The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Matthew

 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others,

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you that you are Peter,^[a] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades^[b] will not overcome it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be^[c] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be^[d] loosed in heaven.” ²⁰ Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. ( Mt. 16:13-20)

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Some missionaries in the Philippines set up a croquet game in their front yard. Several of their Agra Negrito neighbors became interested and wanted to join in the fun. The missionaries explained the game and started them out, each with a mallet and a ball.

As the game progressed, opportunity came for one of the players to take advantage of another by knocking that person’s ball out of the court. A missionary explained the procedure, but his advice only puzzled the Negrito friend. “Why would I want to knock his ball out of the court?” he asked. “So you will be the one to win,” the missionary said.

This short-statured man, clad only in a loin cloth, shook his head in bewilderment. In a hunting and gathering society, people survive, not by competing, but by sharing equally in every activity.

The game continued, but no one followed the missionaries’ advice. When a player successfully got through all the wickets, the game was not over for him. He went back and gave aid and advice to his fellows.

As the final player moved toward the last wicket, the affair was still very much a team effort. And finally when the last wicket was played, the ‘team’ shouted happily, “We won! We won!”

That’s how Paul tells us the church, the body of Christ should be.

A team. We all play and we all win together.

Paul’s favourite thought is of the church as a body. The members of the body neither argue with each other, nor envy each other, nor dispute with each other as to their relative importance.

Paul was sure that was what the church should be like. Each member has a task to do and it is only when each contributes  the help of her own task, that the body of the church functions as it should.

We are urged first to know ourselves, and our gift: to assess our capabilities honestly, without conceit or false modesty.

Then we are urged to use the gift that God has given us. 

Paul is saying that even if the contribution we can make is going to be unseen, without praise, and without glory, that we should still make it, and that without the offer of that gift, the world, and the church, can never be what they are meant to be.

Because whatever gift we have comes from God. And it comes for a purpose.

Paul  calls a gift from God charismata.

Some people have charisma.

You could practice playing the violin for a lifetime and yet would never be able to play like Yehudi Menuhin. He had more than practice going for him. He had something plus. Charisma  – a gift from God.

Similarly, you might toil for a  lifetime and still be hopeless in the use of wood and metal – like me, and yet, another person fashions wood or metal effortlessly. The tools become a part of the artisan. A gift from God. A charisma.

You might practice speaking for ever and a day, and never acquire the presence and the special something that makes people listen to you. A gifted speaker, on the other hand comes to the podium and soon has the audience in the palm of her hand.

Try writing.  You can try and put words onto paper and never get them right, whereas someone with the gift of words, can see his thoughts take place, flowing effortlessly from  mind  to  paper.

My thoughts flow effortlessly from mind to paper, or rather computer, then I need someone with gift of translation to correct all the typos.

Everyone has their own charisma. Their own gift from God.

It may be for writing sermons, for building houses, gardening, fashioning wood, working with figures, playing the piano, singing songs, teaching children, playing football, or golf.

And gifts are not given to be used solely in the church. They are given to be used in a wider context.

The gift of healing, for example.

A physician who has studied, and has found the balance between medicine as a science, and medicine as an art, is truly a healer.  Using that gift for healing, that charisma, to make the lives of people more bearable, is truly serving God.

At the other end of the scale, my mother was a relatively uneducated woman. She left school at age fourteen. She worked as a maid for the local vicar.  

Later, as a married woman, with four children, she didn’t have much time to develop whatever gifts she might have had.  But there was one gift she had in abundance. Compassion.

I remember her going to the homes of two elderly members of our church and getting down on her hands and knees, and  cleaning their homes.  Regularly. And no thought of being paid.

No-one at the church knew what  she did.

It was what she could do, and her use of that gift – of compassion for others – was just as important in God’s scheme for the world, as the use of the gift of healing by the physician.  And it had nothing to do with the church.

All of us are gifted by God, and He expects us to use our gift.  Because in using our gifts we are acting as members of the body of Christ.

Imagine if Jesus were here now.

Wouldn’t he be healing people?

Wouldn’t he be helping the old and infirm? 

Wouldn’t he be teaching? 

Wouldn’t he be feeding people? 

Wouldn’t he be teaching us how to forgive?

