Sunday: 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Mark 6:1-21
Preacher: Jack Seymour

The Gospel this week again has Jesus being beleaguered by a large crowd who is clamoring to get close to this man that has demonstrated over and over again his ability to heal the sick. The Gospel of John is written in a way that attempts to apply a theological understanding to every action that Jesus undertakes. The story this morning, as told by John, is no exception. Jesus is portrayed as knowing ahead of time what he was about to do. John depicts Jesus as seeing the crowd of 5000 as an opportunity to perform a large public miracle.

This miracle that Jesus is about to do is both a foreshadowing of a much more important meal ritual that Jesus will institute later in his ministry and the feeding of the 5000 is seen by John is also a reference back to the prophet Elisha who fed 100 people with 20 loaves of barley. Mot significantly, the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 is also a reference back to Moses, who fed the Jews in the wilderness with "bread from heaven."

I find myself often wanting to shake off the theological commentary that one finds abundantly in all four of the Gospels about the life and actions of Jesus and focus instead upon what the historic scene might have been.

Last week we saw Jesus telling his disciples to get away from the crowds and to take a rest. In this week's Gospel we see Jesus himself trying to escape for a moment of rest and being followed by the ever growing crowd who pester him constantly by bringing their sick and dying to him to be healed. Neither Jesus nor his disciples seem to be able to catch a break. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, all of which contain this story, the disciples plead with Jesus to "send the crowd away."

However, the Jews in Palestine at this point in their history were a people who had genuine need for a healer. They're pain was very real and they were desperate for a divinely anointed figure to save them. Life under Roman occupation was very hard and many Jews had come to the conclusion that if the Messiah did not appear and save the Jews from their oppressors then the end of the world must surely be close at hand.

I prefer seeing Jesus as an exhausted and pestered man who in encountering a people in pain responded with pity and compassion in spite of his own exhausted state. The Jews, however, were hoping for something much more from this man. Jews had their own theological hopes springing out of their desperate state of life. They were hoping for a Messiah.

The Messiah was expected to rescue God's people from oppression. From a Jewish understanding, the Messiah would take the form of a "second Moses."

For the Jews, there were three possible signs by which people expected to tell that the new Moses had come amongst them:
victory over turbulent waters
giving of Law, and
miraculous feeding with "bread from heaven"

And so it is that in our Gospel reading today that we have both Jesus feeding thousands of people in a miraculous way and also the story of his walking on water. John wants the reader to see Jesus as the "new Moses" - as clearly - The Messiah.

At the same time it is hard to miss the Eucharistic symbolism in today's Gospel reading. We read, "Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them..." John is the only gospel that does not have a story of the Last Supper and Jesus' institution of the Sacrament. John instead focuses on a miraculous meal for large number of people who are merely hungry, a meal that provides rest, satisfaction from that hunger, a common community building ritual and a demonstration of Jesus' Messianic identity.

Communion is like a diamond with many facets, which is reflected in part by the many names we call it: Eucharist, Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, Mass. It is good to take some time to explore them all, or at least more than the one or two that we might remember from our Confirmation days. Last week during the 8 o'clock coffee hour we started into a rather rich discussion of the Eucharist and the different understandings that the Anglican Church has had about it's meaning over the centuries. The broader church has continuing conflicting understandings of just exactly what is going on when we share bread and wine in a ritual way. Is this thing that we are doing a simple memorial of an event that occurred 2000 years ago? Does the bread really become the body of Jesus and the wine his blood?

One of the reasons I like being an Episcopalian is that our church works hard at supporting the inclusion of many different theological points of view about our rituals. Today when you listen to the words of the Eucharist, pay special attention to what is said just before the bread and the wine is passed around. You will hear "the gifts of God for the people of God". These words might bring to mind Jesus' repeated acts of giving food to his followers even when he was too tired to do much else. You will also hear "take them in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving". These words call us all into an act of remembrance, a recalling that the food we receive today is given to us with a high price. A price paid by a weary man who was willing to sacrifice his own life for our eternal nourishment.

And when you receive the bread and the wine listen carefully to the words spoken to you: "the body of Christ, the bread of heaven" and "the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation". The Episcopal Church has managed to include in its liturgical language all of the range of understandings of what is going on when we share bread and wine with each other.