How will we be remembered?

It’s been good to have time to sit and read a newspaper from cover to cover this week - a rare treat! I’m a bit of a politics junkie and I’ve been pondering how this time politically, socially and mentally will be remembered. Nadine Dorries has tonight resigned as an MP very bitterly. She has told the Prime Minister that “history will not judge you kindly.” Then there’s the shenanigans in the United States. Will people next year really vote for Trump again? Then there’s this stop the boats mentality. We’ve become very divided. We have either become introspective and intolerant, or we readily give time trying to change society by good works and kindness. I guess that divide in attitude has always been so but today we don’t see a lot of good deeds being celebrated in the media in its various forms just bad news.

On the television as I write this there’s a very old programme in which Dr Martin Luther King is describing the dire segregation rules he and others lived by. He’s remembered as a worker for racial justice and respect. He wanted to leave a mark on this world by being an agent of change. 

I compare him with Trump. How can people really see him as their Saviour? We don’t live in the States, and we don’t really understand his make America great again rhetoric. It’s happened before in history of course where people have enthusiastically got behind a figure others looking on have seen as very dangerous but the person promises to make their life better. I’ve read books on 1930’s Germany and I understand at a time of hardship why so many people got behind a charismatic new leader promising the world. It wasn’t until later some of those people saw the horrors his evil agenda would lead to. 

I have this evening walked down the lovely street in Stamford called Barn Hill. I took time to reflect on who might have walked this cobbled street before me. You can also do the same exercise mooching round churches looking at tombs and plaques. It’s very powerful to think who has sat where you sit in your church on a Sunday who are part of the story of the place. 

I’ve thought of some dear souls in the Circuit I’ve passed through this week whose presence on my journey as the minister was very special. I take a lot of funerals! I’m always moved when the story of someone is shared and what a difference they’ve quietly made! I love this picture of the last wishes of a pastor I found in Beverley Minster! 

“The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day.”

The apostle Paul was proud to highlight that the legacy he thought he was leaving behind was a life of faith writing to Timothy. He stayed faithful in the long and arduous race of faith. He faced many extreme challenges. He struggled with temptations. He didn’t live an easy or comfortable life. He could have complained about much that he endured. Yet, he completed the race of life faithfully until the end.

He did not focus on all the churches that he started; on the theological works he wrote; on his earthly “accomplishments.” He was happy to note that he had stayed faithful in following God and serving Him until the end of his life!

That’s probably the greatest legacy to leave behind. How will we be remembered? I sat with 93 year old George the other day. He told me things were a lot better in the past with people being more generous. Despite having the war, he said, people helped one another. Maybe today people are as generous, it’s just that their voices and actions are just not noticed as we despair about what the noisy and the narrow what us to notice. One or two of the tabloids want us to follow a certain story, and you can even buy a mug or a tee shirt with Trump’s mugshot in jail on it! Lord have mercy! 

I guess the only way we will be remembered positively is getting on with the work of living in community, loving, sharing, respecting, being sacrificial, doing our best to be the people God has created us to be. One day some poor Superintendent in whatever Methodist Circuit I pass to glory in will have to write an obituary about me! I wonder what he or she will write. How will I be remembered? I hope that I did my best to help people, build people up and share God’s grace. We shall see! Not yet I hope, but we shall see! 

Reflecting on the journey

It’s been good to have three weeks annual leave at the end of what has been a very busy church year. I don’t usually take three weeks off together but I lost a week’s holiday last November as I was off sick then. So I’m glad to have a lot of time to rest, be, catch up with things and reflect before I return to Ripon on 2 September to begin my fourth year of ministry there. The beginning of my silver jubilee year since ordination! Next summer will be great as my colleague Sarah is ordained and I mark 25 years since mine. We will be at hers, somewhere near Leeds and I think we will have a little trip to Southport to remember mine. The floral hall and Leyland Road Methodist Church need revisiting.

It’s been good this week to revisit places important to me around Stamford and Rutland. The Superintendency of the then Stamford and Rutland Circuit was my second appointment in ministry and I arrived in Oakham in 2002, making up how to lead a Circuit as I went along! On Sunday it was a blessing to return to Empingham for worship. 

Empingham was my great joy while in the Circuit as we refurbished the church, put a post office in the hall and became community focussed. The stained glass window behind the  communion table suddenly after we got rid of the miserable blue paint showed its colours. 

