Being Wrong, Putting it Right

 

Our Gospel reading this morning is a very odd sort of story, isn't it?
Here we have Jesus telling his disciples that what goes into your mouth doesn't matter, it's what comes out of it –
what you say, even, perhaps, what you think –
that matters.
And then he goes and says something that everybody, certainly today and, I suspect, throughout a great deal of history, finds incredibly offensive.

Well, the first bit is easy enough to understand.
Jews and Muslims both have very strict dietary rules, and believe that breaking them makes you unclean, and unfit to be in God's presence.
And they also have strict rules about washing yourself before worship,
being clean on the outside before, one hopes, being made clean within.

But Jesus was able to see, as his followers couldn't,
that what you eat doesn't actually matter.
Many of the rules –
about not eating pig, or shellfish, for instance –
made sense in an era where there was no way of refrigerating food.
Eating them might give you a tummy-upset,
but it wouldn't be the end of the world if you did.
What goes into your mouth, says Jesus, eventually passes through and comes out the other end, but what comes out –
well, that just shows what kind of a person you are!

And then a few days later –
we don't know the exact date, that wasn't the kind of thing that the first gospel-writers thought important –
a few days later he's off in a non-Jewish region, and he is so incredibly rude to the woman who comes begging for healing.
What is going on?

Of course, the traditional explanation is that he was testing her.
Well, that may or may not be the case, I don’t know, but it’s what people often say because it’s what they think Jesus is like.

The difficulty is, of course, that we can't hear the tone of voice he was speaking in.
Did he snap at her, which is a bit what it sounds like?
He had ignored her for some time until the disciples asked him to deal with her or send her away.
Was he trying to be funny?
I wonder how you “hear” him in your head when you read this passage, or one of its parallels.

I tend to hear him as being thoughtful, trying to work it out.
You see, in the time and place when he was brought up,
he would have learnt to assume that the Jews were God's chosen people, and nobody else mattered.
Some things, it would appear, given the situation in Gaza today, never change.
But the point is, Jesus didn't know any better,
which I think today's Israelis ought to.

It might sound strange to say “Jesus didn't know”, because after all, He is God, he is omnipotent and so on.
But we believe –
or at least we say we do –
that He is also fully human.
Unlike the various gods and goddesses of Greek myth,
he wasn't born already adult,
springing fully formed from his father's forehead, or something.
He was born as a baby.

Think about it a minute.
A baby.
Babies are so helpless when they are born; they rely on us, their parents, to do everything for them.
And they gradually grow and learn –
first to sit up,
then to begin to play with objects,
chewing them as well as fiddling with them.
And gradually to pull themselves to standing, and to walk, and so on.
And Jesus had to do the same.
He will probably have chewed on Mum's wooden spoon when his teeth were coming through, and when he was of the age to put everything in his mouth –
and later, he will have discovered that it makes a lovely noise when you bang it on the table,
and have to learn that not everybody enjoys that noise!

And so on.
He had to learn.
We are told he grew in learning and wisdom.
Remember the time when he was a teenager and got so engrossed in studying the Scriptures that he stayed behind in the Temple when everybody else had packed up and gone home –
and then, when his parents were understandably cross,
he said “Oh, you don't understand!”
Typical teenager –
and, of course, Jesus was learning the whole time about the Scriptures,
about who God is,
and, arguably, maybe a tiny bit about who He was.

And here, perhaps, he is learning again.
We can't rely on the Gospel-writers' timelines,
they tend to put episodes down when it suits their narrative.
And here is Jesus, perhaps having slipped away for a few days' break into Tyre and Sidon,
where he was less likely to be disturbed than in Galilee.
And then this woman comes and will not go away.

We don't know anything about her, other than that she was a foreigner –
Mark says she was Syro-Phoenician, Matthew, here, calls her a Canaanite.
Either way, she was basically Not Jewish.
An outsider.

You know, the Bible is full of stories about outsiders coming to know and trust Jesus!
Just off the top of my head you have the centurion whose servant was healed, the other centurion who Peter went to after his dream to tell him it was okay to do so,
and the Ethiopian treasury official.
Oh, and Onesimus, Philemon's slave.
Philemon himself, come to that, but I think by the time the letter was written, it was becoming more widely accepted that non-Jews could be Christians, as well as Jews.

But at the time, these people were outsiders.
No good Jew would have anything to do with them.
And Jesus ignores the woman, until his disciples ask him to get rid of her.
And even then, he doesn't heal her daughter.
Instead, “It's not right to take the children's meat and give it to the dogs!”

