Divine Abundance

Beginning with today’s Gospel, we take a detour from Mark’s Gospel to John’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel marks the first of a series of readings on “Jesus as the bread of life,” which we will continue through the month of August.

The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is found in all four Gospels. Evidently this miracle was crucial to the early church’s understanding of Jesus’ identity. John’s Gospel, however, takes this miracle in a different direction from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In those Gospels, the Last Supper is where Jesus instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion, and during next week’s celebration of Holy Communion, I will be using words of institution adapted from those Gospels. John’s Gospel is different. While John’s account of the Last Supper includes the washing of the disciples’ feet, John places his version of the words of institution of Holy Communion much earlier in his Gospel, after the feeding of the five thousand. We will hear these words during our Gospel readings for August. In John’s Gospel, those words were not just for the disciples, but for the crowds as well – though the crowds misunderstood and turned away.

John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand begins as it does in the other gospels, but with some details unique to John. As in the other Gospels, Jesus has been teaching the crowds. He crosses the sea of Galilee, but the crowds keep following him, similar to Mark’s account that we read last week. John’s account contains the interesting detail that the festival of the Passover was near. In the other Gospels, the disciples urge Jesus to send the crowds away so that they can eat, but Jesus tells the disciples, “you feed them.” In John’s Gospel, Jesus takes the initiative, asking Philip, “where will we buy bread for these people to eat.” As in the other Gospels, a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish is offered. Jesus directs the crowd to be seated, takes what is offered, gives thanks, and distributes it. All are satisfied, and there are twelve baskets left over. All this would have reminded the crowds of Elijah’s miracle from our Old Testament reading. John’s Gospel tells us that, in their gratitude for being fed, the crowds wanted to take Jesus by force to make him their king – but Jesus rejected this and went by himself to a mountain to pray.

The disciples take off in a boat to the other side of the lake, without Jesus. Having finished his time of communion with God, in the dark of night, with a strong wind tossing the boat, Jesus comes walking on the water to them. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus reassures them, “It is I, do not be afraid.”

The psychologist Abraham Maslow was best known for his theory of the “hierarchy of needs.” For Maslow, the most basic needs were those of survival – food and drink. Next in the hierarchy is the need for safety and security. Then come needs for social interaction and belonging. Then come needs for self-esteem. At the top of the hierarchy were what he called self-actualization – meeting one’s potential – and then transcendence – the feeling that our individual lives are part of a greater whole. According to Maslow’s theory, if one’s most basic survival needs are not met, one is less likely to succeed in fulfilling one’s higher-level needs for belonging and so forth. And that likely jives with our own experience; if it takes all our effort just to get enough food and water to get through the day, hanging out with friends is way down our list of priorities, perhaps the last thing on our mind.

In today’s readings, we see Jesus meeting the most basic need of the crowds – for food – and of his disciples – for safety and security. On that basis, the crowd is willing to follow Jesus anywhere, to crown him as their king – at least so long as the next meal keeps coming. But Jesus is always trying to draw the crowds and the disciples – and us – beyond our own obsession with self-preservation to relationship with our neighbor, and ultimate into communion with God. When we hear the word “communion” we think of the eucharist – and so it is – but the communion God desires for us which begins by the sharing of bread and wine, leads to the sharing of ourselves with one another and with God, to knowing and being fully known by God. As St. Augustine prayed, “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” In the eucharist, bread and wine are elements of the covenant of salvation between God and followers of Jesus, a covenant that we live into over the course of our lives as we grow in faith, as, in Paul’s phrase, we grow up into Christ. In this sense, Jesus is the bread of life, that which makes the difference between existing and truly living, between just getting by and the life of the spirit that Jesus yearns for us to experience.

In our Gospel, we saw that Jesus was not defeated by scarcity, by the limited resources of the boy’s lunch of loaves and fish. Jesus was not defeated by the wind and the waves, or by the terror of the disciples. Jesus likewise is not defeated by our limited resources or our personal limitations. We do not have to struggle and strain to make ourselves better in order to make ourselves good enough to be acceptable to God. God accepts us as we are, with all our weakness, sin, and limitation, if we are open to God’s call, if we are willing to turn ourselves over to his direction. Inevitably as we follow Jesus over time, sin will have less of a role in our lives and we will begin to transcend our former limitations, but this is the fruit of the Spirit’s work in us, not something we need to do ourselves in order to qualify for God’s mercy – God’s work in us, not our own work for God. Jesus is victorious over the brokenness in all of our lives – if we’re willing. Like the loaves and fish, God can use our small numbers and limited resources to do mighty works here in Bridesburg – if we let him. If we get out of God’s way with our fear and worry, and allow God to do what God does best.

Let me close with Paul’s words from our Epistle reading today, slightly adapted for our own situation: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that we may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that we may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. May God’s divine abundance of grace be with each of us, and with Emanuel Church, now and always. Amen.