On Sunday it was a huge privilege to be at the service led by Rev Maureen Jones. Maureen, now well into her 80’s has decided to stop leading services and Sunday was her last service on the plan after a very successful ministry including being the Bishop of the Methodist Church in Kenya. 

She reflected on God being a great big God and his providence being there especially when we wobble. Sometimes we need reminding where he has been on the journey. It was humbling on Sunday to hear folk say how much I’d helped them in my time as their minister. To get them a lovely bright set of premises after suffering dark and didgey blue and water pouring in was a huge privilege. 

I’ve been challenged to write down one thing a day I am proud of. My time as superintendent of the Stamford and Rutland Circuit feels me with pride. I only left them for personal reasons which I later regretted acting on. It was lovely to mooch round Oakham again, where I enjoyed living. Rutland is a fiercely independent county but I get why it is. As its motto says there is much in little - multum in parvo! 

Where are the important places on the journey that shape us and make us who we are and which leave something of them in us forever. 

This week as well as revisiting Rutland, we’ve spent an afternoon in the Fens seeing three friends who befriended us in our year in that area when we really needed friends. Next week we are heading for Sussex for a night in Penhurst Retreat Centre, then a few days in Rye. Leaving my appointment in the area so ebruptly was hard but it will be good next week to lay some things down and have a new beginning. My time in the south will include a visit to Southwick, in what was the then Worthing Circuit, for a thanksgiving service for the life of Richard, a dear friend, encourager and preacher of the Gospel. Who are the important people on our journey without who we would not be the people we are today? 

As we begin a new church year in a week or so, we will in my services sing the mighty new year hymn penned by Charles Wesley including the line “his providence has brought us through another various year.” Perhaps it ought to say “various years.” We’ve all had ups and downs, times of mountain top ecstasy and tikes of deep depression, times when the way seems clear and  exciting and times when we have no clue whatsoever what to do, times when all is right with the world and times when we want to give up. There’s no point! 

 

I am writing this outside our holiday home in Stamford as it’s too hot to sleep and it is 2.30 in the morning! I’m sitting here reflecting on the people who’ve shaped me and nurtured me over nearly 27 years of ministry and 56 and a bit years of life. I’m still shocked when people say I’ve made a difference to their journey. But maybe I shouldn’t be.

 Maybe we have turned into a negative and complaining society and we’ve forgotten the church and every community only works when people do their little bit and leave what happens with that little bit to God. We’ve become very critical of ourselves and especially little churches but I say this - up and down this country every day little acts of kindness and faithfulness done in God’s name are keeping people going and growing. 

Remember the story of the hungry crowd and only a little boy’s packed lunch there. The disciples say “we have nothing here except this.”

Jesus says “bring it here to me” then a miracle happens. 

A healthy journey is about remembering God, the great big God is here and the ongoing journey is safe in his hands. The world may change, but God does not. He upholds and governs all things and he has the whole world, including ours, in his hands. And maybe we need to believe in ourselves a bit more too! As someone said once “we have enough to be the church.” I am glad I have been helpful to people over the years and I am glad to remember the Ian and Eileen’s and Maurice and Judith’s and Mollie, George and June’s and Richard’s out there. They may like me shudder with embarrassment they make a difference but they do, quietly.

So maybe in September when I launch a new church year and encourage positivity and encouragement I need to include another Wesley hymn with these words: the task we have to really make a difference:

“He bids us build each other up, and gathered into one, to our high calling’s glorious hope, we hand in hand go on.” 

A Churchless Sunday —- and faith?

To wake up on a Sunday morning and not have to go to church is a rare treat for me. Is it naughty to use the word treat? I did think about going, honestly! But after an exceptionally busy few months waking up in Farnborough West Premier Inn about nine then discovering checkout wasn’t until midday, I rolled over and went back to sleep. 

For the majority in this country a good lie in on a Sunday is a gift. The part of the country I’ve been in this weekend, Surrey and Hampshire, part of the Greater London commuter belt is full of large houses crammed in wherever there is space and I have to say I noticed a lot of soulless housing estates and also a lot of aggression on the roads especially when they want your parking space! Hard work in the week deserves a good lie in on a Sunday morning doesn’t it? 