But I wonder.
Do you remember the wedding at Cana, which we are told is his first recorded miracle?
And his mother came to him and said “Disaster!
They've run out of wine!”
His first reaction was basically, “So what?
What's that got to do with me?”
but then he went and got the servants to fill those huge amphorae
and the water turned into wine.
He changed his mind.
His first reaction was not to do anything, but if there is one thing
he appears to have learnt, it is to listen to the promptings of the Spirit.

And in this case, too.
The woman, consciously or not, said exactly the right thing:
“But even the puppies are allowed the crumbs that fall from the children's table!”

And to Jesus, that was God's answer.
Yes, he could and should heal this woman's daughter.
So he did.
With the comment that right then, her faith was probably greater than his!

You know, the first time I heard this sort of interpretation of this story,
my immediate reaction was “No way!”
Jesus couldn't be like that –
he couldn't have got things wrong!
You may be thinking the exact same thing, and I really wouldn't blame you!

But, you know, it wouldn't go away.
Like a sore place in one’s mouth, or something,
I kept on thinking about it and thinking about it.
Why was this so totally alien to my mental image of Jesus?

Then I realised that, of course, it was because I was confusing “being perfect” with “never being wrong”.
There’s a difference between being mistaken and sinning!
And, as I said, Jesus had to be born as a human baby, to learn, to grow.
And he may well have learnt, consciously or unconsciously, that as a Jew,
he was one of the Chosen, and thus superior to everybody else.
But he had already learnt, as we found in the first part of our reading,
that keeping the Jewish Law wasn't what made you clean or unclean –
so perhaps it wasn't such a huge leap to discover that being Jewish or not didn't actually matter.
God still loved and cared for you, whoever you were.

And in the end, I found this thought very liberating.
It made Jesus far more human.
I realised that, while I had always paid lip-service to the belief that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, in fact, I’d never really believed in his humanity!
For me, he had always been a plaster saint, absolutely perfect,
never making a mistake,
never even being tempted.
I realised I’d envisaged him overcoming those temptations the gospel-writers talk about with a wave of his hand, not really tempted at all.
But, of course, it wasn’t like that!
St Paul tells us that he was tempted “in every way that we are”,
and if that doesn’t include really, really, really wanting to do it,
then it wasn’t temptation!

But if Jesus could be mistaken,
if he sometimes had to change his mind,
if being perfect didn’t necessarily mean never being wrong,
then that changed everything!
Suddenly, Jesus became more human, more real than ever before.
The Incarnation wasn’t just something to pay lip-service to, it was real.
Jesus really had been a human being, with human frailties,
just like you and me.
He had had to learn, and to grow, and to change.
Suddenly, it was okay not to get everything right first time;
it was okay not to be very good at some things;
it was okay to make mistakes.

And, what’s more, it meant that the Jesus who had died on the cross for me wasn’t some remote, distant figure whom I could aim at but never emulate, but almost an ordinary person,
someone I might have liked had I known him in the flesh,
someone I could identify with.

As I have frequently said, these Sundays in Ordinary Time are when what we think we believe comes up against what we really believe.
Do we really believe that Jesus, as well as being divine, was also human?
Do we think of him as having had to learn, to grow, to change.
Do we think of him as having made mistakes,
having to change his mind, having to –
to repent, if you like, since that basically means changing one's mind
because one realises one is wrong?

And if that is so, if Jesus is not some remote plaster saint, but a human being just like us –
how does that change things?
How does that change our relationship with Him?
And how does it change things when we make a mistake?

Feeding the Five Thousand

 

Introduction

Poor Jesus was having a very bad day.

In fact, a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

He had just learnt that his cousin John had been killed by Herod, and he badly wanted to get away by himself to talk to God about it, and to begin to come to terms with it.

He did manage to get away a bit later, and when he was feeling more peaceful, he walked across the water to rejoin the disciples.

But right now, he hasn't had a chance to get away by himself,
He went across the lake in a boat, but the crowds walked round
and because Jesus was nice like that he gave up all thoughts of going off by himself for a bit, and he healed the sick people, and I expect he taught them a bit, too.

It was getting dark, and the disciples know that Jesus really needed to eat,
and they could use a break themselves,
so they try to get him to make everyone go away.
But they've all followed Jesus further away from town than they meant, and it would be rather a long way to go back without a breather first, and some food.
But there is no food –
and nowhere to buy any,
even if they could have afforded it.
Just five loaves and two fish.
In some of the other gospels, we learn that this belonged to a small boy, who had shyly come up to Andrew and offered to share his lunch with Jesus, although Matthew doesn’t mention this.
But it appears that this was all the food there was.

