Christ's Abundance

Pentecost 10, Proper 12

July 28, 2024

Fr. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

By any measure, Thomas Jefferson, our third President, was a brilliant man.  Despite being only 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, his leadership was integral as those 13 colonies were breaking away from the mightiest empire in the world and shaping a brand-new nation and brand-new form of government. He also had many flaws, including his involvement with slavery. But let’s set all that aside and hone in on his faith.

Remember that from the moment Jesus began his ministry, people doubted him, even those who witnessed his miracles. That has been true in every age since.

Jefferson identified himself as a Christian, but on his own terms. Like lots of people in his time and lots of people today, Jefferson believed in “Nature’s God” and a “Creator” as he wrote in the Declaration of Independence. He was convinced that Jesus’s moral example and ethical teachings were the very best any culture or philosophy had to offer. But he struggled with believing in miracles and Christ’s divinity.

So, he embarked on a personal project to gather Jesus’ life and sayings from all four Gospels and arrange them in a roughly chronological order, keeping the parts that he felt were clearly right in a moral sense and factually based. He discarded the miracles and references to Jesus’s divinity and anything spiritual or heavenly.

He did this only for personal use. He called it “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” It was not published until nearly 100 years after his death and is commonly known as “The Jefferson Bible.”

The problem is that the Jesus he retained in “The Life and Morals of Jesus” is not Jesus. Once someone starts cutting, it all depends on who is holding the scissors. In this case it is Thomas Jefferson’s caricature of Jesus; a faint shadow of the Jesus the Apostles proclaimed and died for. It is not what caused the church to grow like wildfire even though their testimony was illegal and persecuted for hundreds of years.

Today we begin a five week journey through the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, which is all about Jesus as the “Bread of life.” It begins with a miracle we must not clip away. This passage is so important that it is the only incident before the triumphal entry into Jerusalem that is included in all four gospels. The image of the loaves and fishes was a prominent early symbol of the Church found in the catacombs under Rome and another archaeological sites across the Mediterranean world.

It’s importance rests in what it teaches us about Jesus, about the Kingdom of God and about the promise he holds for us in our daily living.

The first, and perhaps most apparent, lesson is about abundance. Jesus took five small barley loaves, really more like five rolls, and two fishes and fed thousands of people. There is a clear parallel to the many Old Testament stories of which our passage this morning is one, about how God miraculously provided for people as a demonstration of his power and love. As we are faithful, God will provide. Jesus himself is doing this and demonstrating the abundance of the Kingdom for all people.

A second lesson comes through the objections. Philip says that six month’s wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little. He’s right. Do the math. That’s 180 days’ worth of wages to feed over 5000 people! Andrew states the obvious, that five small rolls and a couple of salted fish wouldn’t go far at all. But, Jesus gave thanks (the Greek word for thanks is Eucharist) and fed them all. He then sent his 12 disciples to gather up the fragments and each of them came back with a full basket. The more we share Jesus the more we have to share.

How many times did God lead his people to victory over impossible odds? Further, quite often God insisted that the odds be impossible so that people had to attribute the victory solely to God. That is so true in our ministries today. We do not have the power in ourselves to accomplish the work that God is giving us to do. But that’s the point. We are not to be daunted by the impossibility of tasks, rather we are to be faithful because if God is leading us, then he will shock and surprise us with his awesome work.

A third lesson comes through what appears to be almost an aside. John tells us, “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” We are to see this moment in context with the Passover. Recall that the Passover involved the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb whose blood was painted over the lentils and door posts so that the angel of death would pass over God’s people. This was the key to Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt and a defining moment for them as the people of God.

Later in this chapter, Jesus will refer to himself as “the bread of life.” Eventually he will allow himself to be broken on the cross, to die for God’s people so that the power of sin and death would be broken forever. The breaking of the bread in this scene demonstrates how Jesus will share himself with the multitudes and, having given away everything, will see an abundance in return. Any of us who have sacrificed for others or have been blessed by others’ sacrifices for us know how deeply true that is.

Further, as we moved to the next scene, we can all identify with that feeling of rowing hard against the headwind in rough seas. Some of us may have been, or may be now, terrified in such moments. When Jesus comes to you, he takes away the fear and in a very real sense gets you immediately to shore. The kingdom of God is coming and it is already here.

It’s natural that people would look at these stories and struggle to understand them, especially if they discount the possibility of God doing wondrous things and space and time. To anyone who does struggle, I encourage you to remain in the struggle. It would be a sad mistake, born of ego, to take out scissors and snip away the parts you don’t understand.

The truth is that we all struggle to understand the depths of meaning in these passages, and it’s even harder to fully apply them in our own lives. That is the journey of faith, and as we strive forward, we have in a very real sense arrived because we do so by God’s grace and in God’s hand.

And we come. We come to this table to partake of the broken bread, Jesus broken again and again for us, that we may be formed to his likeness and carry him into our communities. That we might be broken of our limitations to participate in his abundance and bring back more than he gave us.

AMEN!