A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus crossed the Sea Of Galilee to the shore of Tiberias. Of course, this is now going back into his lifetime before his passion and so forth. Now a vast crowd kept following Jesus because they saw the signs that he was performing for the sick. Jesus then went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples.
The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus looked up and caught sight of a vast crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, where shall we buy bread for all these people to eat? Jesus knew well enough what he intended to do, but he asked this to test Philip's response. Well, Philip replied, not even with two hundred days wages could we buy bread enough to give each person even a mouthful. Now that they must have been a big crowd of people, and they'd gone around the lakeside so that they were pretty hungry.
One of Jesus' disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, remarked to Jesus, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and a couple of dried fish. But what good is that for all of these people? Jesus said, have the people sit down. Now even though the men numbered about 5,000, there was plenty of grass for them to find a place on the ground. And Jesus then took the loaves of bread, gave thanks, and passed them around to those reclining.
He did the same with the dried fish as much as the people wanted. When they had had enough, Jesus said to his do to to do that. They disciples were pieces left over by those who had been fed with five barley loaves. When the people saw the sign that Jesus had performed, they began to say, this is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come into the world. At that, Jesus realized that they would come and carry him off and make him king.
So he fled back to the mountain alone. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Again, it's no coincidence that this particular excerpt from Saint John's gospel has been put and presented to us at this time along with the this excerpt from the acts of the apostles.
So you have this parallelism running through it. Now this is one of the outstanding miracles of our Lord's life, this feeding of the 5,000 notice it says men. Well, if you know there were if there were 5,000 men, there were a couple of women there too, you know. So this was a this was a crowd of people. And if they got to that side if they got to the eastern side of the lake, they had to go around the northern end.
There weren't many seven four sevens running in those days. So this is a very mysterious and a very dramatic incident in our lord's life. One of the most significant items in it is the reaction of the people. They got a good, hefty, free meal from this very extraordinary man. So what do they do want with him?
They wanna keep him. They get a heck of a lot more free meals. So they want him to make him and make him king. So they'll so they'll eat without work, without labor. He will feed them.
Everybody wants something for nothing. And you see Jesus' popularity was based if if that's all the popularity he had, it was worth just what the popularity of a of a person in public life today is worth. All you have to do is to promise people the world. And for some reason, they'll think they'll get it, and maybe they will get pieces of it. Now the the thing about this is what actually happened there?
Now I've referred to this incident more than once, and it's a it's out out of my personal experience, where you have a young minister going to his to to an older man. This is out of the Valley Of decision, very, very fine novel written about the steel industry of The United States. And he says to his to the older man, how do I explain this to the people, this particular wonderful action of our lord? So the older man said, there's no problem there. No problem.
All that happened was this, the people were there and there and some of them were thoughtful enough to bring some food with them. So all that Christ did was to take up to take these loaves and the few fish and hold them up and suggested to the people that they share what they had. And so when the people all dug down into their traveling bags and pulled out the food they had, they discovered they had enough to pass it all around everybody. So you see, the miracle turns out to be not any multiplication of loaves and fishes. Oh, no.
The miracle is the giving, the communicating, the sharing, you see. Well, I gave a public review of this book and I'd had no idea that in the audience was the author, a very her name her name was Turnbull, a very fine person. So, of course, I sort of went into that idea that that this eliminates the miracle part, you see. But here you have this this modern Gnosticism where you see people say what matters isn't whether Christ ever had a personal contact with Mary, the sinner, whoever whatever it was, the woman taken in adultery. It what whether that actually happened or not is not important.
The thing is it shows Christ's attitude towards sin. See, this is very very lofty religion. It's not the grubby vulgar type when you're just going to thump your chest and say, my god, I committed adultery. Forgive me. See, that's kind of vulgar.
This is the lofty. This is the religion of the elite. This is the religion of the Arians. This is the religion of the Donatists. This is the religion of the Maniches.
All down the centuries, you have this, and we still come back to Jesus Christ. He was grubby. Christ was grubby. Look where look where he went. Look where he died.
He didn't die in a hygienic hospital room, you know. He didn't even die in a bed. He didn't even die on the street. And so we come back to what happened here. Did something happen?
By that I mean, did were there multiplication of frozen fishes or not? To me, that's the issue. And if it didn't actually happen, then what are we dealing with? Fiction? Well, I I I can I can do a little bit with fiction, but I like to know when it's fiction and when I'm reading history?
Now this is one of the most important miracles of Our Lord's life because this precedes directly the promise of our lord, I will give you my body to eat and I will give you my blood to drink. This particular miracle. This multiplication of the loaves and fishes precedes that. And I think you've got in Saint John, and I think you have to hold these things together. It's not a coincidence.
A man wrote this book. He had some sense. He he was putting it together to say something. Something. And so this miracle cannot be eliminated by simply giving you some kind of a highfaluting fictional interpretation where you eliminate the grubby fact that there were a large multitude of people who were hungry and fatigued and weary and needed food, and that Christ multiplied a few loaves of bread and a few fish and fed the multitude and then took up baskets of food left over.
You see, very recently, very recently, I had a a religious minded person, uncouthy said, how can you say that that you drink the blood of Christ? I said, you know, I didn't say that. Christ said that. They were amazed. They said, where's that?
Said, it's in Saint John. Said, well, that that's awful. I said, you're absolutely right. It is awful. Who can believe it?
And his disciples walked no longer with him. They couldn't believe it. So let's let us not be nonchalant about this. The church is presenting this for our encouragement, for our perseverance. We we are we proclaim a tremendous truth that Jesus Christ died for us and left us the sacrament of his own body and blood.
If he was not afraid to say drink it and eat it, why should I hesitate? Why should I hesitate to say my lord and my god before the host and the chalice? In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.