Of course, I don't suppose it was all the food there was, not really.
After all, there were mothers in the crowd,
mothers with small children.
They would have made sure they were well-provisioned for the day.
Probably many of the men had lunchboxes
or whatever they carried their food in;
certainly the children would have.
Mothers do tend to see to it that their families are provisioned,
and few people would go out for the day without some sort of arrangements for a meal!

But it was, so we are told, a small boy who was the catalyst,
who offers his lunch.
And Jesus takes it,
gives thanks,
breaks it,
and shares it.
And everyone has enough food,
and there are twelve basketsful left over.
Enough for each of the disciples to take a basket of food home to Mum.

Before we think about what this story means, and why it’s still important, I want us to listen to a video I found which tells this story through puppets.

Did you enjoy that?
I did!
But we need to look at the story, and what it tells us.
I think it tells us something about Jesus,
something about God the Father,
and something about ourselves.

2. Something About Jesus
So what does the story tell us about Jesus?
This sort of food-stretching isn't unique to him, you know!
It happens in the Old Testament, too.
Elijah goes to stay with the Widow of Zarephath during a famine and promises that her oil and flour won't run out if she will feed him, too.
Which she does,
and it doesn't.

Elisha, Elijah's successor,
performs a miracle very like Jesus',
making 20 barley loaves stretch to feed 100 people, with some left over.
Which mightn't sound too bad to us, but those loaves were only about the size of a hamburger bun –
and if you were only given 1/5 of a bun,
you might well want to complain that it wasn't quite enough!

So this kind of miracle was something that prophets did.
You might have noticed that John doesn't tend to record Jesus' miracles unless they teach us something about who Jesus is.
So on one level, in John’s gospel, the story shows that Jesus was not only a prophet like Elisha, but something greater.

And did you notice something else?
Jesus took the food,
gave thanks,
broke it
and shared it.
Doesn't that sound awfully familiar?
Doesn't that sound like something we do some Sundays,
those Sundays we have a Communion service?

So the story is saying something about who Jesus is;
it is showing us that Jesus is not only a prophet,
he is more than a prophet.

3. Something About God the Father
Then secondly, the story tells us something about God the Father.
You see, Jesus says elsewhere that he only does what he sees his Father doing.
And one of the things that always strikes me about this story,
when I read it,
is the amount left over.
Twelve basketsful.

As I said earlier, enough for each of the disciples to take a basket home to Mum!

It isn't that there was just enough food to keep everyone going until they got home.
It isn't that there was enough for everyone to have a decent meal.
There was enough for everyone to have a decent meal and still have masses left over!

That seems to be so typical of Jesus, though.
When he turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana,
he made enough wine to stock a young off-licence,
never mind be enough for a few guests at the tag-end of a party.
And when people were healed,
they were healed!
He made a proper job of it,
even if it took him two goes.

It's typical of Jesus, and it's typical of God.
I mean, look at the sort of extravagance we see in the natural world –
all those desert flowers, for instance,
and nobody knew they were there.
All those stars,
all those universes.....

This story, with the twelve basketsful left over,
reminds us that God is generous to the point of extravagance.
And also, it was Jesus who broke the bread and shared it out.
He did the serving.
It was Jesus,
elsewhere in John's gospel,
who kneels with towel and basin,
washing the disciples' feet.
It was Jesus who said of himself,
"The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve."

So this story helps to remind us that God longs
and longs
and longs
to give us, his children,
more good things than we can possibly handle.
God wants to serve us,
to heal us,
to make us whole,
to give us what we need –
not just grudgingly,
barely enough,
but pressed down, shaken together and running over!

4. Something About Us
But the third thing that this story tells us is something about us.
And I'm afraid that it isn't very flattering.
All those thousands of people –
five thousand men,
and maybe up to four times that number when you include the women and children –
all those people, and one, just one, was willing to share what he had!
One little boy who came up to Andrew and whispered, shyly,
"Jesus can have my lunch if he'd like".
Nobody else was willing to share.

Yet most people probably had more than they needed that day.
We tend to take along more food than we'll need, just in case.
And if we make a packed lunch for our family,
if they're going on an outing,
there's usually enough that we could share it,
if we wanted to,
without going hungry ourselves.

But the people in the crowd weren't willing to risk going hungry.
They weren't willing to share their food,
not even with Jesus and his disciples.
That was too great a risk.
Perhaps they wouldn't have minded missing lunch, for once,
but what about their children?

