(compiled from the texts of the four Gospels)
Offered to Mt Freedom Presbyterian Church – July 30, 2000
Background: John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth and cousin to Jesus, had been arrested by Herod, the king. Herod had John beheaded. John’s disciples took the body and placed it in a tomb. Then they went to tell Jesus what had happened. [Matthew] It was the time of the Passover Feast. [John]
The Story:
John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, is beheaded while in prison by Herod. John’s disciples took the body and placed it into a tomb. When they had done this, they went and told Jesus what had happened.
Now when Jesus had heard this, he withdrew in a boat to a lonely place.
But when the crowds heard this, they followed him. They had heard of the signs that he had performed on those who were sick and diseased. So, they went ahead of him on foot from out of the towns along the shoreline.
The Passover Feast of the Jews was at hand.
Now when Jesus came ashore, he saw the great throng and had compassion for them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. John had been a shepherd to many of them but now he had been taken from them. To offer comfort, Jesus spoke to them about the Kingdom of God and cured many of those in need of healing.
When it was evening, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place ad the hour is late. Send the crowds away to the villages so that they can buy something to eat for themselves.
But he answered them, “They need not go away. You give them something to eat.” Philip answered him, “200 denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to eat just a little.” And Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother came to him and said, “There is a lad who has five barley loaves ad two fish. But what are these among so many?” Jesus said to them, “Bring them to me.” He ordered them to have the crowd sit down in companies of 50 and 100 on the grass.
Jesus took the loaves and the fish into the midst of the crowd and he looked up to heaven to give thanks to God. There in the midst of the thousands he prayed over the small gift of one who was willing to share all that he had. And when he had finished praying, Jesus blessed and broke the loaves and fish and then gave it all to his disciples to set before the crowd.
And all ate and were satisfied. And the disciples took up their baskets and gathered enough food for the twelve. Now those in the crowd numbered five thousand men. When the people had seen the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is come into the world.”
Immediately, he made the disciples go ahead of him to the other side of the lake while he dismissed the crowd. Then he went up to the mountain by himself to pray.
Sermon Message: What Gifts Can We Bring?
I believe the Bible is alive.
I hope that with that statement I have raised a few eyebrows. Perhaps, an initial reaction might be, “What do you mean by that? The Bible is a book. How can you say that it is alive.
That is the idea that I want to examine with you today because I believed that understanding that the Bible is alive is a critical first step to knowing who the Living God is and what our response as believers in the Christ should be. It ultimately will bring us closer to and understanding of what this Bible story means for us today.
We know that the Bible is filled with stories of great faith, great deeds, miracles and the great Truths of our Faith. It chronicles the history of the failures of the chosen people to follow God’s law and even at times to understand it and God’s unfailing love and devotion to the promises God had made to his people. It records God’s covenants, the promise of salvation and the ultimate sacrifice of Love that has saved us and reconciled us to God.
Now, if that is all that it is, it would be a magnificent anthology. It would be as Hollywood has dubbed it, “the Greatest Story Ever Told.” But if that is all it is, then it would simply be a book. One with a front cover that you can open, page through – read when you are moved to and then when you are done, set it aside. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you might feel something extraordinary – some kind of closeness to the characters in the stories, some sense of the depth of God’s love foe you. Perhaps.
But there is more to this book than that. Even its name, “Holy Bible, isn’t enough to convey its true meaning. We call it the Word of God. If we remember the opening of the Gospel of John, we read that, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The word that the Gospel writer John refers to is none other than the Christ. It is the Christ that is the Word of God. And as John details for us, “…it is the Christ that gives life to the world.” It is the Christ that is the light of the world, and the darkness has not overcome it – not the darkness of death, not the darkness of evil. The Christ is alive.
And if the Christ is alive, then the Word of God is alive. And if the Word of God is alive, then the Bible is alive. It is more than a written record, a chronicle or story line. It is the Word of the Living God.
And, if the Word of God is alive then what we read has to be more than a written record, a history or an anthology of stories. What happens in our lives as we interact with the Bible has to be active and alive, as well. The Bible cannot simply be what was. It must be what is. In other words, the Bible must be for us a proactive force in our lives, and we must react to it. We cannot close the cover on this book and lay it aside when we are done reading from it.
Let’s look at how this story of the Five Thousand might help us to understand how that might be.
In our lesson today, we heard about a miracle in which Jesus performed some 2,000 thousand years ago. If the Bible is alive today [and I say to you that it is], then that 2,000-year-old miracle has to be alive and working our lives today – as real now as on the day that Jesus performed it.
As we experience the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, I would suggest to you that two miracles took place that day. There was the obvious miracle in which Jesus takes a meager portion of food and physically creates a fest for the multitudes. This is the miracle on the surface of the story. It is the one we learn about in Sunday School as children. Jesus stood over the five loaves of barley and the two fish and created a bountiful meal for the 5,000 people in that place and time. And that is all real because the Christ is the Word of God that was with God in the beginning and who spoke creation into existence giving life to all things.
Bit if ALL that happened that day was that Jesus took the meager offering and created a miracle feast then all it would be is a magnificent story – a miracle of Truth that validates our belief that Jesus was the Christ. But it would be a miracle that would be frozen in time, not to be repeated, not to be relived. And that would be an unfortunate loss for us. Because I think the point of the story that Jesus wants us to learn is in his response to the disciples when they ask him to dismiss the crowd and send them off to find food in the villages. He said to the, “There is no need to send them away. You feed them.”
