A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus crossed the Sea Of Galilee onto the shore of Tiberias, that's going east away from Capernaum. And a vast crowd kept following him because they saw the signs that he was performing for the sick. In other words, curing them. They had good health insurance in him.
Jesus then went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now this is on the other side of the lake. The Jewish feast of Passover was near when Jesus looked up and caught sight of the vast crowd that had followed him. Now remember, they had to go walk around the northern part of the lake. So seeing the crowd, our lord said to Philip, where shall we buy enough bread for all of these people to eat?
And in parentheses, he knew well what he intended to do, but he asked this to test Philip's response. Philip replied, not even with two hundred days wages could we buy bread enough to give each of these people a mouthful. Now one of Jesus' disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, remarked to Jesus, there's a let a boy here who has five barley loaves, a couple of dried fish. But what good is that for a multitude like this? Jesus said, get the people to 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. Jesus then took the loaves of bread, gave thanks, passed them around to those sitting on the ground. And he did this very same thing with the dried fish as much as the people wanted, and they probably were very hungry after that long walk around the lake, believe me. When they had had enough, Jesus said to his disciples, gather up all the crusts that are left over so that nothing shall go to waste. At this, the apostles gathered 12 baskets full of pieces left over by those who had been fed with five barley loaves and a couple of fish.
When the people saw the sign that he had performed, in other words, he had fed without any trouble, a free meal. They began to say, this is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come into the world. At that, Jesus realized realized that they would come and carry him off and forcibly make him king. So he fled back to the mountain alone. The gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. I wanna talk about the crowd, the public. My late friend Horace put it this way, And that translated in the vernacular is, I hate the vulgar crowd. And Archie. I keep them at a distance.
I ask you to remember Caesar, that that play that, you know, a guy named Shakespeare wrote, at his funeral, Brutus's speech. How one gets up, he says, I have come not to praise Caesar but to bury him. So he gives a very favorable and everybody claps and applauds. Caesar's a great guy. The other senator gets up, who hated Caesar, probably had a in his death, gives the opposite suit.
So the crowd then goes over to the other one. They hate Caesar. Look at our blessed lord. Look at the day why do these people follow him? Because they got his good health insurance.
What's the main thing we're interested in this country now? Health insurance for everybody. And here's a man who who gives you not only health insurance, curing your sick, but he feeds you for free a free lunch. Who wouldn't wanna make that guy a king? So they wanna make him king.
They wanna eat. They wanna have good health. How much later was it when the crowd says, don't give us give us Well, then Pilate says, what are we gonna do with the Christ who says he's the Messiah? And you know what they said, crucify. Crucify.
The crowd, the hoi polloi, the vulgar crowd, the lynching mob. That's how they sway. They eat and they like the two main things, good health and food, feed, fun and games. Odie, profanum, bogus, and archie. I keep them at a distance.
They put the very first night I was in the seminary, I never I I don't remember much about it. But I remember that very first night very well because what the what the priest said, father Hoag, who was president, was so startling to me because I've been in the boarding school for about eight years. Now here's this fine elegant gentleman. It's our first night back. It was my first night, the evening in the seminary.
And what was the subject of his talk that night? That when you live a community life, it pulls you down. Pulls you down. And he gave us a stirring talk that we must resist that. You can he didn't use this example, but you can take a barrel of good apples and put one bad one in there, and the good apples don't make the bad one better.
But the rotten apple destroys the others. So this lesson, this, the way the crowd treated Christ, it's typical of human beings. It's typical of what human beings could do. You've heard a lot about the well, you couldn't miss it yesterday or the day before or the day before, dedication of the Jewish for the Holocaust Museum. But you see, there's a point to this.
Let us admit the enlightenment. Let us admit good old Rousseau. The fact is human beings can be bad. Put them together and they generally are bad. I've often thought when we used to have when there was these lynching, but they talked about a mob.
Usually, was a handful of people who actually did the lynching. The I would wager in most instances, if those if that crowd or the group or whatever you wanna talk the lynching, they call them a mob. But it's usually just a handful of people, really, who who are the leaders. Take them singly. Would any one of them lynch do the lynching?
But put them all together and they certainly do. This has been proved experimentally. And so let us why do we follow Christ? That's the question I wanna ask you. Why do you individually follow Christ?
What do you expect to get out of it? Why do you do it? Why do you make why you walk around the lake, a hill a long walk? Why do you go hungry? Why do why do you do it?
To be fulfilled, to be comfortable, to keep you civilized, or what why? Why do you follow Christ? Good question, and you ought to be able to answer it. In the name of the father, of the son, holy spirit. Amen.