Bread and Stones
John 6:1-21
Rev. Karla Miller July 29, 2012
Eliot Church of Newton
Sand and stones and pebbles,
Beaches and wise ones,
A picnic of bread and fish
A terrifying storm on the water,
And a question,
What is satisfying to you in your life?f
Is that what fills it,
Or is it filled with tiny grains of sand?
This is where we find ourselves, today.
On a beach, with Patrick* pondering our lives,
And on another beach, with Jesus, and the crowds,
And a oh so too familiar gospel story
About the feeding of the 5,000 men plus more women and children
With a boy’s lunch of five loaves of bread and a couple of dried fish.
I remember once meeting with a confirmand, and talking about her concepts of who Christ was.
She said that Jesus was magic, because who else could turn so little food into a feast for thousands?
It had to be magic.
I gently asked a few questions, “What if this story was about people letting go, and sharing what they had, because of Jesus example, because of the little boy? I wonder what that would mean about Jesus?”
She looked at me in horror and basically said, “but that’s so ordinary. Jesus wasn’t ordinary. Jesus could do anything.”
And I thought to myself,
Well, she is right about Jesus not being ordinary, and let it go, because really, all I can do is sow seeds, right? Plus, the whole sharing thing came naturally to this child, so that really wasn’t all that revolutionary to her.
That being said, in spite of this story’s familiarity,
It is anything BUT ordinary.
Picture the scene, if you will.
Crowds have followed Jesus across the Sea of Galilee,
Because they witnessed healing in his presence.
The crowds are the common folk, oppressed by Roman domination, and are at the bottom rung of the economic and social ladders.
They follow Jesus and his disciples up the mountainside,
And then Jesus stops,
And wonders, where will these crowds get food?
He sensed their hunger,
Their need…
Phillip, the treasurer of the disciples, notes that not even six months wages would be enough to feed a crowd so large.
Phillips’s answer blows open this story, which is so much more than sweet Sunday School Story. His comment makes us realize that this story is about bread--a symbol of basic need; and economics--what could be afforded, especially for those outside the circle of power and privilege and excess.
Jesus was concerned for the basic needs of these people, who had so little, but hungered for the fullness of life.
So he commences with the supposed miracle--as one writer notes, “if it is a miracle it is of the most deflated kind.” (Rachel Mann,
There is no magic, no special mystical words--(my apologies to my former confirmand)
Simply, he takes the bread and fish, gives thanks, and shares.
Did you hear that? He took what was there, said thank-you, and gives it away.
People are fed as much as they need,
a staggering amount of people,mind you.
Imagine,
what little there was at the beginning, but it ended up being enough, in fact,more than enough, with leftovers for tomorrow!
Don’t you love that Jesus tells them to gather up the fragments? In spite of the fact that the fragments were broken, they still were good and nourishing, and Jesus didn’t want them to be left behind.
We are invited to gather up the fragments, for nothing that matters, that which feeds us, should be lost. We tend to lose what matters, because in these days, our society is caught in a “famine of excess, no matter what we eat or use, nothing seems to satisfy us for long and so we continue to try to fill ourselves.” (Mann) And what we end up in our jars of life is too much sand, and not enough large stones, of what matters.
I finished reading this week a biography of Catherine the Great, the 18th century empress of Russia (and the last woman ruler of that country). Her road to the throne was rocky, and precarious, and in spite of her ambition, it wasn’t a sure thing that she would ever become the empress, and she suffered betrayal, deceit, and horrible treatment at the hands of her mother-in-law and her husband. She finally became empress, after a hostile take-over of her husbands rule as emperor. (It’s a very long story). Once she held the throne, she filled her courts with lush and imperial excesses, rewarding her supporters, building palaces encrusted with jewels, etc. She was a learned woman--a scholar of the Enlightenment, with a special penchant for Voltaire.
She was also complicated--for she wanted to reform Russia regarding the many serfs that were owned by nobility, the church, and the state, in order to give them freedom.
A noble cause which never came to fruition.
She also waged wars,
built cities,
amassed a huge european art collection of Rembrandts and Rubens--
She had it all.
Except for one thing.
The love of partner.
She had all of these affairs with men, called the “favorites”, but never did they live up to her simple expectations to be a companion, a friend, a confidant. Some of the relationships were incredibly co-dependent,
and this strong woman, acclaimed in all the western world,
would fall to pieces over the shallow relationships with her lovers.
You see, her jar was filled with sand first,
and there was no room for what mattered.
I felt so sad at the end of the story.
It’s really important to be sustained by what matters, rather than by accessories and acquisitions.
Back to the text.
After all of the people are fed,
Jesus goes off to pray alone on the mountainside, to feed himself, and also to avoid those in the crowd that wanted him to be king.
It doesn’t say what the disciples are doing, but the next thing we know, they are piled in a boat to go to the other side of the lake.
Don’t you wonder why the heck they didn’t wait for Jesus? Why did they leave him?
It is as if, in spite of being fed by Divine presence earlier in the day, they have forgotten what is important. It doesn’t seem to occur to them to go and look for Jesus before they leave.
But, Jesus didn’t forget them. Jesus shows up, in spite of the fact that one would think by now that the doofy disciples would know what matters.
We all are doofy sometimes. We forget. We drag jars of sand around, abandoning all attempts to fit in what is important, because we just can’t save ourselves.
And that’s where our faith comes in, our community, and the Divine. To remind us of what is sustaining--so that when we find ourselves in the storms of life, we will have the fragments of what is more than enough and filling--the Bread of Life.
3
Which circles back to the stones in the jar, because the stones in the jar are the greatest gifts of the Bread of Life to you—that which sustains and gives life and is life.
May your jar be filled with big stones.
Amen.
*Adult Children's Time given by Patrick O’Reilly.
(**The #### represents improvisation on the piano)
I was walking on a beach when I saw this young man ####
I said hello and saw that he had a pile of stones – big ones and small ones, so I asked what he was making
“Well the stones are LIFE” he replied ####
OK – at this point I know I should just keep walking but I say – “What?” ###
“Come closer” he invited. ###
The man had a few bowls in front of him. He took some large stones and said – “The large stones represent the important things in your life. Family, faith, caring and loving others.” And he put the large stones in one of the jars.####
“Looks kind of full” I said.
“Look again”– and he took the smaller stones and they dribbled among the large stones. #### “The small stones represent things in your life that are of lesser importance.”
“That kind of fills it up”, I said.
He held up his hand, which was filled with sand, and I watched it fill in the spaces between the stones.####
“The sand represents the unimportant things in life” -####
As I was thinking about this, he showed me a jar that was mostly filled with sand – he said, this is what happens when you fill your life with things that are unimportant. And as he tried to put in the large stones, he said, “You cannot fit in the things are are really important. But it is so easy to fill your life with sand, isn't it?
Now, which represents your life?? ####
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