by CCW | 15 March 2015 17:39
John’s account of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness contains this wonderful little detail. “Now there was much grass in the place.” No. Not that kind of grass! But it is wonderful to think about the approach of spring and to think that somehow under the mountains and mountains of snow that surround us there just might be green grass! How wonderful, too, to think of a picnic in the wilderness!
It is a marvellous story within the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel which is known as the “Bread of Life” discourse. It is read in the midst of the journey of Lent and signals a moment of refreshment in the course of the disciplines of Lent. Discipline is about learning and so too this story is about teaching. The teaching is the feeding; food for our souls and minds. What is it about? Simply this. God provides for us in the wilderness journeys of our lives. The feeding in the wilderness looks back to the wilderness journeys of the Exodus when Israel learns how to live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and is provided with “manna from heaven” and “water from a stricken rock,” all their kvetching and complaining notwithstanding. The story also looks ahead to the Passion of Christ, to the Passover meal with his disciples on the night in which he is betrayed. There he identifies himself with the bread and the wine of the Passover meal on the night when Israel departs from Egypt.
The story is profoundly symbolic and sacramental. In the Christian Mass, Communion or Eucharist, to use three common terms for the central event of Christian worship, bread and wine, themselves the results of human interaction with the things of nature – wheat and grapes – become by the Word of God the means of our union with God, the body and blood of Christ. In terms of the Christian understanding of Lent, we journey to God and with God. It is really about learning to live in communion with God and with one another.
So much is made of so little – a few small loaves and a few fishes. Sharing, of course, is always a kind of miracle. Even more, Jesus commands the disciples to “gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost” and what is gathered up fills twelve baskets: one for each of the tribes of Israel; one for each of the apostles of the Christian Church. In a way, we live from the crumbs which fall from the heavenly table of divine love and it is always more and better than what we can imagine.
A story which points back to the Exodus and ahead to the Passion suggests something more. The Sundays in Lent, we have noted, prepare us for the intense events of Holy Week. This Gospel story anticipates and prepares us for the events of Maundy Thursday, for the Passover meal of Jesus with his disciples where he anticipates his death and provides for us in identifying himself with the bread and the wine of the Passover meal. This helps us to understand the great cry of faith, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.” It helps us to understand the radical meaning of Christ’s feeding of the multitude in the wilderness. The key element in John’s Gospel is his taking the loaves and giving thanks and then distributing to the disciples. The key point is the act of giving thanks. It signals Christ’s eucharist in the wilderness, for the word is about the great thanksgiving and reminds us here and now at Christ Church that in the Holy Eucharist we are fed and nourished with the spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ and find ourselves in communion with the Blessed Trinity.
Such is the radical meaning of the refreshment on this day which is variously known as Refreshment Sunday, Laetare Sunday, or Mothering Sunday, a wonderful collocation of images which make no sense whatsoever apart from the classical lectionary in its provisions of this epistle and gospel. But we shall get our cake and eat it, too! Thanks to Jacoba!
How the Scriptures are read is one of the critical questions for our age. How to read them with the mind of those who not only wrote them but those who gathered them into the shape of what we call the Canon of Scripture? This Gospel story has not only been read for centuries upon centuries in the season of Lent for reasons which I hope are perfectly clear but it was also read again just before the season of Advent; in other words at the end of the Trinity Season. Our Canadian Prayer Book in 1959 changed that reading to another passage in John’s Gospel. Nonetheless, there is a simple and profound logic at work in this story and in the way in which it has been read.
We are fed in the wilderness journeys of our lives but at the end of the journey there is a gathering up of all that remains that nothing be lost. The deeper meaning of God’s providing for us is signaled here. Much, much, more is made out of very little and nothing, nothing is lost because everything has its meaning with God.
There is green grass indeed, the green grass that belongs to the spring of our souls in communion with Christ who feeds us and nourishes us and provides for us more than we can ever desire or deserve. We are fed from the crumbs which fall from the picnic in the wilderness and is more than enough to sustain us in our lives. We live from him who lives for us.
Fr. David Curry
Lent IV, 2015
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