If he were working in a company, wouldn’t he be trying to make sure that the business of that company was done honestly?

If he were working in a job that involved meeting people, and handling their complaints, then wouldn’t he be loving and understanding?

Of course he would, if he were here.

But he is not here.

He is not here in body.

He is here in Spirit. And he is here in the gifts that we have.

So doesn’t it make sense for us,  in whatever job we have, or in whatever way we live, or in however we work for our church, or in whatever we do, to act like him? To be his body here in the world?

And being members of his body here in this world, each doing what we are gifted with, and called to do, we don’t fight with each other, or expect to be placed higher than another, or envy what others do.

It’s kind of like – it is like – being on a team.

Isn’t it?

You know we don’t always act as if we are on a team – at least not as if we are on the same team.

There is sometimes dissent. There is sometimes disagreement. There is rivalry. Because we are human. And we haven’t all reached a state of perfection.

But you, know, the church at large will never be a church that effectively reaches out to those who are lost, if we shoot our wounded, and enter into big battles about small things.

Instead of becoming fishers of men, we are, as often as not, keepers of a shrinking aquarium.

Next Fall, when you see geese heading south for the Winter, flying along in a ‘V’ formation, you might be interested in knowing what science has discovered about why they fly that way.

It has been learned that as each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird immediately following. By flying in ‘V’ formation, the whole flock adds at least 71% greater  flying range than if each bird flew on its own.

Christians who  share a common direction, and a sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they travel with the  shared strength of each other.

Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone, and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of those immediately in front.

When the lead goose gets tired, he or she rotates back in the wing and another goose flies point.

It pays to take turns doing hard jobs with people in church, just as it does for geese flying South.

The geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

What does it mean when we hear honking from behind?  

Finally, when a goose gets sick, or is wounded by a shot, and falls out, two geese fall out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with the wounded goose until it is either well enough to fly, or it dies.   And then they launch out on their own, or join another formation going in the right direction.

If people outside knew that we would stand by them like that in church, they would be pushing these walls down to get in.

You see, all we have to do to attract those who are missing out, is to demonstrate to the world that here at church, we have as much sense  – as geese!

That seems a small enough price to pay to win the lost and minister to each other.

Even a goose knows it makes sense to work as a team.

Amen.

The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ According to Matthew.

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand:
 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”
But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.”
Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding?
Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.
For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.
These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” (Matthew 15: 10-20.)

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A priest visited another church during his vacation, and was impressed that at the very beginning of the service everyone turned around in their seats and greeted other worshippers seated nearby.   He liked this. And thinking about it, he decided that his own church was a bit stuffy, and that he would introduce the practice there.

The first Sunday he was back, he told the congregation that the following Sunday they were going to initiate this custom.

At the close of the service, a man turned around to the lady behind him and said, Good Morning.”  She looked at him with shock at his boldness, and said, “I beg your pardon!  That friendliness business doesn’t start until next Sunday!”

Now next week she was going to be real friendly, as her priest requested, and no-one – except the unlucky fellow who had started too soon, would know the difference.

This woman from next week on, would greet someone sitting nearby with a lovely smile, and a cheery good morning, but in her heart of hearts wasn’t nearly so friendly as she would appear to be.

In fact in her heart she could be just poison.

Jesus in his discourse in today’s Gospel is making a point about the same stuff – what’s on the surface, as good as it may seem, isn’t nearly as important as what’s in the heart.

The example he chose to make this point was the food laws. And he held up to ridicule, Pharisees because of their devotion to the food laws.

In the statement he makes  – “The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.” – this statement attacks the way then Pharisees parade their righteousness, and cancels all the food laws in the Old Testament.

Some of the  laws could still be valid in terms  of health and hygiene, and common-sense and medical wisdom,  but they could never again be valid as part of religion.

No wonder the Scribes and Pharisees were shocked. He was undermining their whole theological rationale, the whole way in which they lived their lives.

They identified pleasing God with the observing of rules and regulations which had to do with cleanness and with uncleanness, with what a person ate and with how they washed their hands before they ate. Jesus tells them these rules have nothing to do with religion.

In fact he says, that Pharisees and the people who followed them were like the blind leading the blind and they could expect to fall into a ditch.

