Sunday Worship 2nd August
This morning's first hymn is "Seek Ye First The Kingdom Of God" -
Today's Bible reading -
This is, of course, a very familiar story. The miracle of the feeding of the multitude is the only miracle that is recorded in all four of the Gospels. There are minor differences in detail between each but the basic story is the same.
There are some very human moments in this story. The crowds surrounded Jesus just when he’d been looking for a little time alone (it seems likely that this happened soon after Jesus heard about the execution of his cousin John the Baptist). The disciples were concerned for Jesus, and wanted him to send the people away. But not only did Jesus refuse to send the crowd away, he told the disciples that they should find food for them. We know the rest of the story. Jesus took the bread and fish, he looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to distribute. This should remind us of the Last Supper, where Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to the disciples. And of course this is what happens at every communion service. So this alfresco meal was a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Not only were all the people fed, but there was plenty left over – reminding us of God’s great generosity! God is a God of abundance.
Jesus could have fed the people himself. Instead he threw the situation to the disciples who had seen the problem. We, as the body of Christ, are (or certainly should be) closely involved in our broken and hurting world. We are able to articulate what is wrong and what is needed, and we pray about the situation. We can’t, however just dump the problems on God. Jesus’ reply, when the disciples told him the people needed food, was ‘you give them something to eat’. Jesus performed the miracle. Jesus fed the people, but the disciples had to identify the problem and do what they could practically to solve it. Christians must be involved in our world, we must highlight wrongs (big and small), we must pray about them and we must be involved at whatever level is appropriate in making things better.
This story has implications for our celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus’ actions of taking, blessing, breaking and giving the bread are in the context not of a meal with friends but of the overwhelming needs of very large crowd. Jesus expected the disciples to find the resources to meet that need. They did, to their own surprise, by bringing the five loaves and two fishes.
Eucharist is about God’s generous love for this world. There can be no celebration of the Eucharist without prayers for God’s world. Our sharing in the heavenly banquet can’t be separated from our sharing in the life of the world with all its needs.
Remember those words at the end of the service, where we say “Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory. May we who share Christ’s body live his risen life, we who drink his cup bring life to others, we whom the Spirit light give light to the world”
Our second hymn today comes from St Mark's Cathedral Junior Choir, and is a beautiful rendition of "The Servant King" -
Our prayers for today -
And just because it's the school holidays and we've had a bit of sunshine - our final hymn for today is "I've Seen The Golden Sunshine" -
