Detail of a stained glass window in Holy Trinity, Meole Brace
(Shrewsbury) by William Morris, 1871. Photo © Michael Garlick
A sermon for Bramley St Peter, 28 July 2024. Reading: John 6:1-21
“Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted” (John 6:11). With these simple actions of taking, giving thanks and sharing, Jesus achieved one of his best remembered miracles, and one of the most significant.
Let us be in no doubt that this miracle happened and is of the greatest importance in understanding Jesus. It’s one of the few acts of Jesus that is mentioned in all four of the gospels. St John, who was probably there when it happened1, gives more space to this than to any of Jesus’ other miraculous signs: almost the whole of chapter 6. The Church of England’s Sunday readings include parts of this chapter for the next five weeks. So we have a whole month to meditate on its meaning. But I’ll try to do the same in under ten minutes.
Let’s look at the obvious physical meaning first. Jesus had thousands of followers, and in this instance, they had followed him miles from their towns around to the far side of Lake Galilee and into the countryside. After spending all day listening to his teaching, they were hungry. A picnic on the grass was just what they needed. Jesus was a man like any other: he would have been hungry too. Normally he resisted the temptation to perform miracles just to impress people, but this time his empathy and compassion for his followers meant that he had to do something to satisfy the hunger of their stomachs. So he took what little food was offered, and somehow made it stretch to feed everyone. What an amazing act of power and generosity that was! No-one was left hungry, no-one had to pay for their food, and there was still more left over than they had to start with!
The first followers of Jesus, when they had been filled with the Holy Spirit, had the same sense of empathy and compassion. Without needing to rely on miracles, one thing they did do was to share whatever they had, including food, with their community. In Acts chapter six, seven men are called to a ministry of distributing food to widows and others in need. It was, if you like, the first Christian foodbank. I’m reminded of that famous quote of Teresa of Avila: “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world”.
There is, alas, still much hunger in this world. There is no time now to go into the economics and politics of global inequality. But mission, like charity, begins at home. What we do know is that there is hunger in Bramley. Since our foodbank centre began six months ago, we have grown to the point that families totalling between 50 and 100 people every week are being referred to us for emergency food parcels. This is not something incidental to what we do as a church, it is central to it. Whether your contribution is in praying for this ministry, donating food or money, or volunteering on a Tuesday, you are continuing in that tradition started by Stephen and the other apostles of making sure no-one in the community goes hungry. Like the boy with the five loaves, it may seem like nowhere near enough, but Jesus takes our willingness to give, and turns it into plenty.
And while it may not be a miracle, there are answers to prayer. Working in the warehouse, there have been many times when we have been short of particular types of food, and after praying about it, it has been given, just in time. On one occasion we ran out of tomatoes (I think it was) – and the same day a primary school asked us to collect their donations: all that month they had been asking people to give tomatoes, and suddenly we had enough. Just this week we ran out of curry sauce, and someone turned up with plenty of it. Never underestimate the power of prayer or Jesus’ desire from his heart to give us what we need.
So much for the physical sharing of food. But the feeding of the five thousand is so much more than that. It has a very deep spiritual meaning that goes right back to the roots of Judaism, and to Jesus’ birth. Ever since God commanded the Hebrews to eat unleavened bread at Passover, and provided manna to Moses and his people in the wilderness, bread had been a sign of God’s presence with people, such as the freshly baked bread always placed on a table in the tabernacle. The very name of the town of Jesus’ birth – (beit leḥem) – means ‘house of bread’.
Jesus followed up and explained this miracle by referring to himself like this: “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”. By this, he meant much more than meeting physical hunger. He meant that his presence in us is as important to our spiritual life as eating and drinking is to our physical life. In most Christian churches, this is symbolised every week with the breaking and sharing of bread at communion. Some churches call it the ‘eucharist’ which is simply the Greek word for ‘giving thanks’.
You have probably worked out from my sermon illustrations that I love stained glass. Church windows around England bring the Bible to life in so many different ways. It’s not difficult to find illustrations of windows that depict the feeding of the five thousand. In most of them, the boy with the loaves and fish is shown kneeling in submission before Jesus. But I found this one that is different. In it, we see Jesus (the one with the bigger halo, obviously) along with Philip and Andrew distributing the bread. In the foreground, four women are sitting and eating their bread: not looking at Jesus directly, but with thoughtful looks as they contemplate the bread they are eating. For in eating what Jesus has provided, they recognise the Bread of Life.
That window is in a church in Shrewsbury, and was designed in 1871 by William Morris. Three years later in 1874, Morris, the campaigning socialist, designed the ‘acts of mercy’ windows in our own church. Come and look at the window behind me – on your right – and you will see the depiction of Christians feeding the hungry. Just as we still do week by week in St Margaret’s Room exactly 150 years later.
To understand this miracle, then, we must hold these various concepts together. Our belief in God as Three in One is helpful here. The loving, providing Father, the God of Abraham and of Moses, who has given us bread as an eternal symbol of his presence. Jesus, his son: the Bread of Life whose very presence is with us as we take and share the communion. Jesus the compassionate, who sees the very real physical needs of the community around us and longs to meet them. And the Holy Spirit who moves us to pray and act to provide food for the hungry. Not for nothing do we pray every day: “Your will be done, your kingdom come on earth as in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread”. If we ask, he will give. And we will share.
Amen.
- Whether the Gospel of John was actually written by Jesus’ closest disciple remains a matter of argument among Bible scholars. Personally I am convinced that it probably was. ↩︎