There is second miracle. It is a miracle that calls upon the power of the Holy Spirit of God. It is a miracle that through the power of the Holy Spirit can be relived today. It is a miracle that through the power of the Holy Spirit working through us can be relived today, every day.
In this second miracle, Jesus receives a meager gift from one single person. And to display how lowly it was, our story tells us that in a crowd of thousands of adults, it came from a child. In a crowd of thousands, one gave while others held back.
Now, if you are still paying attention, you should be asking yourselves, “What do you mean by ‘held back’?” Nothing in the story suggests that any of the thousands was holding anything back.
Well let’s take a closer look at who was in this crowd of five thousand. There were of course Jesus’ disciples and followers. These were perhaps a few hundred. Then there were people from the surrounding towns and villages who had heard that the miracle working prophet, Jesus, was in the area. They spontaneously dropped what they were doing and rushed out into the countryside to see the miracles and healings that everyone was talking about. This Messiah was on a nearby hill, let’s go see what all the talk is about. This portion of the crowd was probably ill-prepared to be away from their homes for any length of time. They grabbed a cloak and maybe some water and rushed out.
But there was a third element in the crowd that day. In his Gospel, John tells us that the season of the year were the days leading up to the Passover Feast. At Passover, Jews throughout Palestine would pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The population of the city would swell from a quarter million to over two and a half million visitors. Those people were on the road from their homes to Jerusalem. It is this portion of the crowd around Jesus that would have been traveling with provision for the long journey. That is, they had brought food to sustain them for the many days they were on the road. From out of these our young boy came forth with his five barley loaves and two fish.
It was these travelers on pilgrimage to Jerusalem that caused the crowds to swell to such huge numbers. The text tells us that there five thousand men. But we can assume that women and children were also in the crowd since whole households usually traveled together. We can guess that the true size of the crowd listening to Jeus on the mountain side was upwards of twenty thousand.
Now Jesus was tired and exhausted still reeling from the news that John, his cousin, had just been executed by Herod. He was seeking a lonely place where he could grieve alone with God in prayer. But he saw before himself a crowd flocking to him like sheep without a shepherd. For many in the crowd, their shepherd, John the Baptizer, had been taken away. So, Jesus had compassion on them. He let them come to him even in his hour of need. He taught them about the Kingdom of God and healed their brokenness.
Now as it got late in the day, the disciples want him to dismiss the people so that they could return to the villages to buy something to eat. And we already know Jesus’ response, “No. You feed them.”
How, Philip asked him? “Where are we to get food for five thousand? Do you want us to go out and buy the bread. That would cost at least 200 denarii. We don’t have that kind of money in the treasury.
No, of course not. Jesus knew the people and what the possibilities were. No. He asked them, “How many loaves do you have. Go see.”
Go out into the crowd and see what they have to share. So, the disciples went through the crow and came back. Andrew came to him and said, “there is a lad who has five barley loaves and two fish.” Out of a crowd or twenty thousand people, they came back with one meager offering from one small boy.
Now comes the second miracle. Jesus too the offering and placed in from of himself for all to see. Now this is the exciting part. Jesus stood in silence over the offering and raised his head to God in prayer. To offer a blessing of thanksgiving to God before eating was a typical Jewish thing to do. Jesus prayed but not just a prayer of thanksgiving but also a prayer that God’s Holy Spirit enter into the hearts of each person there. In silence he prayed while the magnificent power of God’s Holy Spirit entered into each of the people’s hearts and touched them and moved them and stirred them to shared what they had. And by the time that Jesus had finished his prayer, there lay before him food enough for all to wat and be satisfied.
Now that’s a miracle of Biblical proportions – one prayer touching twenty thousand hearts; one prayer moving a mountainside of stone-cold selfishness to share. It is a miracle that is alive with the Spirit of God. Working within the hearts of every person present. It is a miracle wider in scope with long ranging and everlasting effect. It is a miracle that reaches out across the centuries and through the Spirit of the Living God seeks us out and stir us.
The miracles of the Bible are not singular events frozen in time. They must be alive. For us to experience the meaning of Christ’s teachings, his miracles must be alive and at work in God’s people today.
We are called to respond to Jesus’ prayer today just as the crowd on the hill in Palestine two thousand years ago. Jesus prays for us to be stirred to a miracle just as he did then. How is that Jesus prays for us to be stirred? What resources do we possess that Jesus calls us to share?
In order to answer that question we should look to the needs of the communities that surround us. In our own Presbytery, there are several local missions with whom we can share our resources. There are soup kitchens that seek to feed the hungry. There is the Interfaith Council for the Homeless. There is Habitat for Humanity. Both of these missions seek to provide homes for the homeless. These missions need our resources in order to further their work as God’s hands and feet – working to heal the brokenness of this world. Our participation in these missions is the response to Jesus’ prayer that he asks the Spirit to bring forth. Our response keeps alive the miracle on the mountainside in Palestine.
Personally, as individuals and corporately as a Church we, who profess faith in Jesus as Lord, are called to respond to Jesus’ prayer. What resources do we have to share? What gifts can we bring? How can we keep the miracle of the living Word of God alive?