Their way – the way of the Pharisees – was too easy. It was much easier to refrain from eating certain foods, and to remember to wash their hands before meals, than it was to love the unlovable, and to help the needy at the cost of one’s own time and money and comfort.

For us, the lesson is that  coming  to church, and giving liberally, and attending Bible study, are all essential as a path toward religion. But they are not religion.  Religion consists in personal relationships and in our attitude toward God and our neighbour.

Like you don’t want to confuse the externals with the internals.

There are lots of people who have faultless lives – externally – but whose hearts are filled with evil thoughts.

Jesus was telling his listeners that all the observances in the world cannot make up for a heart that is dominated by pride and bitterness.

We can all put up a good front, but there has to be substance behind it.

I am reminded of the story of two Texans who were trying to impress each other with the size of their ranches.

One asked the other, “What’s  the name of  your ranch?”

The other replied, “The Rockin R, ABC, Flying W, Circle C, Staple Four, Rolling M,  Rainbow’s End, Silver Spur Ranch.”

The other guy was really impressed with this, and said, “Wow, that’s sure some name. How many head of cattle do you run?”

The rancher answered, “Well, not too many. Very few survive the branding.”

Putting up a good front is alright, but if there is nothing real behind it, then you might as well give up trying.

It is clear from what Jesus is saying that what matters most in our relationship with God is what is in our hearts.

What matters to God isn’t what we do so much as why we do it.

Thomas Aquinas explained it this way, “Man sees the deed, but God sees the intention.”

Here’s the scary thing.  We can’t declare ourselves good because of the external things we do – obeying the rules – careful about regulations – making sure that we look right – look good to everyone – we can only call ourselves good when our heart is pure.

That’s the end of all pride, isn’t it?

That’s why God has to live in our hearts.   

It means being vigilant about the attitudes of this world, and the demands of living in a consumer society, and the effects of less than wholesome media messages that are aimed at us daily.

It means knowing that there are influences in society that gradually and insidiously work to lessen our awareness of what is evil.

It means being aware of being under attack by the dark forces of this world.

You know, I don’t think we are alert to how much things around us gradually erode our sense of what is right and what is wrong.

I don’t think that most of us are aware of how our mind-sets may have changed. We don’t know how much we have absorbed of this world’s foolish ways. How much do we tolerate now compared with some years ago?  And is that right?

The way to know this is to examine your heart, your beliefs, the way you are in the world,  and ask, “ Is the way I am, OK with Jesus?”

“If  I were to face  Jesus right now, would I be comfortable with who I am?”

Is  there room in my life for Jesus?

Because if  I allow things in my heart, and in my life that I just can’t reconcile  with following Jesus; – even if no-one else knows about them – then just maybe I have allowed those things to crowd God out.

It is infinitely easier to obey a few rules than to make drastic changes in the way my heart works.

It is easier to go through the motions,  than to actually open myself fully to God’s will.

It is easier to look good than to be good.

That’s why each and every one of us can say only, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

It’s when we make that plea that false pride falls away, and our heart can be emptied of all that distracts us from knowing God.

It’s when we can begin to be humble, and genuine, and have room in our hearts only for God.

There is a time in the marriage service when rings are exchanged.  First the husband, places the ring on his bride’s finger, and says these words, and then the wife places a ring on her husband’s finger and says the same words, “ With all that I am, and all that I have, I honour you in the name of God.”

That is a holy moment. It is when the couple give themselves wholeheartedly to each other. 

With all that I am and all that I have.    Those are beautiful words aren’t they? 

That’s how we need to come to our Lord.  With a heart and a life completely open to his will.

“Lord Jesus, with all that I am and all that I have, I come to you, a poor sinner, and accept your gracious love. Live in me and make me wholly yours,”

Amen.

The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Matthew

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

 “Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:22-33)

Someone who knows me well, said to me, “You have had one heck of a year, haven’t you?” And I thought about it, and I realized that yep, it hasn’t been an easy year for me.

In fact it hasn’t been an easy four years.

Now I am not looking for sympathy. I know that for some of you this has not been an easy year either. In fact I know some people who can’t remember the last time they had an easy year.   It’s the way things are, isn’t it?

Life has its ups and downs. Life has a way of catching you when you are feeling good and bringing you face to face with something bad.

