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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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John
6:5-14 Sunday
Next before Advent November
21, 2010 It
is often said that good things come in small packages.
It is also true that they also often come in disguise.
The ugly duckling turns out to be a beautiful swan.
The tiny horse that hasn't won a race turns out to be the great
Seabiscuit. The baby set
adrift on the Nile becomes a leader whose influence spans the centuries,
and the world. Another baby
born in an animal shed, hunted by the king of His own people, who spent
His life in a backwater town of an obscure and powerless country, turns
out to be nothing less than God in human flesh. I
think the same principle applies to our Gospel reading for this morning.
We know the story well. 5,000
men, plus wives and children gathered to hear the words of this Man called
Jesus. They were with Him
until late in the evening and the only food in the area was a small boy's
lunch of five barley loaves and two fishes.
The Bible specifically mentions barley loaves because they were
poor people's food. Barley
was much cheaper than wheat, because it produced heavy, dry bread, not
like the fluffy, wheat bread we know today.
The two fishes were probably dried and salted sardines.
They were the most appetising part of the meal.
Even after eating his fish and loaves, we would call them
"crackers," the boy would normally still be hungry, for that was
the lot of the poor. The
loaves and fish didn't look like a sumptuous meal.
In towns and on country estates nearby, the rich and powerful were
sitting down to feasts of meats and fruits and delicacies.
But these people would get none of that.
Most of them had probably resigned themselves to fasting for the
day, and since they usually ate only two small meals a day, missing a meal
was a great sacrifice, which they willingly made to hear the word.
What a contrast we see between these people and many today who
willingly sacrifice the hearing of the Word rather than suffer the loss of
an hour's sleep, or the hardship of driving to their air-conditioned
church in their air-conditioned cars to torture themselves in padded pews.
I recently saw a picture of Anglicans in India taken around 1900.
They had no shade from the south Indian heat and humidity, no pews
or chairs to sit in, no transportation, not even a drink of water, yet
they were there worshiping God. I
am sure that what looks to us like great hardship was to them a great
blessing in disguise, for their discomforts of the body brought them into
the presence of the Living God. Their
physical discomforts lasted but an hour; the blessings of their time in
worship continue forever. These
crackers and sardines did not look like much to the crowd.
But they were. In fact they were more than enough. Jesus multiplied them over and over again so that every
person there had as much as they could eat.
The Bible says, they were "filled." They were stuffed. They
were satisfied. There
is great meaning in this. Jesus
didn't look like much to people in His day. He wasn't handsome or powerful
or rich. The Bible says there was nothing about His appearance that would
attract people to Him. Yet in
Him dwells all the fullness of God. In
Him is the answer to our deepest needs and most troubling questions. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
To as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the
sons of God. In Him we behold
God, full of grace and truth. Our
greatest hunger is not for bread and fish.
It is not even for turkey and dressing and gravy and cranberry
sauce. Our greatest hunger is
the hunger in our souls for the Bread of Life.
It is amazing to me that the bread and fish of this passage of
Scripture are both symbols of Christ.
He is the bread that came down out of Heaven.
The symbol of the fish continues to be a symbol of Christ and the
Christian faith. And the
feeding of the 5,000 is a symbol of the feeding of the souls of lost and
hungry people who need God more than we can ever realise in this life.
He is bread for the soul. Hear
His own words. "I
am the Bread of Life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that
believeth on me shall never thirst" (Jn. 6:35). "I
am the Living Bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this
bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh,
which I will give for the life of the world" (Jn. 6:51). "And
this is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son,
and believeth on Him, may have eternal life: and I will raise him up at
the last day" (Jn. 6:40). The
Gospel is like those loaves and fishes.
At first it looks small and insignificant. How can it matter to me if Jesus was crucified, or even if He
rose again? What difference
does it make to me if God became a man and lived and died and rose again?
I have bills to pay and work to do, and troubles and problems
galore. How can God's game of
hide and seek have any relevance to me? Beloved, it is the most relevant thing in the world, for He
came to seek and to save that which was lost.
He came to fill the emptiness of your being with the Bread of
Heaven, now and forever. As
one of our favourite Bishops, J.C. Ryle, wrote: "There
can be no doubt that this [miracle] was meant to teach the adequacy of
Christ's Gospel to supply the necessities of the whole world.
Week, and feeble, and foolish as it may seem to man, the simple
story of the Cross is enough for all the children of Adam in every part of
the globe. The tidings of
Christ's death for sinners, and the atonement made by that death, is able
to meet the hearts and satisfy the consciences of all nations, and
peoples, and kindreds, and tongues. Carried
by faithful messengers, it feeds and supplies all ranks and classes. "Five
barley loaves and two small fishes seemed a scanty provision for a hungry
crowd. But blessed by Christ and distributed by His disciples, they were
more than sufficient." "Let
us never doubt for a moment, that the preaching of Christ crucified,- the
old story of His blood and righteousness, and substitution,- is enough for
all the spiritual necessities of all mankind.
It is not worn out. It
has not lost its power. We
[need] nothing new,- nothing more broad and kind,- nothing more
intellectual,- nothing more efficacious.
We [need] nothing but the true bread of life which Christ bestows,
distributed faithfully among starving souls." "Nothing
else can do good in this sinful world.
No other teaching can fill hungry consciences, and give them peace.
We are all in a wilderness. We
must feed on Christ crucified, and the atonement made by His death, or we
shall die in our sins." Last
week I said the season of Trinity closes with teaching on deliverance and
fullness. We looked at
deliverance last Sunday; the deliverance from the bands of sin and all its
devastation in our lives and souls. We
have looked at fullness today. Christ
is our fullness. Whoever
feeds on Him in his heart by faith is full in his soul with all the good
things God wants to give us. Feed
on Him and be filled.
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