Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity – 2 KINGS 4:42-44, EPHESIANS 3: 14-21, JOHN 6: 1-21

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

I speak in the name of the Triune God, Father Son and Holy Spirit Amen

I don’t know when and if you do your supermarket shopping, you take any notice of to kalathi tis voikokipas / ou . It should not be a gendered social issue but that’s the Greek language for you.  The English supermarkets and some here have a list of basic or essential products to fit everyone’s  trolley or basket . However, what should be on our essential list and which items can we all agree on? Maybe bread or some kind of rusk is a basic  one if we remember also to include those who have special dietary requirements. When Cliff and I  were on holiday earlier in the month in Kefalonia, we were quite surprised to find that tavernas didn’t automatically bring a basket of bread as they would in our usual haunts here. You had to ask for it or they asked you. I take any leftovers with me for home or to feed the ducks.

Isn’t it wonderful that in a traditional Greek restaurant the word artos is used for bread as has been used for thousand of years not the everyday word psomi or worse still couver the charge per person? Bread is sacred; arto is the blessed bread is given out at the end of liturgy from big baskets as well as prosforo offerings, you got it distributed from baskets again, profero is bread maybe sweetened which people have especially ordered and had baked usually given in the memory of a loved one.

This week and for the next five weeks our lectionary readings take us out of Mark where the continuation from last week’s reading would have recounted the feeding of the five thousand which is told in all four gospels in varying forms to Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel, a very long chapter mainly about feeding. The bread used here by Jesus is what was available in the nameless boy’s lunch box/basket kofini – basic barley loaves with, we imagine, a simple fish readily available. Nothing special yet but Jesus is about to perform the most extraordinary miracle reacting with compassion to the crowd and their hunger. The blessing is important – only Jesus can do this, the disciples notice the need, remark on it and source the ingredients. And boy are there leftovers – twelve baskets of them kofinia a word still used to describe big wicker containers. For sure, the numbers rang true for the first listeners and made sense with Jewish history more than they register for us.

 

We are left with many questions after the reading of the pairing of miracles of 2 Kings and the gospel and even more by the addition of the stilling of the storm coming at the end of the John reading today. It would be wise not to stray into trying to interpret the two together but remain marveling at Jesus’ power.

We interpret the feeding of the five thousand in the sustenance we are given at the Eucharist and disciples of Christ have been sustained by down the ages and the future. We also recall the Lord’s Prayer Give us our Daily Bread ton arton imon ton epiouson dos imin simeron.

How do we interpret that phrase, for many of us in the West who have full larders and fridges it does not stand up to scrutiny but we are hearing of famine in Ethiopia and Sudan. Being a disciple of Christ means that all resources are to be shared for the common good throughout the world. There is plenty for everyone because of God’s abundance and provision. That is the natural intended/created order of things.

 

The feeding of the five thousand is like a layered, long life bread for all our baskets . It does not depend on where we shop or which country we are in. On onew level, it is a story and account oif miraculous feeding on a grand scale, on another it is a refection of how we are fed and nourished spiritually and in the Eucharist which we will celebrate together and partake of soon.