At lunchtime today we found a bistro in Fleet as we hadn’t had breakfast. There was a huge queue to get in the place. Perhaps a breakfast or brunch out is the norm on a Sunday morning in Hampshire and a leisurely read of the Sunday papers over a coffee. All the Sunday papers today discussed “stop the boats” - either good on you, get tougher, put them on more barges and blame the French for any deaths, or this is a scandal. When I do ever read a Sunday paper?!  I went into the Waitrose. (Which shows what sort of area we were in!) The Waitrose was heaving! Perhaps shopping on a Sunday is the norm now. Perhaps it’s the only day people can do it. Is shopping the Sunday God now? We had to collect an order in Argos in Luton on the way back north. That was heaving too! As were all the shops on the retail park. 

How else do people use Sunday? Maybe to catch up with family. Commuters who live in big houses in Surrey and Hampshire find Sunday is the only day they have time to be a father or a mother. We’ve been to my cousin’s wedding this weekend in Guildford which was lovely and today we were invited to Graham and Pippa’s garden in Sandhurst along with my Aunt and Uncle just to sit in their garden! It was really good just to sit and be with family. We’ve not many family left so we both treasure our cousins! It was precious just to be together. A lovely use of a Sunday afternoon.

What else do people relax with at the weekend? Sport of course. Myfamily team Luton Town FC are in the Premier League for the first time. They got a 4 - 1 drubbing at Brighton yesterday but they will remain optimistic they can stay up all season. Then there’s the box sets bingers and the radio addicts. A lot of people listen to Liza Tarbuck on a Saturday night. I love this article in yesterday’s Telegraph:

The funniest show on British radio right now isn’t some hip young affair on Radio 1 or 6 Music. It’s not full of pre-scripted banter, nor is it hosted by a pun-slinging stand-up. Instead, it’s a riotous weekly gossip session, helmed by a self-effacing 58-year-old woman, tucked away on dear old Radio 2.

We were recently regaled with a listener’s story about a friend proudly boasting that her son was holidaying in France, “staying in a quiche on the edge of town” (she meant a gîte). This prompted another caller to gently tease his mother for calling the Wimbledon crowd “a bit parmesan” (she meant partisan). Such faux pas recalled the listener who confessed to forgetting Rasputin’s name while on a sightseeing trip to St Petersburg and asking the tour guide: “Is this where they murdered Rumpelstiltskin?” Welcome to Liza Tarbuck on Saturday evenings – reliably the most uplifting show on air.

“It’s my favourite Radio 2 show of the week,” says breakfast host Zoe Ball. “Liza plays the finest music and nobody makes me belly laugh like that woman. She actually got a shout-out at my friends’ wedding this summer. In the years that [they] Damian and Kim, the new Mr and Mrs Harris, have been together, they always make a roast listening to Liza’s show. It’s just the thing they do. Liza is a broadcasting legend and there is no one finer.”

Tarbuck’s show is a weekly fixture in Claudia Winkleman’s house, too. “We never miss it,” says Winkleman. “One story that sticks in my mind is the male listener who was accosted by a glamorous stranger outside the supermarket. He couldn’t work out if it was aftershave or the fact that he’d just bought a jar of sauerkraut that made him so irresistible. Liza’s verdict? ‘Quite plainly, you’re looking after your gut health and that excites me.’ My entire family was howling.”

For the past decade, Tarbuck’s joyous blend of eclectic songs and freewheeling chat has sound-tracked two million listeners’ Saturday sundowners, supper-making or domestic pottering. The BBC blurb calls it “a mishmash of tunes, a hearty portion of hilarity, a side of whimsy and a dollop of dinner chat”. That doesn’t do justice to this exuberant cult phenomenon that has built a devoted following.

That loyal listenership is key. Tarbuck calls her audience “the hivemind”. All she has to do is mention a loose theme – say, summer fêtes, horticultural accidents or “who’s the most famous person to have petted your dog?” – and amusing anecdotes arrive in reams. She receives the most listener messages of any programme on the station – more than 50 texts and emails per minute – and plunders the best for material. Most missives end with a cheery “love to everyone”. It genuinely feels like a club where like-minded folk meet every week for a catch-up and a cackle.

She always asks what we’re having for dinner, which she reads aloud with peckish envy. She canvasses calls from “mohos and caras” (mini-breakers and mucking-about-on-a-boat-ers), asking what they can currently see and cooing at their lyrical descriptions. Listeners offer their ornithological sightings (“top bird trumpingtons”, Tarbuck terms this) and wildlife news. Squirrels are known as “Ben Fogles”, ­presumably because he looks a bit like one. Indeed, the show has developed its own language. The Wirral is always “the leisure peninsula”. Contributors are known as “fots” (friends of the show). Listeners’ husbands (“hello, men!”) are invariably “gorgeous” or “filthy”, depending on what’s funnier.

