Sermon by Mark Wakefield on 3rd August 2008
Isaiah 55:1-5, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:13-21 

At our last PCC meeting at the end of June we discussed the job specification and parish profile for the appointment of Robert’s successor and if all goes well we look forward to knowing who he or she is going to be some time in September. Given the importance of this appointment not just to St. Mary’s but to the wider church here in north London, Bishop Peter came along to give us some advice.

He observed that while a huge amount had happened during Robert’s time here – most obviously the impressive growth in the congregation and the development of our work with local youth – all this activity said at least as much about the congregation here at St. Mary’s as it did about Robert, excellent and richly talented chap though the new Bishop of Stockport most certainly is. 

When Bishop Peter said this I found myself nodding in agreement without much thought. After all, this is just the sort of encouraging thing that Bishops are supposed to say. And yet over the past few weeks I’ve begun to understand how true his words were.

Time was that I would turn up here on a Sunday and never give a second thought to the effort that had gone into getting this very impressive show on the road. But all that stopped on July 1st when I became a priest. As you’ll doubtless have noticed, during this interregnum Linda and I take it in turns to celebrate the Eucharist, as otherwise we’d be on duty pretty much every Sunday. This meant that a couple of weeks ago I celebrated the Eucharist without Linda’s reassuring presence.

Flushed with the excitement of my first outing as celebrant I didn’t give this prospect much thought until I woke up in the middle of one night fretting about all those things I’ve taken for granted this last year or so. What would I do, for instance, if no one came forward to do the readings or the prayers? What if no stewards turned up? What if I was standing there up at the altar and no one came and brought me the bread and the wine? Suddenly all sorts of horrific and embarrassing scenarios crowded into my mind and I realised that I didn’t have a blind clue as to how this place works.

But of course, it does work and work magnificently, and it’s all down to countless people volunteering in all sorts of ways large and small to do their bit and doing so gladly, willingly and dependably. And this extraordinary exercise in collaborative effort extends far beyond the Sunday parish Eucharist to all the activities that go on both within this church and out in the wider community year in, year out. It’s all so seamless and successful that we often don’t realise how much goes on here unseen and unsung until something – just occasionally - goes wrong.

I believe that all this tells us something about what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven and about what it means to live life according to Gods’ intentions for humanity.

Today’s gospel reading tells one of the most famous of all the gospel miracle stories – the feeding of the 5,000. This event comes very early in Jesus’s ministry and at a particularly difficult time, for Jesus has just learnt of the death of John the Baptist who, if you remember, was beheaded by King Herod at the request of his niece who had danced for the court and had asked for John’s head on a platter as a reward.

Distressed, Jesus tries to escape to be by himself but is followed by a crowd on whom, the bible tells us, he had compassion, so moved was he by their lostness and palpable human need. Once he’s finished healing the sick the disciples ask him to send the crowd away – it being late in the day - so that they can go and get something to eat. But Jesus will have none of it and says these words:

“They need not go away. You give them something to eat.”

The disciples are, as ever, pretty clueless. “But we’ve only got five loaves and two fish” they cry and so the weary and troubled Jesus takes charge and the multitude are duly fed.

Understanding and interpreting this story can often be made more difficult than it need be by our tendency to obsess about what really happened and this can result in a reduced and rather lifeless reading of the text. On the one hand there are those who insist on reading the whole thing literally and for whom it’s simply a sign of God’s mighty power. On the other hand there are the sophisticated sceptics who loftily dismiss such naiveté and offer a non-supernatural interpretation that explains the story in terms of everyone pooling their resources so that in the end there was more than enough for all.

Of course we’ll never know precisely what happened or what gave rise to this story but in any case interpretations like this rather overlook the depth of meaning that’s there and that would have been so evident to 1st century Christians.

The first Christians were, of course, by and large Jews and as such what would have struck them immediately is the obvious parallel with the story in Exodus in which Moses sits the Israelites down and appoints helpers to distribute the miraculous bread from heaven, otherwise known as manna, which God has provided in such abundance that there are basketsful left over.

And there’s a further parallel with the story in 2 Kings in which Elisha orders a disciple to feed 100 men with 20 loaves of barley. Just as in Matthew’s gospel, the disciple is at a loss to understand how so many can be fed with so little, to which Elisha replies “thus says the Lord, they shall eat and have some left”. And so they do.

Now of course, Moses is associated with the 10 commandments and the giving of the Law, while Elisha was one of the prophets, so what the story is telling us is that Jesus is the fulfilment of both the law and the prophets – in other words, he is the messiah. You can see this validation of Jesus as the messiah with reference to key Old Testament figures in lots of other places in the New Testament. Take the transfiguration for example, where Jesus appears to the disciples on the mountainside with both Moses and Elijah.

As well as looking back, the story of the feeding of the 5,000 looks forward. Jesus’s action in blessing and breaking the bread and giving it to the disciples who in turn give it to the crowds is clearly pointing to the institution of the Eucharist.

And finally, we shouldn’t just see this as being a story about feeding people in the physical sense only. In the book of Deuteronomy Moses tells the Israelites clearly that the whole experience of being fed with manna should teach them that “one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” So this is every bit as much about feeding the spiritually hungry as it is about feeding their physically hungry.

So, you can see that this story is capable of being read on all sorts of different levels and has a richness about it from which we can learn a great deal. But my key point today is that while drawing our attention to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, this story also makes it clear that he prefers to enlist his disciples’ help in mending this broken world rather than work alone.

And again, this idea of mankind as God’s co-workers in creation is fundamental not just to the New Testament but to the Old as well. The Old Testament is in many ways the story of a series of covenants, of deals if you like, between God and the Israelites in which the Israelites are expected to keep their side of the bargain and in so doing help God fulfil his purposes.

The extraordinary thing about all this is the people God chooses to be his servants. From Abraham, the father of Israel to the likes of King David an adulterer and murderer, they’re so often a motley crew. And in the New Testament the disciples are a seemingly hopeless lot, always getting the wrong end of the stick and so often lacking in faith. Amazingly, it is through such as these – or should I say us? – that he works.

In positively wanting the help and support of mankind God confers a remarkable dignity on all of us. This is a noble calling from which no one is excluded and to which all are invited with the promise that in playing our part we will become more truly the people we were intended to be.

So there was profound truth in what the bishop said to us at the PCC. No vicar, however talented can or – more to the point - should try and do things on his or her own. For we will only succeed in advancing God’s cause of justice and truth by working together and by each of us hearing God’s call to play our part, however big or small that might be. For what did Jesus say when the disciples asked him to send the hungry crowd away?

“You give them something to eat.”

Amen