If you are picking up an Agatha Christie and you are impatient you’ll turn to the last page of the novel to find the answer. But of course first of all you have to know the question, which in an Agatha Christie book is “Who was the murderer”.By the end of this morning sermons I hope to answered three questions
- Why do we bring up the bread and wine from the back at the Offertory?
- What is heaven like?
and
- What does God prefer - a big splash and a big fanfare, or big results done quietly?
Firstly - What is heaven like? A strange question to ask (you might think) when we have just heard the parable of the Feeding of the Five thousand. If you did one of those vox pops video things asking people on the streets “What’s heaven like?”, you would probably get things about floating around on fluffy clouds with wings and harps or perhaps a garden with streams and beautiful sunsets.
Neither of those are what Jesus says heaven is like. The biggest thing Jesus compares heaven to is a party - what theologians (who like long words) call “the eschatological banquet”- but which basically means just a feast, a party, a celebration.
look at Jesus’s parables - Luke 14 or Matthew 22 - the Kingdom of God is like a great feast - perhaps a wedding feast - and the king invites hundreds of people but they all say no - so instead he invites the poor and the lame and those who could never expect to go to party and they feast and celebrate together. Matthew 25 - the parable of the ten bridesmaids and they are waiting for the groom, Those who are unprepared and haven’t bought enough oil miss out but those whose lamps are lit go and share in the wedding party. Luke 15 - the Prodigal Son comes home - and what does the Father do? He slays the fatted calf and throws a party with food and music and dancing. Earlier in Luke 15 the woman who’s lost her coin, the farmer who has lost it’s sheep - each finds it and throws a party.
Jesus models this in his ministry - Jesus goes to the wedding at Cana in Galilee and makes sure the wine doesn’t run out. On other occasions Jesus parties with the scum of society - tax collectors and workers in the red light district. In effect Jesus is being like the King who invites those who would never normally get invited to a feast. In all this Jesus isn’t just doing this because (as the Pharisees accused him) he likes a good time. Jesus is doing this to model what heaven is like.
On so on a hillside surrounded by “five thousand men, besides women and children too” - surrounded by perhaps 15,000 hungry people - Jesus took… blessed … broke …. and gave out the loaves and the fishes. “and all ate and were filled” - these people, many of whom struggled to get a decent meal from one meal to the next - “all ate and were filled” - and indeed there’s so much food that there’s twelve baskets of leftovers, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Jesus isn’t just doing because he saw some hungry people and felt compassion with them. As with every miracle of Jesus, its about a snapshot of heaven, a tit bit of heaven, breaking into our world to show us what heaven is like. Each miracle is like the movie trailer, showing us what the blockbuster is going to be like.
Jesus took … blessed … broke … and gave out the loaves and the fishes. And if those words sound familiar it’s because the Gospel writers intend them to. {9.45 - where have you heard those words before?} The mass too is meant to be a trailer for heaven. It’s a party to show us what the party in heaven will be like.
And in order to feed these people - Jesus takes what the disciples have got “we have nothing here but five loaves and two fishes”. In Matthew’s version the disciples take the credit for the loaves and fishes. In John’s version we see perhaps the reality - when no one else is helping a little boy comes forward and says “you can have my packed lunch if you want”.
Jesus - fully human and fully God - If he could create the Big Bang and call the laws of physics into existence creating Quasars and Galaxies and stars and planets - does he need a little boy’s lunch to feed 15,000 people? Can’t he create it from nothing? Of course he can, but he chooses not to.
And here we learn why we bring up bread and wine from the back of church at the offertory. Just like a grown up who helps a child make something though of course the adult could do it all on their own, or the pianist who plays a duet with a child who can play little more than chopsticks, the pianist filling in a beautiful tune around it - so God, out of his delight for us, takes what we have and works with us.
He takes the littles boys lunch and feeds 15,000 people, He takes our gifts of bread and wine and transforms it into the body and blood of Christ. In some Orthodox churches, a member of the congregation each week will bake the bread that is then offered in the mass - God, out of his delight for us, takes what we have and works with us.
There is an offertory prayer in the Church of England’s Common Worship that goes “All that we have is yours and of your own do we give you.”
And the final question - Does God prefer a big splash and a big fanfare or big results done quietly?
5,000 people are fed - yet we don’t see an enormous mound of food growing in front of Jesus. Rather the food multiplies as it is given out. It is only as the baskets and baskets of leftovers are gathered up that it is clear what a big miracle has occurred.
Across the country this morning just under a million people will be worshipping in Church of England churches. And that’s not including the ones who missed it this week but will be here next week. Or the Anglicans in Scotland Wales or Northern Ireland. Or the other denominations - Roman Catholics, Baptists, Greek Orthodox, Pentecostals, Methodists and more.
Each month churchgoers do 23.2 million hours of voluntary service in the local community and raise £51.7 million for charities other than the church - almost twice what BBC’s children in Need raised.
[source - Church of Englandd's website]
Of course - you don’t hear much about it - but that is the way God chooses to work - with big results rather than a big fanfare.