It was like that for the disciples. They had just been with Jesus as he preached to thousands of people.   They had heard his words, and seen his face, and must have been  excited just being with him, seeing how the crowd reacted.

It must have been really uplifting, and inspiring, and made them feel sure about the man they had chosen to follow.  

Not only that, but they had been part of the action, so to speak – when he had fed over five thousand people with the contents of one lunch box. They had seen how God worked in this man Jesus to do things that seemed impossible.

Anybody normal would have been flying high, don’t you think?

Then Jesus commanded them to take the boat and to start back across the lake.

Jesus may have done this because the crowd was in a mood to forcibly make him a king, and he didn’t want this, and the disciples, not yet realizing his true nature, and goals, might have helped the crowd.

So he sent them on ahead and he climbed up the mountain to be alone to pray.

So they took the boat, and set sail for the other shore.

Fine.

But as is known to happen with that lake, the wind suddenly comes up  and  the sky darkens, and  they are in the midst of a storm, and  can’t control the boat, and are dead scared.

They go from being confident and excited, to helpless and frightened in just a few minutes.

You know, those who sail will tell you that sailing is ninety per cent boredom, and ten per cent sheer terror.

And these guys were experiencing terror!

Maybe from where Jesus  was, on high ground, he saw the disciples in that little boat,  and he went to help them.

But at first, when they saw him, instead of being reassured, they were even more frightened, thinking they had seen a ghost.

But Jesus did eventually calm them down, and then, after he got into the boat with them, the storm subsided.

Even though they were doing what Jesus had told them to do – and surely he wouldn’t put them in danger – they panicked.

They had seen his awesome power, been there when a marvelous miracle had been performed, and they still panicked when that storm had hit.  Their faith had dribbled away.

When you are trying to live your life right, living it according to the way you think Christ would have you live it, you don’t expect to have to deal with storms, do you? 

But storms come up in life, just as unpredictably as they did on that sea of Galilee.

Storms hit us hard sometimes.

All of a sudden, the settled life we are enjoying is shattered – shattered – in such a way that it seems that life will never be the same again.

Why? If we have been living right?

Well…..the weather changes because we live in a dynamic environment.  Winds, high and low pressure ridges, humidity, pollution, all play their part. We understand that is why storms come along.

Life is dynamic too! Events, other people, economic change, normal bodily wear and tear,  the time of the year, the job, the family, – you name it – all contribute to our life environment, as it were, and contribute to the storms that hit us.  

It seems like our little ship of life is close to sinking sometimes.

Even if we have been doing what we think God wants us to do.  

Like if I am living my life right, how come things go wrong?  Eh?

It doesn’t sound right, does it?

But you know, Jesus was right there for his disciples in that storm. No sooner had a need arisen than he was by their side. To help and save.

When we are up against it; when life is a desperate struggle, with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our temptations, our sins and our weaknesses, and our decisions,   Jesus is there with a hand outstretched to save, and with his calm clear voice, bids us to take heart and have no fear.

And we realise that we have been drifting without him. We have forgotten his promise to be with us to the end of the age. We have been trying to do it alone.

And as we have just drifted along, and our faith has dribbled away.

And then sometimes our problem has a different complexion. 

Maybe we weren’t just drifting. Maybe we took some risk, stepped out, reached for something that would normally be beyond our grasp – with confidence, and with a sure sense that we could make it – just to find that confidence dribble away at the first sign of trouble, and panic set in.

That’s what happened with Peter, isn’t it?

The endearing thing about Peter was his eagerness, his brashness, his adventurousness.

But sometimes he was too eager. Sometimes he jumped in without having really thought things out.

You know what I mean. I have done that. I am sure most of you have, too.

Like you leave one job for another, without having checked out the new company well enough, and within a week of being  there, you regret it. 

Or you decide you can afford to redo the bathroom and go ahead, and it costs twice as much as you thought, and when you look into it more closely, you realise you missed out just one or two big items.

How are you going to pay for it all?

Or you take a chance in a relationship, allow it to develop just a bit faster than you should, and finish up getting hurt.  How is your heart ever going to heal?

Or in a moment of rashness, you get involved in something not quite on the up and up,  and have a hard time getting out of it.

So here is Peter.  He jumps into the lake and begins walking toward Jesus.

On the water!

