is described later in Ephesians. There were no “dividing walls” at the feeding–no barriers of legal, social or religious foundation. The multitude sat at Jesus’ feet, looking to him to fill their need. Jesus was a son and teacher of Israel, the first people to whom God was revealed, the first people entrusted with God’s oracles and ordinances. We, the Gentiles, know ourselves to be those who were far off, “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” and “separated from Christ” in the beginning. But his peace has come for all. He is the one who unites all the families of the nations. Through him both Jews and Gentiles have access to the Father.

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By Debie S Thomas  for Journey with Jesus 

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Icon of Christ the healer

"Mark 6:30-34 describes the return of the disciples from their first ministry tour — their inauguration into apostleship. Exhilarated and exhausted, they have stories to tell Jesus — thrilling stories of healings, exorcisms, and effective evangelistic campaigns. Perhaps there are darker stories in the mix as well — stories of failure and rejection. Hard stories they need to process privately with their Teacher. 

"Whatever the case, Jesus senses that the disciples need a break. They’re tired, overstimulated, underfed, and in significant need of solitude. 

"Jesus, meanwhile, is not in top form himself. He has just lost John the Baptist, his beloved cousin and prophet, the one who baptized him and spent a lifetime in the wilderness preparing his way. Worse, Jesus has lost him to murder, a terrifying reminder that God’s beloved are not immune to violent, senseless deaths. Maybe Jesus’ own end feels closer. In any case, he’s heartbroken. 

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By Debie S. Thomas "Come Away with Me" for Journey with Jesus. Debie relates a visit to Calcutta India to the Gospel reading this week 

"One of the visits my family made in Calcutta is to "Mother House," the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, and the home where Mother Teresa lived, served, died, and is now laid to rest. We saw the tiny bedroom where she slept from the 1950s until her death in 1997. We saw her tomb, now a place of pilgrimage and silent meditation for people of all faiths. We saw countless photographs of Mother Teresa out among the poor she spent her days and nights serving. Jostling crowds. Outstretched hands. Noisy and desperate petitions. An endless cacophony of need.  

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Article from Faith and Leadership. The story of Tierra Nueva

"An ecumenical ministry in rural Washington state helps Latin American immigrants, migrant workers, gang members, addicts, jail inmates and people who have been incarcerated become leaders in their own community."

"Tierra Nueva is headquartered in a 100-year-old former bank building in rural Burlington, Washington. The first floor, repurposed into a simple worship space and family support center, is a mishmash of sleeper couches, desks, bookshelves and cardboard boxes. On one wall, a mural depicts Jesus as a brown-skinned man channeling healing waters, which swirl around a scene filled with people — imprisoned behind bars, entangled in ropes and chains, toiling in green fields, embracing one another, kneeling in prayer. The painting symbolizes the mission of this ecumenical ministry, which serves people on the margins of society — Latin American immigrants, migrant workers, gang members, addicts, jail inmates and people who have been incarcerated, as well as people in the mainstream.

"Originally focused on jail ministry and immigrant assistance, Tierra Nueva’s mission has grown to encompass gang ministry, drug and alcohol recovery, job creation and theological education as well. Farming and a coffee-roasting social enterprise provide meaningful work and income for people the ministry serves.

"Founder Bob Ekblad’s hope is to see more people empowered as leaders to help liberate those in need within their very own communities.

“To me, that involves bringing together Scripture, Holy Spirit and social justice advocacy in a missional community model,” he said.

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The sermon from this Sunday in 2015 (July 19) considers the the tired weary disciples.

“Rest seems to be in short supply these days. All of those things and people that demand our time can be like thieves that steal our lives away from us. We have too much to do and we’ve convinced ourselves that we have to cram even more into our already packed days.”

“And like the disciples, we can get so busy thinking about how “I did this and I did that” and even telling God how much we’ve done for God that we forget that God sent us out to start with and what we’ve gotten done is through God’s grace and strength, not our own.

“And as a result of any or all of these things, we don’t rest and we get worn out and discouraged or maybe even depressed and hopeless.

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