From the Gospel of Saint Matthew,
20: And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.
21: And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
It is not magic; it is not God making something seem to be what it is not. No, it was real; it did happen, as is shown by the detail at the end of the feeding, when it was noted that the crumbs gathered filled twelve baskets. This is no vaudeville act, no sleight of hand; this is none other than the power of almighty God changing nature, in order to lead us to change our nature.
There is one detail of the feeding we should note as we pursue our ministries here at the Church of the Advent. Notice that Andrew pointed out a lad who had five barley loaves and two fish. It was this tiny offering from the innocent boy which was to be the raw material for Jesus's miracle. The miracle was accomplished through Jesus Christ's taking of the loaves and fishes and blessing them, and breaking them, and giving them to the disciples, who then distributed them to the crowd.
It is not, however, to be neglected that our God and King has used the tiny offering of an innocent lad as the source, the raw material, the beginning of His miracle. Look at the crowd which followed Jesus with admiration and astonishment; there were five thousand men, besides all the women and the children; what an enormous crowd pursuing Jesus!
In the Old Testament lesson, we have a parallel demonstration of the power of faith over brawn. The Persian Empire ruled Palestine around 500 B.C. This was a period of restoration and reconstruction for the Jews. Ezra with the Jews, under King Cyrus, was able to rebuild the temple. King Darius reinforced King Cyrus's orders and encouraged additional Jews to return to Jerusalem with the temple utensils.
Approximately 50,000 Jewish exiles had returned to Jerusalem or surrounding cities. However, due to opposition they were unable to rebuild the wall or gates. Nehemiah inquires with his brother, Hanani, about the Jewish captivity only to hear of "... great affliction and reproach, the wall of Jerusalem broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire" (Nehemiah 1:3). Nehemiah responds to the news with mourning. He prays, fasts, and weeps. While others talked among themselves about the problem, Nehemiah prayed to God about it. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he spent three days reviewing the situation. He waited on God and then shared his vision with his people about repairing the city wall and gates. He encouraged these Jews to strengthen their hands for the work. Finally he led a small band of faithful Jews to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in just 52 days!
How do we respond to bad news? What do we do when we hear of trials and afflictions? Only one person out of thousands had a vision to pray to God and to fast regarding the broken walls of Jerusalem. While others found fault, complained, and opposed the work, Nehemiah and his faithful few encouraged themselves and prayed. Nehemiah and his friends were one in the spirit of "one accord. " Is it any wonder that with the spirit of oneness they completed the wall in 52 days!?
It is not uncommon to face opposition when you have a revelation or vision. Nehemiah faced opposition, but in the fourth chapter we read:"We made our prayer unto God, and set a watch against them day and night..." Half worked and the other half stayed on guard.
If you find a person with a vision, get behind them in prayer. Set your mind to pray and ask God to strengthen your praying hands. Be like Nehemiah and his friends: Ask, Seek, and Knock!
As Nehemiah concludes today's lection:
20: Thou gavest thy good Spirit to instruct them, and didst not withhold thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst.
18: They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved.
19: They spoke against God, saying, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
23: Yet he commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven;
24: and he rained down upon them manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven.
25: Man ate of the bread of the angels; he sent them food in abundance.
If our all-powerful Father in Heaven chose the little band with Nehemiah to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem in 52 days, and a wee lad with his little offering of loaves and fishes to feed thousands, shouldn't we be reading something in this? Shouldn't we realize God is giving us a message? Prayer works! God listens to us. God answers us.
Of course, one of the problems with prayer is the uncertainty of the response: God will answer, but His answer might be, "No," or, "Yes," or, frustratingly, "Not Yet." It is that "Not Yet" response that is so hard to handle. We can pretty well face the certain disappointment that comes with the "No" response, and we're all glad to hear the "Yes." But how difficult for us to live with, "Not Yet." We often don't realize this to be God's response till after the fact, as we often forget what we have asked for. In fact, some are possibly as careless about prayer as they are about greeting people. We've all heard another say to us, "How are you?" They then continue talking, clearly not really caring about how we are.
In training people about suicide, we strive to make them listen for the answer when they ask a question; we strive to get people not to ask another how they are, unless they truly want to hear the answer. Just so with prayer: when we pray, we should mean it, and we have to listen carefully for the answer.
I recently had a few experiences which were very difficult to handle and seemingly incapable of resolution, In those instances, I ddn't see how the issues were going to come out. So my prayer was less one, "Give me this or that, or do this or that," than it was, "Gold, help me to understand and countenance this difficulty."
Only after it was over did I see that God was speaking to me, and is speaking to all of us, in His actions: I prayed for help, I held out my bit of bread, and, as recounted in the Gospel this morning, Jesus Christ saw the need and addressed it, so much more forcefully than we could expect!
I find intriguing how key a role our availability plays in what we accomplish. This isn't to say that ability, potential and social skills are unimportant in success. Yet when we consider God's working in human life, it seems that he uses our availability at least as much as these other traits in opening doors. This point is helpful to remember when we feel hesitant to take steps of faith when we are reluctant to pray. We're especially prone to hold back if we know that many others are available to meet a need or interested in the same goal we want to pursue. We assume that our efforts won't be as successful as theirs or that what we have to contribute isn't really needed.
In our modern, densely populated world it's all too easy to fall into such futility about life itself. What can I possibly do that will make a difference? We note that someone with an emergency need in public is less likely to receive assistance if a crowd is present than if only a few people are nearby. In a large group each person assumes that someone else will take responsibility--so no one does. The sense of individual capacity and action is greatly reduced.
On this point, we should note that God can do a lot with a little when He has all there is of it. This principle is graphically demonstrated in the feeding miracles. Saint John notes that a young boy actually made a few fish and loaves available to Jesus to feed the vast crowd, by letting Andrew offer them to Jesus. Through his availability this boy helped feed a multitude of thousands.
Our hesitancy in the face of opportunity is often like Andrew's, who when presenting the boy's provisions to Jesus, complained, "but what are they among so many?" The incident reminds us, though, that Christ's power is manifested through our mere availability in ways that far transcend our potential or meager resources.
After the feeding, in John's gospel, Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread." Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst."
The bread that comes down from heaven gives life and is life. So, the disciples thought they were getting bread to feed their bellies when they asked for it; in fact, they, and we this morning, are getting the Bread of Heaven, We ask our Father to give us our daily bread, and He gives us His Son.
We see the absolute, overwhelming, invincible power of God so resoundingly proclaimed by Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans read this morning:
39: nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.