Sermon-Believing in the miracle of multiplication

'150 People', Los Carpinteros, Art Basel 2012

A sermon given during Holy Communion (BCP) at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 14th July 2024 based on the text of Romans 6.19-23 and Mark 8.1-9.

I have a confession to make. 

The week after I was ordained a priest, the Bishop came here to preach at Evensong and she asked me how the ordination service went. Well…..I said, the music was lovely… and I managed to think of one or two other positive remarks. But - (you see in the end I couldn’t help myself) - but - I blurted out - “the main thing was there were just too many people crammed into too small a space.” 

You see, here in London, it has become the practice for deacons from across the diocese to be ordained together in St Paul’s Cathedral. Beautiful - and loads of room. Ordinations of priests however happen in each area of the diocese, in a local church.

So I was ordained priest along with twenty one colleagues from Central and East London in a beautiful but small church with fixed box pews - rather like the ones here but with a gate onto the aisle and a panel down the centre of each one. We were told these individual boxes could seat six people. They left out a crucial word. Six - tiny - people. 

It was all rather a squeeze. Not particularly pleasant for those like me and my family who aren’t the most tactile of people!

At the start of the service those being ordained had to process in and go and sit with our families and friends at the end of our designated rows. I got to my pew, opened the gate and somehow managed to stop everyone spilling out whilst at the same time wedge myself in and sit down - without cutting off the circulation to all our legs. 

During the first hymn I had to summon up all my aforementioned limited powers of self control not to sing the words of the nursery rhyme: “There were ten in the bed and the little one said roll over…” while the organ played the tune of the Old Hundredth. 

You get the picture.

How about another one.

Just imagine if this church was full to bursting right now. So full that each of you had people you didn’t know pressing into you on each side. You can feel their body heat through your clothes. Or even worse - you both have bare arms! The church is so full you can smell the breath of the people behind as say the creed. Imagine this is the case not just at Christmas, but every…. single……. time you come to St Giles. 

How do you feel? 

How do you really feel about that? 

Before we turn to today’s gospel reading - a passage most of us, I expect, will have heard several times before - a passage that is found with small differences in all four gospels and twice in Mark’s - before we turn to it again, I think it’s worth asking ourselves whether we want to believe in the miracle of the multiplication?

I’m not speaking here in the way St Paul described in the Epistle as “in the manner of men”. In human terms, in other words. I don’t mean - do we want to believe in a world where everyone has enough bread and fish to eat. Where nobody is starving. The answer to that question is obvious - although we also have work to do on that score of course. 

Do we want to believe in the miracle of the multiplication?

Do we want to believe in a God whose abundant grace sustains us and works through us and his whole creation in miraculous ways us to sustain others; drawing them and us to Him in a great - and growing - crowd?

Do we want to believe that?

Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like we do - and as my gut reaction to the ordination service shows, I confess, I very much include myself in that damning assessment!

The good news is we can change. As St Paul reminds us throughout his Epistle to the Romans, using diverse imagery.

So let us assume that we really do want to believe in the miracle of the multiplication - and turn again to that familiar passage. 

Jesus is concerned about his flock. They aren’t going to make the journey back home. After three days they need to be fed - and right now.  

The disciples had been with Jesus all this time. Did they not stop to think that the people might need something to eat? Did they not care? Had the crowd themselves not started to complain to them? 

The gospel tells us that it was Jesus alone who saw what people really needed to sustain them. It was only when he called his disciples to him that they began to understand. 

No matter how long we have spent alongside other people - three days, three decades, it is impossible for us to truly know them - or to know ourselves - unless we do so through Christ. When we recognise him in each other. The closer we come to Christ, the closer we come to each other. And the closest we can get to him is there [points to altar]. 

No amount of dinner parties at home, meet ups in the pub to watch the footie, at an art class or choir are going to cut the mustard. If we really want to know others and for them to know us, we have to invite them to join us here. 

It turns out that the disciples had food. At least some of them did. A few loaves and fish. Perhaps they were saving it for themselves, or for Jesus - to make sure he had the energy to carry on? Would the hungry crowd not have been pleading for a slice of it had they had caught a glimpse?

Jesus knows what we need. And he knows what we have. What we are all carrying with us. Jesus sees that which others do not see. 

He asks the disciples what they have to offer. They cannot believe that what little they come up with can be used to help all these people. 

And they are right. It cannot. This isn’t a lesson about the redistribution of resources. It is a miracle of multiplication. When the disciples offer what they have to Jesus it is transformed through his abundant grace. When things come to Jesus, when they are blessed in his name, things change. We change. We try our best but we can’t really explain how. But it happens.

Jesus sends the disciples out into the crowd to share this miraculous meal. And they return to him with even more than they started with! Somehow they have been a part of this growth. This multiplication. It has happened through them. 

Like the disciples, we feel inadequate! We think we haven’t got what it takes. We don’t know enough clever theology or the right words to say. We want someone else - usually the priest - to do something to grow the church. To bring more people here, to experience the love of God, to eat together with Jesus at this Holy Table. 

When we think like that we deny the miracle of the multiplication. We fail to believe that when we kneel at the altar, carrying with us all our limitations seen and unseen - that our lives are transformed, sustained and grow, through Christ. We devalue all that we have received from others and all that we offer back to God. We deny the possibility of transformation.

Do we want to believe that this and every other church across the world, can be full, gathering to share bread together as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come?

Do we want to believe in the miracle of the multiplication? 

Jesus is calling all of us who do so to come to him today and raise up their hands.