Incidentally, I'm aware that I'm sounding as though the sole source of food was from the crowd,
rather than from Jesus.
I rather suspect it was a case of "both, and" –
I'm perfectly certain that if the small boy's five loaves and two fishes were really all the food there was,
Jesus both could have and would have produced
a delicious meal for everyone from just that.
However, I find it almost impossible to believe that nobody else at all had brought any supplies with them!
Like so much of Christianity,
the truth is probably somewhere in between;
a case of "both, and", rather than "either, or".

The crowd was selfish.
Either they had come out without any food, or,
if they had brought food,
they weren't willing to share it.
Either way,
they expected Jesus to do something about it.
They weren't going to do anything.
They were going to hedge their bets,
to wait and see,
to look out for Number One.

And are we like that?
Well, yes, we are, some of the time, aren't we.
We can be extraordinarily selfish.
Look how just a quarter of the world consumes about seventy-five percent of the planet’s resources.
And even in our country, there are those of us who have plenty, and those who are reliant on the food banks to feed their children because their benefits simply won’t stretch far enough.
And if you are one of the ones who have enough, have you given anything to the food bank lately?
It’s easy enough to buy an extra tin of tuna or packet of ramen noodles and drop it in the bins the supermarkets all provide for such purposes.

We can be extraordinarily selfish,

and we can be extraordinarily faithless.
We can't offer more than ourselves to Jesus,
but how often do we offer even that?
The small boy offered what he had –
five loaves, and two fishes.
It wasn't much, but he had the courage to offer it.
Nobody else seems to have had the nerve.
But why not?

Partly, of course, it was selfishness and fear –
if I give my lunch to Jesus,
maybe I won't get any.
Maybe my kids won't get any.
I'm not going to offer;
I need what I have for myself.

But partly it was a different sort of fear.
Fear of rejection.
And that is one of the most difficult of all fears to overcome.
Been there,
done that,
read the book
bought the T-shirt
You don't go to Jesus with your five loaves and two fish because you're afraid he'll shriek with laughter and say
"Who on earth do you think you are!"
You don't go to Jesus and say
"Use me as you will",
because you're afraid he'll either send you off to work somewhere highly disagreeable,
like somewhere with a seriously nasty climate
far away from all your friends and family.
Or else we're afraid that he won't!
That he will say "Oh, I couldn't possibly use you!”
and sort of throw you aside like a used tissue.

But, you know, that's not God!
We've just seen how God longs and longs to be far more generous to us than we can possibly imagine.
And when we say "Use me as you will",
he says "Great!
Now, here's this present,
and do take some of that,
and are you sure you won't have any more of the other,
and you really need some of this, and...."
until you practically have to say,
"Hey, hang on, give me a chance to breathe!"

Oh, but, you are saying,
I've offered and offered and nothing has happened.
God doesn't want me!
Well, I have to ask two questions, then.
The first is, did you really mean your offering,
or did you pull it back as soon as you'd made it.
And the second question is,
are you sure God isn't helping you do exactly what you're meant to be doing right now?
Not all of us are called to spectacular tasks, or to go and work somewhere with a disagreeable climate, and so on.
Some of us are asked to stay right where we are, and be salt and light in our own families and communities.

Students are probably meant to be studying hard and waiting to see where the road leads to next.
Parents are probably meant to be making a safe home for their children.
The elderly are often such enormous lights to the rest of us –
we need you so much in our churches,
just for who you are and
what you have learnt about our dear Lord as you have followed him!

In fact, it's always safest to assume that God will want you to stay where you are, doing what you're doing.
If that should change, you can be quite sure you will know about it totally unmistakeably!
But God can't use you unless you offer yourself to him,
and he will use you if you do!
And if you hold back, whether from fear, or from selfishness, or from any other motive,
then not only do you prevent the Kingdom of God from going forward in the way God would like,
but you also cut yourself off from all the good things God wanted to give you!

5.Conclusion
I've gone on quite long enough for one morning!
But this story,
this central story,
of how Jesus fed a huge crowd,
does teach us that Jesus is greater even than Elijah and Elisha,
and does foreshadow the taking, blessing, breaking and sharing of bread that is so important to us.
It reminds us of how extravagantly generous God can be,
and how much he longs and longs to share that generosity with you and with me.
And it reminds us that all too often we can be selfish and afraid,
and hold back from offering what we have and who we are to Jesus.
So lets make an effort this morning to conquer our fear and selfishness, and to offer ourselves anew to the God whose response is always so infinitely greater than our terrified offerings. Amen.