This sermon is based on (Matthew 14), (Mark 6), (Luke 9), and (John 6).
It is Jesus who blesses the loaves and the fishes, but it is the disciples who give the food to the crowd. And it's only whilst they're undertaking that distribution that the miracle happens. Jesus blesses the gifts that they've brought, but it is they, the disciples, who put the blessing into action. Jesus looks up to heaven and breaks the loaves. The miracle happens as the disciples distribute the food.
It's once the apostles take responsibility for their own actions and capacities, for their own potential and power, that they suddenly realise they have 12 baskets full of leftovers.
The message of the miracle seems to be this. God gives abundantly of his grace. He provides and blesses and equips and nurtures his people. But he sometimes needs us to act on that in order for it to become a miracle.
There comes a point when we have to roll up our sleeves and do something in response to God's gift. It's when we collaborate with him that five loaves and two fish can become a miraculous feast. Well, what does that look like for us? Now you can take this dynamic that we see in today's gospel and apply it to almost any area of the life of the body of Christ.
God blesses his church with the resources that we need for a feast. But he needs us real flesh men and women to cooperate with him to make it all happen. They need a human face to make the love of God real. So Jesus's challenge to us is this. I think he's already given us the loaves and the fishes that we need.
But what is the action that he needs from you? From you that will turn that into a feast. How can you contribute to making his love seem more real ? What can you do with your time and your resources that helps usher in the kingdom of God?
The gospel starts off by telling us that after the death of John the Baptist, Jesus went off to a desolate place. Not just a lonely place, but a desolate place.
He wanted to grieve the loss of his cousin and friend John the Baptist. He wanted to be alone in his grief to talk to his God, his father, the Lord. He wanted to be alone. And yet, we are told that the people followed him. And even in his grief, he saw their need for him. He had compassion on them. He healed their sick. He made their lives better even as he himself was grieving.
And as they grieved and as they received from the Lord, we're told the disciples wanted them to go to get something to eat. Jesus offers five loaves and two fish.
But not only did he take the bread and the fish and bless it and break it and give it, he also give so much. We're told that 12 baskets remained. He called the disciples to give the food to the people. He called the disciples to take what was left over and put it in baskets because later on they would be able to give that out as well. The 12 apostles, the 12 disciples signify the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 tribes of the apostles whom Jesus would send out to build his church, the foundation of the house of God.
Jesus feeds us with water and he gives us his blood. He feeds us with food. He feeds us with love. You and I have received this love. And you and I are sent to bring that love into our world.
We spend so much of our life trying to hide our fragments, the broken bits of ourselves, the mistakes that we've made, the sharp edges of our grief, relationships that didn't work, hopes that have crumbled, the parts of ourselves where we feel we fall short, where we're inadequate, where we feel just worn out. Fragments in (Matthew 14) is the left over bread which Jesus asked to be collected.
I think sometimes we assume that what God wants is a fresh, sound full loaf, the polished version, the successful version of us. But in the gospel today, we hear the words of Jesus that we should gather up those fragments because nothing is wasted in the kingdom of God. All of it is valued. All of it is able to be given a new life.
God gather gathers up the lives that seem beyond use. He gathers our regrets, our failures, our losses, our disappointments, the times and the places when we feel tired. He gathers communities that feel forgotten, hearts that feel broken, and in God's hands, nothing is wasted. The disciples don't know it yet, but we can hear in that story echoes of another meal.
It has echoes of that last supper of communion. Because soon the disciples will sit around the table with Jesus. They'll watch him take bread. They will watch him break it and him say, "This is my body." The sign of God's salvation isn't a whole and beautiful untouched loaf. It's broken bread.
The extraordinary work of God is revealed not through something that looks perfect, but through something that looks at first glance as if it's been ruined. And every time we gather together in this place around the altar, we see that same sign again, the sign of broken bread. In the eyes of faith, it's the place where Christ makes himself known. And perhaps it's true of us as well.
Perhaps the places where we feel most broken aren't the places where we have been abandoned, but the places where Christ is able to make himself known in us. The fragments of our lives aren't something that's discarded, swept away, but something that is carefully, mindfully gathered, blessed, and transformed because nothing is lost.
So as we go about our lives and bump up again and again on those broken parts of ourselves, hear those words from the gospel today. Hear that action where God gathered up the fragments. Not because they are useless and we're needing to tidy them away, but because in the hands of God, broken things become holy things.