His faith is such that he can do it  ………. but wait a minute……… he looks down, and sees the waves, and realizes it is just too stupid to be real, and he has no life-jacket, and he starts to go under. 

The rock, as Jesus called him, has become  a lead sinker.

But Peter,  no matter how brash, how confident – no matter how often he leapt in without thinking –  knew who his Saviour was. And he reached out for Jesus.

And was saved.

Isn’t that what is needed in life?

Isn’t that what we need in our lives? Someone who knows as soon as we  are in trouble and is there to help. Just as Jesus was there for the disciples? 

Isn’t that what we need? 

Someone who, when we lose confidence in ourselves, and come a cropper, is there to help us up  – without judging us, without condemning us?

Someone who understands?

Someone who has been there?

You know we are not supposed to succeed the first time in everything we do.

I have had my eyes opened over the past years as I have seen my grandchildren going from holding their head up for the first time, to taking their first steps. From gurgling as babies, to trying to put sentences together.

The thing that’s astonishes me is how many times they try a thing,  before they actually make it.

I am amazed that any child gets to be three years old when you consider how many times they fall down, or   when they get under the table, stand up and bang their head.  Again and again.

Until they learn.

Nothing comes without travail. No success ever came without failure on the way.

But just as a parent understands that when a child is trying to walk,  that child needs comforting when she falls, and encouraging to try again, Jesus understands that we need encouraging in our walk in faith, and he is ready to reach out a hand to pick us up, and is there to encourage us when we have fallen just too many times.

I challenge anyone who has had great trauma, and has made themselves open to the love that God sends, to tell me that they were left alone.

There is no ‘alone’ when you follow Jesus.

You don’t see a big hand coming through the ceiling to grab you and stand you up, or pat you on the head.

But you will find someone at your door with a casserole; you will find uplifting messages on cards, in your mailbox, and you will feel the love of God as people help you to get on your feet again.

Where does this come from?        What do we have to do to deserve this?

How do we get this great and wonderful love that surrounds us and delivers us?

Paul tells the Romans, You don’t have to go to heaven to find Jesus, nor down into the depths. You don’t have to live strictly according to the law, because it’s not possible to live that rigidly.

All you have to do, is say, ‘Jesus is Lord’. And believe that God raised him from the dead.

In other words, all you have to do is accept the love he has offered so graciously in Jesus.

And take a hold of that outstretched hand.

Grab it!

Grab life!

And live!  

Amen.

The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Matthew.

 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

 “Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Mt. 14: 13-21)

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One day my dad came home from work, tired and hungry, after a shift underground in the coal mine, to find no dinner waiting for him. My mother was in tears. A man had come to the door, ragged, and unkempt, and she took such pity on him that she gave him my dad’s dinner.

Now you might think that there would be enough food for more than one person anyway, but this was wartime, when food was rationed, and ours was a poor family, where meat and potatoes, and veggies, and Yorkshire pudding came along very rarely.

Food is important.

One of the ways that people hereabouts show how much they care when tragedy strikes, is to bring food.

It’s a fact that food, eating, sharing bread, have quite a meaning to us all, even though we would say that we were merely being neighborly.

In Jesus’s day, in a strictly hierarchical society, who was invited for a meal, and what was served, and where people sat, indicated much about the host and the guests.

Higher ranking guests would be seated near the host.   If the host were reasonably well off, he would have servants whose job was to keep guests fed, and those guests, spared from having to get their own food would recline on couches during the meal.

Higher ranking guests would also get the better food, while guests who were rated as lesser mortals would be served not such choice food.

Imagine if you were to give a dinner party with rules like that. The local mayor, reclining on your right  hand would be served the very best lean meat, while others might be lucky to get a piece of that fatty stuff – the stuff which is so hard to chew.

And if you don’t think a system like that is fair, then how would you feel about poor people paying taxes, and the rich paying nothing? Because that’s how it was in the Roman Empire.

Jesus’ ministry quite deliberately included eating with all classes of people, and using those occasions to bring lessons on equality to the host and guests alike.

You will remember hearing the Pharisee’s asking the disciples, “Why does your master eat with tax gatherers and sinners?”

You will remember Jesus telling assembled guests that they should not take the best place at a feast, but take a lowly place. Taking a higher place and then being asked to move to a lower, would be embarrassing to say the least.

