Imagine with me, then, that you are sitting on a mountain, a mountain that represents being as close as you can get to God, a mountain where you know that the warm breeze you feel on your skin is the breath of the Holy Spirit. Imagine that you are sitting in a soft, green meadow—without stones, dust, or prickly thorns to disturb your pleasure. The grass is cool and smooth, just like the psalmist describes it: a place where you shall not want, a place where God restores your soul. The sun is shining; and you can hear a stream singing in sweet abundance all around you.
Imagine that you’ve been hiking a really long time to get to this mountain spot. It hasn’t been an easy hike at all, and you are bone-tired and sapped of strength. You are weak with hunger and empty, empty in every way. And here comes Jesus with baskets of just what you need: Nourishing food. Enough food that your body relaxes with the weight of it. You are full for the first time in what seems like forever. New energy fills your veins. Can you feel it? The rush of strength, the sweetness of consolation, the easing of tension? Such relief is what Jesus offers us today. God longs for nothing more than to feed us all with an abundance beyond our wildest dreams.
As John makes clear to us, though, the trouble can lie in the distribution. The interesting thing in John’s version of this feeding story is that he focuses on the reactions of the disciples, especially Philip and Andrew. John portrays Jesus as always in control of the situation, but poor Philip and Andrew are just as tired and unprepared as we are. And yet it seems to be up to us to provide the food?!
Jesus first asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” As one who usually sees the glass half-empty myself, I can smile knowingly at Philip’s cynical answer to Jesus. Even if they had the unimaginably huge sum of 6 months’ wages, mumbles Philip, it still wouldn’t be enough money to buy food to feed all of the hungry people. Like many of us, Philip gives up quickly in a crisis. It’s easy to shrug our shoulders before the immensity of the problems that engulf us these days. We feel like too few, or too old, or too young, or too confused, or too unequal to the impossible tasks before us. We don’t have the answers, surely?!
Then Andrew speaks up, this time with an attempt at a solution, at least. He has found a boy with some bread and two fish. He points the boy out to Jesus as a possible solution … then, embarrassed at his own naivete, he quickly adds: “But what is this bit of food among so many people.” After all, who likes to look simple and impractical? How tempting it is to offer a creative response during a brainstorming session, adding a quiet, “but this is probably a dumb idea …” in order to avoid potential criticism. No one likes to be put down for repeated questions or unusual solutions, yet we regularly do that to one another, and to ourselves.
Jesus doesn’t respond to either disciple’s discouragement. Note that he doesn’t give them all a pep talk, either. He doesn’t use words at all. In the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, he responds with a sign. He shows the disciples the power and presence of God—a presence that they have not been seeing or reckoning with. What’s surprising in Jesus’ sign is that it doesn’t involve producing a sumptuous feast with a wave of his hand. If Jesus is God, why doesn’t he whip up a banquet of fine wines and rich marrow like we read about at funerals from the book of Isaiah? Strangely, Jesus feeds his people with barley loaves and salted sardines.
John explicitly tells us that the five small loaves that the young boy carries are made of barley, the cheapest grain available at the time and the normal food of animals and poor folks. It is rough, dry bread—an ordinary meal at best. The two small salted fish might add some moisture and flavor to the bread but are barely sufficient for one boy’s daily meal. In feeding a crowd of 5000 with one boy’s dry barley bread and sardines, Jesus opens our eyes to God’s action and presence in the most unexpected and impossible of places. While the disciples are looking for Jesus to conjure piles of silver with which they could purchase a feast, God is waiting to fill them up with a peasant boy’s lunch.
There is an icon of the Virgin Mary called, “The Virgin of the Sign.” In this icon a small image of Jesus waits encircled within Mary’s body. It shows us that Jesus is often hidden, silently loving us and praying for us, within the Church, within our hearts, and within the most unlikely places in our world. We expect God to work in the places where we find ourselves on the right track, where we are prepared, where we have enough of whatever is needed for the tasks at hand.[1] We fret when we can’t seem to access this perfection. But by God’s Grace, God has prepared nourishment and restoration for our souls deep within simple, common things—deep within our own imperfections, too.
Back in June, we had to feed a crowd here at St. Ambrose. Remember? We were expecting folks for the celebration of new ministry with Bishop Kym, and Covid restrictions had us as isolated and discouraged as Philip and Andrew. We weren’t going to be able to gather and feed people in any of the familiar ways. It was going to be hot as heck. We’d have to be outside. We didn’t have money in the budget for a party. Parishioners were going to be out of town. There was a good chance that it would rain and ruin the whole thing. There were plenty of good reasons to throw up our hands and sulk. But you know what? St. Ambrosians looked around at what we had and handed it to Jesus, and we had an amazing feast. Barb Senger and Toni divided all the tasks up into small pieces that wouldn’t overwhelm anyone. They passed both the cost and the workload around, just like the disciples shared the baskets of bread. Lots of people helped. No one was overwhelmed. And there was joy, food, and fellowship in abundance!
And remember Easter? Last Easter, the second Easter of Covidtide, when we still weren’t “back to normal?” That Easter, we might not have gathered in the nave, but the risen Christ came to us for sure in our first-ever Easter video pageant. Here at little St. Ambrose, where there is no abundance of tech perfection, we managed to stage the virtual feeding of the 5000. Remember Sarah, trudging through ankle-deep snow with baskets of pretend bread, shouting to the crowds of geese that there is food for all? Remember Walter passing an abundance of bread through the pine trees, with Jane as his “crowd” of one? Remember Don with his 5 tortillas and 2 cans of tuna, awkwardly passing them across the frame to Chris? Remember how everyone had so much bread that they couldn’t get rid of it at the end? Remember Matt’s glowing smile of satisfaction at the way in which he, as Jesus, had fed us all? I invite you to go to our YouTube page and watch it again. It will restore your soul.
Today, in the most unexpected ways, in spite of our imperfections and our struggles, Jesus is here among us with food in abundance for our tired souls. We discover the nourishment he offers us not when we excel, but when we pick up a basket to feed someone else. We open ourselves to his grace not when we pile up plenty for ourselves, but when we give out of a desire that our neighbor be fed, too.
I’d like to close with a poem that I recently found online. It is my prayer as we follow Jesus into the unknown. I invite you to return to your green mountain pasture in your mind, holding out your hands in prayer, palms up:
When we're not looking at our hands,/ it's easy to miss the strain/ the clenched fists/ the tired fingers/ the aching hands./ Holding on takes great energy/ We hurt/but can't locate the source/We're determined to fix the pain by/ numbing/ignoring/judging/pointing/But the pain remains/Until we unravel one aching finger at a time/to see the thing we were holding/is already done/over/finished/In the terror of letting go/we sense a kind of heaviness/That we are somehow responsible /for /everything/Beloved,/this heaviness is not meant for you/to hold/As we take our first tentative steps /into new worlds/may we bravely and gently open /our aching hands/May we receive the rest and grace/that is ours/May the Love that holds every inch of us/whisper to our beings/that we are /loved/held/enjoyed/creative/adaptive/resilient/enough/as we moment/by/moment/create /a/beautiful/new/life/together/palms up[2]
