GATHERED FRAGMENTS
A REFLECTIVE READING OF JOHN 6:1-14
Reader: (John 6:1-5)
After this, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a multitude followed him because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. Jesus went up into the hills and there sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?”
Response: Jesus takes his disciples to the middle of nowhere, outside of Galilee, to a foreign place, and then, uninvited, unasked for, unbidden, the multitudes come. The miscellaneous crowd of outcasts and misfits comes. It is the Passover holiday, a day for feasting and thanksgiving, a day for family and friends, a day for synagogue or temple. But this crowd is trekking into some foreign field leaving behind family and friends, home and hearth, traditions and observances. They must be a desperate lot indeed to be following some street-corner holy man into this distant empty place on the biggest feast day of the year. What longing must be in their hearts? What emptiness of spirit must drive them? What passionate dreams must they be following? But the multitude comes.
And Jesus does not want to disappoint them. They come for spiritual sustenance but he also worries about what they are to eat. He feels responsible. He even thinks that maybe his little group of impoverished disciples should be buying some food. It’s a feast day and Jesus thinks the people should feast. Like the host of any holiday gathering, Jesus frets over the menu and wonders if the guests will have a good time and will there be enough and where will they all sit. He is the host and he means to give them a Passover to remember. They have needs and he has compassion.
Reader: (John 6:6-10)
This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
Response: And so they discuss the problem. They consider their options. They don’t have enough money and the food available to them is as nothing in the face of the need. Like so many times in all our lives their resources are not up to the task at hand. How do five thousand people have a feast with just a scattering of loaves and fish? The resources in life never seem to be enough. How do I pay my bills, or send the kids to college, or pay off this mortgage, on what little I earn? How do I get through a night of grief when my strength is all used up? How do I confront the bully when I am so small? How do I get everything done when there is so little time? And for our whole communities; how do we change the world when we are so few? How do we fight for justice or advocate for the poor or stand up to bigotry when we just don’t have the strength, the numbers, the clout, the power? The resources never seem to be enough. The need is great, the hunger is deep and the food is scarce and the feast seems impossible. Such is life.
But Jesus just tells the people to sit down. There are no chairs. There is no table. There is almost no food. They have none of the things necessary for feasting. And yet, Jesus proclaims the feast. The host says sit down. Use the grass. Use the rocks. Use whatever you’ve got. But sit down, for the feast time is here.
Reader: (John 6:11)
Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
Response: And then he gives thanks. They have almost nothing, but he gives thanks for what they have. They are a group of nobodies gathering in the middle of nowhere, but he gives thanks for who they are. He is a man on the hard road to Calvary and death, but he gives thanks for the journey. Their world is full of cruelty, hypocrisy and hatred, but he gives thanks for it all. This kind of gratitude doesn’t grow out of their abundance or their good fortune or their easy life or their good health or their great prospects; they have none of those. This gratitude grows out of their faith and their hope.
God’s promise is abundant life and they believe the promise and so life seems abundant. God’s promise is for a future of grace and so they find that grace breaking forth in their lives in out-of-the-way places. God’s promise is for a messiah and so here, now, on some desolate hillside, sitting in the grass, they have discovered a messiah. Jesus gives thanks because abundance is in the heart not on the plate, because God’s gifts are in the spirit not in the bank account. He gives thanks because when he looks into the eyes of that multitude at his feet, he sees faith and hopes and powerful dreams and deep longings and an overflowing expectation for the miracle of God’s grace ready to break forth in his impromptu feast on the grass.
Reader: (John 6:12)
And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.”
Response: He says, gather up the fragments. And we are the fragments. Every one of our lives is broken into pieces. We are stressed and stretched by the scattering of our attention into the thousand little and large things that we have to attend to. Our lives are so often hectic and harried, broken into the pieces of family and job and church and a dozen other commitments. And our communities are fragmented by the polarization of our positions and our politics. And we sit in our houses, often with members of our families in separate rooms, in front of computers or television screens or whatever we use to entertain ourselves in our separateness. And our world is broken into the pieces of nations and races and political parties and warring tribes. Yes, we are the fragments.
But isn’t this what Jesus’ life was really all about—gathering up the fragments? He collects the people who are the fragments broken off by our hard-hearted society. He gathers the fragments of our broken lives when we are unable to put them together again. He gathers the fragments of our hearts when they are broken by the losses of those we love. He collects the fragments of our hopes when they are scattered by the trials of life. The baskets of his love can contain all of the fragments of our mistakes and our disappointments and our sins and our shames. He gathers up all the fragments that nothing may be lost.
Reader: (John 6:13-14)
So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the twelve barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
Response: As they all ate their fill from the five little loaves did nobody notice the miracle? As the two little fish passed from hand to hand with each of the five thousand breaking off a piece did no one notice the absurdity or the wonder of it? No, it seems that it was only at the end when the massive baskets of broken pieces were gathered up that they saw what had happened. But isn’t that always the way. The gifts of God so often go unnoticed or unacknowledged or unseen until we gather up the wholeness of our lives. When we think only of the pieces, we see so clearly what we lack, we see and worry over the lack of resources; we note and tally every little piece of bad fortune, every little incident when we were ill-used or ill-treated, every single time that things did not turn out the way we wanted them to or thought they should. But the countless gifts, small and large so often escape our notice until we add up all of those fragments; until we look back at how we grew or grew deeper even in the hard times; until we see the whole arc of the story and how it was shaped by the gifts of a thousand lives and loves that touched us; until we reflect back on the richness of the whole tapestry of our days and the beauties that blessed them. When we gather up all of the pieces of our living, we each have twelve baskets full of blessings to give thanks for and to praise God for and to rejoice over. Twelve baskets of blessings, gather them up and you too will notice the miracle.
Now, the miracle may have been something that defied the laws of nature. Maybe the loaves just kept growing larger in some magical way as the pieces were broken off. But perhaps it is more profound if we see here a better and simpler miracle. No doubt some, if not all, of those poor people leaving their homes on a holiday weekend and heading out into the wilderness, thought of the issue of food for the journey. They were all hungry for Jesus’ gifts of the spirit, but they no doubt remembered to provide for their more ordinary hunger in their own ways. So when the loaves and fishes came around to them, most people, rather than taking what was offered, added the gift of some of what they had brought. People shared. They gave twelve baskets more than what they took.
It was still a miracle. But it was a miracle of sharing; a miracle of love that happened that holy day. They all feasted on the gifts of each other. They feasted on the generosity of strangers and the largess of friends and the giving of people who had little to give. They found abundance together as a gathered community because each opened their larders as they opened their hearts. They gave their hard-earned food to each other as they also gave their hard-earned trust and faith and hope to this gracious miracle worker who hosted such a glorious feast. It was the greatest miracle of all—he touched their hearts and moved them with the power of love. They had abundance because they shared. And that made a thanksgiving feast indeed.
Reader: And they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”
Response: Thanks be to God.
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