Some of the Rev. Charles Mullaly’s sermons preached at Emmanuel Episcopal Church ~ Below is one recent sermon and other sermons can be accessed by clicking on the dates.
Matthew 14: 13-21
While Leith and I were on vacation in New Hampshire with our daughter Heather and our granddaughters Hannah, Elizabeth, and Julia, we celebrated many family feasts. Family feasts of fun, family feasts of fellowship, and family feasts of food. For Hannah, a family feast of food has to include rooty tooty fruity pancakes. For Elizabeth, a family feast of food has to include tomatoes. And for Julia, a family feast of food has to include cheese.
This morning’s Gospel lesson is about one of the first Christian family feasts, known to most of us as the Miraculous Feeding of the 5000. But before I talk about that feast, I have one simple concern.
All too often the very first sentence in this Gospel is swept aside as meaningless and that bothers me because it is a very important sentence. “Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” Now why would He want to do that? Frankly, He did it because He needed private time to process the fact that He was in great danger from King Herod. Crazy King Herod, the personification of evil, had beheaded John the Baptist. Herod, a fool, thought Jesus was actually John the Baptist raised from the dead, so Herod of course wanted to kill him a second time. After all, the king did have his pride.
Alone in the boat, Jesus was consumed with trying to figure out how to handle this terrible matter. How long did He have before Herod’s soldiers found Him and how could He protect His followers from the king’s wrath. In the meantime, completely unaware of the danger that Jesus was facing, huge crowds continued to follow Him, driven by their own all-consuming problems and their need to be in His presence.
As He came ashore, Jesus was overwhelmed with compassion for His followers, and what an extraordinary gift that was for His people. That crowd could well have been filled with the King’s assassins, but Jesus just dove into the middle of them anyway, like a President of the United States without a bullet-proof vest and without any Secret Service protection. As soon as He was in their midst He began to heal every sick person who came to Him.
When the healings were finished, they all sat down in hopes of hearing Him preach and teach about the divine family feast that awaited them in heaven. And when He did just that His words set their hearts on fire and filled them with hope. As the day came to an end, Jesus realized it was time to stop talking and start addressing their basic need for food. As one observer said, “If Jesus had talked on and on, people would have slowly drifted away and we wouldn’t have seen the miraculous feeding of the 5000. Instead it would have been the miraculous feeding of the 500, or the 50.”
Packaging and timing are 90% of success in life, so Jesus knew it was time to change His focus to feed His famished followers. Five loaves and two fish were gathered. Jesus blessed that offering, broke the bread, and then, just like in the Eucharist, others handled the distribution. Once everyone had their fill, twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered.
Did you hear what I just said? A count of 5000 means 5000 men. But there were also women and children who accompanied the men. So by my count we’re talking about 10,000 people at a minimum. And when all 10,000 were fed, the remnants still filled twelve baskets!
What happened in this morning’s Gospel was a miracle. You can’t explain it any other way. A modern day example of this feeding story took place in North Carolina when two married Christians named Rob and Jackie decided to open a new restaurant called “Our Place”. All that awaited for them to open was a health inspection. The morning the health inspector was scheduled to visit, their town was devastated by Hurricane Hugo. After the storm, “Our Place” was the only restaurant with electricity. Its refrigerator was stuffed with 300 pounds of bacon, and a huge supply of lettuce and tomatoes. In addition, there was lots of bread, coffee, and mayonnaise. Rob and Jackie began offering “Free BLTs and Coffee” to anyone who came in. Everyone in town flocked to “Our Place”. They came to eat and they came to help. People brought the contents of their refrigerators, and stores sent over food of all kinds.
After they were finished, 16,000 meals had been served, and yet the restaurant’s supply shelves now held five times as many supplies as they had when the feeding had begun. Another Christian family feast had just taken place!
During the original miraculous feeding of the 5000, the crowd that followed Jesus was transformed into a family, a family united in their need for one another, the bread they shared, and the love of Christ. Feasts in the court of King Herod were always “Feasts of Fear” where everyone wondered “Will I be the next one killed?”, while feasts in the court of Jesus, The King of Kings, were “Feasts of Foretaste, the Foretaste of Heaven”. Today that “Feast of Foretaste” awaits everyone here – at Christ’s table. What a miracle! Please, come and partake.
~Amen.