Jesus told a parable about a rich man who invited many guests to a feast and was turned down by many of them, so he sent his servants out along the highways and byways to bring in any who were hungry.

Eating, dining together, breaking bread together was an occasion where Jesus could highlight class differences, and their unfairness, in his ministry of bringing God’s kingdom to bear, here on earth.

At the table, he could point out how people are hurt, rejected, used and manipulated by those who know  no God except their own appetites.

On the other hand, the table, was also where equality could be shown. The table was where those who had could share with those who hadn’t.

The table was where friends could get together and enjoy each other’s company.

The table was where people interacted with each other.

Things haven’t changed too much, have they?

We ‘ do lunch.’  A lot of business gets done over lunch.

We invite friends over for dinner, or to barbecue, to drink, and laugh together.

Politicians use dinners as a prime way to raise funds.  You might pay as much as a thousand dollars to be in the same room as a leading politician.

No, things haven’t changed.

No wonder feasts figure so much in Jesus’ parables. No wonder he used such moments to bring home his message.

Eating with people outside your class was a radical thing to do, so when Jesus ate with tax gatherers and other sinners, he was deliberately making a radical statement about the way things were in his world, and how they should be better.

He was deliberately demonstrating how it would be when the kingdom was realized – there would be equality, brotherly love, a communing one with another, and a coming together of people despite their place in society, free or slave, Hebrew or Greek, man or woman, rich or poor.

No-one would be higher than another.

No-one would be exploited by another.

No-one would be abused by another.

The leader would be the one who served. Not the one who sat back waiting for others to serve them.

And this was shown most amazingly in the story in today’s Gospel of the feeding of over five thousand people.

Jesus took the bread and the fish, blessed it, broke it, and shared it with all who were there. No-one was left out. Everyone ate. All sat down together, right where they were –no placing by rank – everyone ate the same food, in peace and in amity, and in brotherly love.

Some writers hold that this event was the first Eucharist, and that bread and fish were the first eucharistic foods.

Whatever we think, this momentous event was something that had a spiritual component to it – other than the words they heard from Jesus – and foreshadowed the meal that Jesus had with his disciples on that Thursday night, before he was betrayed.

That meal, shared between more than five thousand people, is echoed in the meal we share in our Eucharistic feast.

You know, we talk about a eucharistic feast don’t we? But that little wafer and a sip of wine hardly comprise what you would call a feast. You tend to think of a feast as somewhere where you get lots of food.

But cast your minds back to the most enjoyable evenings you ever had; the times you look back upon with a smile, the times when tears of love come to your eyes, and I bet what made that evening great was the people, or person there, and that the food didn’t matter, really.

You may remember, in the year 2002, Pope John Paul the second, celebrated mass in Downsview Park, Toronto. Some 800,000 people were said to have attended.   

There have been big events before. Large stadiums are regularly filled by rock groups.  And sports events.

One major  difference between those secular events and the religious events of that  week, was that there was no rowdiness. No-one was hurt. There were no reports of drug taking.

The newspapers reported that in the clean-up, afterward, numerous things were found in the garbage. Wallets. Bibles. Flags. Rosaries. Shoes.

No mention of  needles, or other drug paraphernalia.

This was a feast – a feast of people coming together to be with one another, to share equally in the blessings that were to be had, and to worship and praise God together.

We don’t serve big portions at our Eucharist.   It is true that if you wait to the end you can get more wine, because we like to have the last few people finish off what is in the chalice, but you could hardly say you are sated when you attend this feast.

But that is not what it’s about.

In his miracles, and through his parables, and through his healing, and eating together, Jesus intentionally places the people of his time, and us in our time, in physical and spiritual contact with God, and in physical and spiritual contact with each other.

He creates equality, brotherliness and sisterliness – community – or as Paul calls it –calls us – the body of Christ. He brings us close to God and each other

I hope that when you next share in the Eucharistic Feast, as small as the portions are, that you will find fullness – fullness of the Spirit.  I hope that you find your spiritual hunger satisfied. I hope that sharing with others, in equality and love, and sharing, and being blessed, and blessing in turn, you will feel that you have feasted.

For that is what it was all about then, and what it is all about now.

Amen.