The God Who Feeds Us - A Homily for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

A sermon preached by the Reverend Holly Huff at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on July 28, 2024, the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

It was a dark and stormy night, on the Sea of Galilee. Or it was about to be. Earlier in the day, we find Jesus on dry land, flooded by the large crowds following him as he heals the sick. He turns to Philip and asks, to my ear, a strange question. “How are we going to get all these people to turn around and go back home?” is about what I’d be asking at this point. Or maybe, if that seemed too difficult, “How are we going to dodge this crowd long enough to sneak out of here ourselves?” That’s my usual proclivity for distance and suspicion talking, of course. That’s why I don’t drive the bus. Jesus, the good shepherd, looks at those flocking around him with compassion, and an attentiveness to their needs. “Where are we going to buy bread for these people to eat?” he asks Philip. Jesus sees the gathered crowd not as a conglomerate faceless obstacle but as people, persons, each one beloved of God. He sees people who are hungry or about to be hungry, and he doesn’t dodge that concrete need. In his question to Philip he’s already taking responsibility, responding to the needs of those who have been following him, even those who’ve only just heard of him that afternoon.  

God loves us in our need and in our hunger. When we’re sick or scattered or grieving or distracted or faithless or otherwise unremarkable, limited, and human, God loves us and provides for us, just like that. Just like this. God loves real human beings, remember. Though we’re often trying to escape the human, God in Jesus is always coming to us in the reality of our fleshy human life just here, and calling us in the Spirit to receive him, just here, in the reality of our fleshy human life. Holy and broken and blessed, all at once.

In front of 5,000 hungry people, though, Philip and Andrew are stumped. Half my salary wouldn’t even get them each a bite!, Philip says cynically. It’s impossible. Andrew feebly names the little he sees—well, there’s this kid offering up 5 loaves and 2 fish, not that that would feed anyone here. After all, “what are they among so many people?” We can hear and perhaps recognize in Philip and Andrew’s responses a sense of futility in the face of the crowd, a hopelessness about the needs of the world which were then and are still incredibly real and beyond telling. I don’t have to tell you—we live in an astoundingly fragile world, a world that shelters us even as it suffers the murderous unseeing domination of war, hostility and terror in what we call public discourse, and ongoing environmental devastation: just this week we’ve experienced the hottest days in recorded history on this planet. A sense of futility in the face of the hungry crowd is not new nor particularly modern. The needs of the world have always been more than any one of us could meet. Who am I among so many people? Among so much pain?

Jesus steps into and toward this overwhelming need of the world. He has the weary crowds sit down, on the green grass that springs up to meet their aching feet in this desert place. He takes the loaves and the fishes from the anonymous boy whose small and earnest offering is accepted and blessed. He gives thanks, and then he moves through the crowd clumped like sheep on the grass to distribute the little pittance that under his hands have become a sacramental sign of abundance, of God’s plenty, good measure pressed down and overflowing. There is enough. And so he gives each person in that crowd bread and fish—as much as they wanted. The kingdom has come near; the glorious splendor of God’s radiant fullness shines through barley loaves and the catch of the day. There is enough, it does not run out, and hungry people are met and seen and known and fed. Divine provision comes to them, and as each person stretches out their hand, Jesus fills it, reaches their reaching, meets them in that bread-and-fish moment of need and desire. There is enough, enough and to spare. “Gather up the fragments, so nothing may be lost,” he says when all have eaten, and the disciples collect 12 beautiful baskets of leftover bread. 12 baskets, 12 tribes of Israel: the good shepherd will gather up all his people and none will be lost or left out. God’s radiant abundance attends to each one.

And God attends to each one particularly, brings mercy overflowing to us in the way we can receive it. I have celiac disease, so bread’s no good for me, not even miracle bread. This is inconvenient as a priest. It’s also inconvenient as a person eating meals I haven’t cooked myself. When I went on a retreat last year, I showed up with a suitcase containing enough clothes for the week, more than enough books for the week, and a whole pantry of supplemental gluten-free noodle cups and canned tuna and the like, just in case there wasn’t anything I could eat. I had filled out the dietary needs portion of the registration form but I hate to put people to trouble just for me, and, such was the state of my faith in people, I didn’t think they could really do it. I have never been so delightfully wrong. The cooks at Snowmass, Jan and Jill, were twin sisters, now in their 50s, and they had grown up there and learned to cook for retreats from their mother, who they’d taken over from when it was time. Not “just” the cooks, these women were steeped in prayer and formed in hospitality. They led many of the prayer sessions and always made the mile-long trek down to the monastery for mass in the morning no matter the weather. Each gorgeous vegetarian meal seemed to me the best lunch I had ever had, no, the best dinner I’d ever had, or maybe this lunch! And they made sure there was always something I could eat, not canned tuna but something lovely. They often went to extra lengths to make an extra pot of soup or another dish of noodles just for me. Just as nourishing to me as the food was that it didn’t hurt them to do this for me, to take extra care. They wanted to, actually, there was a quiet joy and vitality in their hospitality and attention to each member of the retreat group and their particular needs. One afternoon during a break I watched either Jan or Jill (Twins—always together, always laughing, and I couldn’t tell them apart!) tromp outside into the snow with a pot of leftover quinoa in hand, which they’d made just for me at lunch. There was plenty, more than I could begin to eat. But nothing was wasted, nothing was lost. Either Jan or Jill took a ladle and started flinging the quinoa out into the snow and the bushes, in wide sticky arcs. It was birdseed now, laid out in front of the big picture window at the retreat center, and even as I watched a magpie arrived to hop little scritches in the snow, lofted by its long flat tail bouncing off the ice like a helicopter touching down.

The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord,

and you give them their food in due season.

You open wide your hand

and satisfy the needs of every living creature.

It is God’s nature and God’s good pleasure to tend to our needs, with a provision that does not run out, and a splendor that is never wasted. God’s glorious abundance is beyond telling in words, but God is bringing it to us to touch and receive, just as Jesus makes his way through the crowd to each one with barley loaves and fish. 

Later that night he comes to the disciples in the dark, saying “It is I; do not be afraid.” His gift in the dark is presence. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” Christ’s presence comes to us abundant and full, presence itself answering the depth of our need more than even miraculous healing and feeding. The world is still fragile and hurting. Yet he comes to the disciples at night, walking on the rough seas, in the dark, as the strong wind blows. He comes near to them. Clambers into their rickety boat, and stays with them. “It is I; do not be afraid.” “I will not leave you or forsake you.” Across all breadth and length and height and depth he comes to us. Let us each by grace find room in our hearts to receive him, as we come to this Eucharistic table and as we respond to the needs of our neighbor. Stretch out your hand!

Amen.