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Last Sunday before Advent Sermon - St Katharine's Halstead

Sunday 26th Nov 2006 - Sermon

Readings - Jer 23. 5; John 6 5

Well here we are again.  The end of another year and my first year as priest.  ….. Yes, that is correct to day is the very last page of my church lectionary.  Today is the end of “Ordinary” time and next Sunday we begin Advent – when the liturgical colour will be purple.  A busy time for churchwardens changing altar frontals and priests remembering what colour stole to get from the wardrobe !

So today is the end of a year of faith where we look forward in Advent to the coming to the Messiah. Are we ready to be ready ?  
The wonderful passage from the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was a priest during the days of King Solomon and is often, perhaps unfairly, referred to as the “prophet of doom” !  However, in the passage that we heard he is declaring what we will be looking forward to in the forthcoming Advent season – “… in the days to  come, saith the Lord, I will raise unto David a righteous branch and a King shall reign and prosper…”  This  is generally regarded as the most important Messianic reference in the Book where is looks  forward to the coming of the Christ-although in a manner and a time that he could not have imagined by Jeremiah (or indeed many Jews at the time, or later).  Jeremiah was looking forward in his prophetic way to a time when a messiah would lead – not only the children of Israel, BUT ALSO the seed of the house of Israel from ALL countries.   What a powerful vision that is of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. !

……  And then we heard the famous and well known account of the miracle  of the “Feeding of the 5,000”.  However, please note that the gospel writers only counted the men – so perhaps one could triple the figure at the very least !!.  In any event, it was such a momentus event that it is recounted in ALL the Gospels WHY ?  Because it is such an important symbol of the awesome power of God in Christ and His care for all His people.  Whereas many of the other miracles involved changing something or curing somebody, this miracle involved the creation of food from NOTHING.

This is such a well known story from our days at Sunday school, that I thought I would try and highlight a few different aspects of it for us to ponder on as we enter towards the Season of Advent.

Firstly -  as mentioned – there were certainly more than   5,000 people ! But why 5,000 ? Certainly it indicates a very great number – which would have caused a huge traffic jam of people !  equivalent to a number of villages or towns infact.  But some commentators would point out that no numbers mentioned in the Bible are random ! “5” is  often seen as a significant number for Grace  and ws the dominant numeral in the Tabernacle –which is why perhaps there were x5 fishes also.   5 also indicates the number of creatures (x4= birds, fish, animals, humans) plus 1 – God.  Thus it indicates God adding His blessing and grace to the works of His hand.

Secondly, the feeding of the people by Jesus when they were hungry also refers back  the Old Testament account of Elisha found in 2 Kings 4:42-44. There the prophet fed a hundred people with 20 barley loaves and had some left over. But Jesus far outstrips that great man of God of the Old Testament.  Also, of course where God provided manna from heaven in the form of Quail to the people of Moses who starving in the desert (Exodus 16:13).   Remember, all these people (however many there actually were) were steeped in the Torah of their faith –and hence Jesus would clearly be aware of their understanding.  As with all preachers, Jesus was aware of his audience well.  They would KNOW that  what Jesus was doing  before their very eyes was so much more than  anything  that any of even the very best of the Jewish Prophets had done in years gone by. 

… And then, what did Jesus do ?  He gave thanks.  And that is exactly what we do in this service of the Holy Eucharist – where we remember how Christ’s body  and blood,  represented by the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, is given as a memorial for our redemption by Christ on the Cross for all our sins for ever.  But also, it reminds us all how much we have to give thanks to God for.  …. Much more that any of us deserve. That is the sacrament which we celebrate at this Eucharist.

 And finally, if you remember just before Jesus performs His miracle, when he was being told that there were too many people to feed and there was no food and not enough money to buy any… Jesus merely told them all to “Sit down” on the grass.  In the account from Mark’s  Gospel (6:39) he adds that the grass was “green”.

This has two significant reminders for us all.  Firstly, that  we all  need to sit and be still when coming before God.  That is, when we pray and as we pray particularly at this Eucharist for God’s Holy Spirit to move in this place so that the bread and wine “might be for us the body and blood” of Christ.  We need to remind ourselves of the awesome nature of the “real presence” of God in Christ at the Eucharist Table  -where we come to feed on pure spiritual food and drink from Christ. 
Secondly, the adding of “green” to the description of the  grass serves to remind us that it is indeed in green and lush pastures in which we sit when we are with  our Lord.  As the Psalmist puts it far more eloquently (Psalm 23) “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me lie in green pastures”.  The Lord, is in deed our Shepherd and as we are fed the ultimate spiritual food in this Eucharist there is nothing more that we can want – so that like those  many thousands of people with Jesus, we can also sit down quietly and wait for the miracle that is the “real presence” of God in this sacrament.

So, on the eve of this Advent – 2006 years after Christ’s birth and about 1974 years after the events of the miraculous feeding of the multitude of people let us be ready to a new year in Christ.  Whereas Jeremiah was only able to say that “ a king shall reign”, we know that Christ the King reigns now and for ever.  Infact, today is also remembered in the church’s calendar as the Festival  of Christ the King – which is why the colour for  today in Red.  To be changed to Purple next week.   Christ  is our  King and in this Eucharist we remember Christ  reign in us through the Holy Sacraments, whereby we can also forever lie in the green and lush pastures of true faith.

AMEN