Sermon at Sung Eucharist - Jane Maycock

In the Gospel reading we have just heard, Matthew shines a spotlight on a very familiar story. If you are someone who had a book of Bible stories in your childhood, then it is quite likely that this account of the feeding of the 5000 was one of those. Coming to it as an adult, it may well provoke different questions, not least, ‘did it really happen?’ In the next 10 minutes I can either address the richness of what the story means, or explore the challenge of a miracle on this scale which can often sit uneasily with us, but I can't do both. I am going to explore the richness of the story, but if there are other things the story raises for you then please do speak to me after the service.

Matthew is describing an event full of drama, so let us imagine what this might look like if told in the theatre. Jesus is alone on stage, a single spotlight on him with the rest of the space in darkness. Slowly the lights come up, gradually revealing the sides of the stage where from the wings a crowd of people are drawing closer and clamouring for his attention. Behind Jesus and the crowd, the backdrop remains in shadow – but it is the shadow that I am curious about. The reading began with these words: “Now when Jesus heard this...” What was it that he had heard? We need to see what is on the backdrop, if we want to understand the riches of what is about to take place.

The news that Jesus had heard was of the beheading of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod. That is the only story Matthew tells in which Jesus does not appear. For him to do that it must be extremely significant for what he is telling us about Jesus. The death of John is about the world of power, sex and intrigue, three words that could equally describe the world that we are living in now; three words which perhaps have always applied to human interactions. The world that they describe is the world to which Jesus offers an alternative.

Herod was scared. His position as ruler of the province of Galilee was fragile, dependent on the goodwill of the Roman authority. He was fearful of John who pointed out the unlawful nature of his marriage to Herodias, and he was fearful of the crowd who regarded John as a prophet. He used the occasion of his birthday as a lavish demonstration of his power to the gathered company, a power that was intoxicating and within which he made extravagant promises. He was an insecure despot, a dangerous man. It is not surprising that Jesus felt the need to be alone, both in his grief for John and considering John’s fate in relation to his own ministry.

In contrast to Herod, Jesus demonstrates the qualities of God's kingdom: compassion, healing, the refusal to send anyone away, and the meeting of ordinary human hunger with the abundant provision of food. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas describes Jesus’ feeding as “an alternative politics to the politics of envy and greed that the Herods of this world cannot avoid.”(1)

This story is not, however, simply about Jesus being a nicer person than Herod. There are echoes in this drama of events that go back far beyond the backdrop I have just described. Those who saw what Jesus was doing, and later those who heard Matthew’s account, would no doubt have recalled the miraculous gift of manna, the bread from heaven by which God fed his people in the wilderness following their escape from Egypt – an event recalled every year in the Passover celebration. Other echoes heard might be that the five loaves remind us of the Torah, the first five books of the Scriptures; the two fish signify the law and the prophets, and the twelve full baskets the twelve tribes of Israel. Matthew is showing us that Jesus is a new Moses. The drama that Matthew puts before us is about the restoring of human life to a way of living created and desired by God; a way of living that places God at the centre, not because God is a despotic ruler with a need to demonstrate power and control, but because God created human beings in his image to share in the giving away of power and demonstrating God’s abundant love. In Jesus we see God fully present amongst God's people. In Jesus we see God empowering others – meeting them with compassion, bringing healing and demonstrating care for the most basic of human needs by giving away food.

Shining a light on the backdrop helps us to see the richness of the drama that Matthew sets before us. But he is also very clear that this is not simply about what has happened in the past. It is about who Jesus is, and it is about who we are. When Jesus takes these five loaves and two fish he blesses them, breaks them and gives them to the gathered crowd. Later, at the Last Supper, he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to his disciples. In this service, the president takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to us gathered here.

Like the crowd who have followed Jesus, we too are drawn in to being part of the Kingdom of God, looking not to an insecure despot but to one who rules with love, compassion and abundant generosity, ultimately giving away his very self.

At the end of a play the lights in the auditorium go up, and we are brought back to the world of the everyday as we leave the theatre; but we go changed by what we have seen. Coming to a service in church is not so very different.

Shining a spotlight on this familiar story invites us to hear it afresh as not simply about something happening in the distant past, but very much about what it means to live out being God's people here and now. It challenges us to consider what it means to live out an alternative politics to that of envy, greed and the very limited vision that looks only to instant gratification and selfish use of power. It challenges us to consider what it means to be a people fed by Jesus in a world of physical and spiritual hunger; and it invites us to come to the table so that, whether we receive the bread and wine or a simple blessing, we too are blessed, strengthened with the abundant love of God and given to the world.

Amen.