Tarbuck’s infectious dirty laugh only fuels the mirth. Stories involving rogue pets, mischievous children or naughty nanas always get her chortling away. A fertile recent theme was sneaky teenagers throwing house parties while their parents were away – and the telltale signs that got them busted. Cue unsavoury finds behind the sideboard or in the fishpond. Body parts resembling famous people were another rich seam. The man with a toenail that looked like Angela Lansbury is seared in my memory.

As a woman of a certain age, Tarbuck revels in tales of “menopausal madness”, celebrating scattiness in a way that’s subtly empowering. A running thread is an enigmatic figure nicknamed “Beryl the Brick”, an elderly lady who surreptitiously helps herself to two house bricks per night when there’s building work in her neighbourhood. What does she do with them? Nobody knows, but speculation is rife.

The way that Tarbuck mixes music with crowdsourced input and her own riffing may sound effortless, but it’s deceptively skilful. The seat-of-the-pants pandemonium is thrillingly unpredictable, but never quite careers out of control. It’s testament to her restless, roaming mind. When Ken Bruce left Radio 2 this year, many championed Tarbuck to inherit his morning show. For now, she remains a weekly treat, rather than a daily one.

Crucially, she keeps a firm grip on her playlist. Most Radio 2 shows pick from the same roster of songs. Tarbuck goes pleasingly off-piste. She spends all week carefully compiling a mixtape. An average show might take in Motown classics, Swing­ing Sixties gems, gritty 1970s funk, disco anthems and vintage jazz. She might lob in a marching band, some country or calypso, per­haps a rousing show tune or cheesy crooner. David Rose’s The Strip­per pops up weekly, as does Percy Faith’s Theme From ‘A Summer Place’. When she played Champion, the Wonder Horse recently, social media went wild. Most songs are followed by a nugget of trivia about the rec­ording. Tarbuck does her research, but wears her knowledge lightly.

Her trademark sound effect of a squeaky dog toy began as a prank. A friend’s mother was driving a vanload of mutts up the motorway and Tarbuck thought it’d be amusing to send them all mad. Now, it’s a high-pitched fixture. Come Saturday, listeners send in photos of their pet pooches sitting by the radio, ears cocked, head tilted. “Where is it?” asks Tarbuck in her dog-owner’s voice. “Find it!”

Tarbuck treats us as friends and fellow fun-seekers, rather than a passive audience. Each episode, she describes an imaginary ice rink. Listeners send in descriptions of their fantasy skating outfits, before a dreamy interlude where everyone visualises taking to the ice together. “I love having that skating moment with all her lovely listeners,” says Ball. Jane Garvey said on Radio 4 last year: “It’s rarer and rarer for people who really understand radio to get on air. But Liza just knows radio and she makes it special.”

“Liza is just a brilliant listen,” says Channel 5’s Dan Walker. “She even somehow makes handing to the news an event.” Those anarchic segues into the 7pm news bulletin recently went viral. She can’t resist putting on silly voices and taking the mickey. It’s invariably “all over your smart trousers”, as opposed to “on your smart speaker”. “Smell that fromage!” she might declare. “We interrupt this fun to bring you some miserable news.”

It’s not exactly from the BBC manual. “Liza’s intros to the news are a thing of legend at Wogan House,” says fellow DJ Scott Mills. He admits it took him time to tune into Tarbuck’s comic frequency, but he is now addicted: “When I first heard Liza’s show, I didn’t get it at all. Now, I’m fully invested and it’s a key part of my weekend.”

Former 6 Music favourite Shaun Keaveny now plies his trade on Community Garden Radio. “The best broadcasters feel like instant friends,” he says. “That’s Liza. You don’t actually know her, of course, but somehow she gives enough of her inner self that you can put a mosaic picture together of this potty, brilliant, hilarious, music-loving woman with a rich inner-life that she wants to share with you. Better than that, she wants to hear about your daft nonsense as well. It’s a reciprocal merry-go-round of idiocy. Daft and profound sit cheek by jowl. There aren’t many people funnier on UK radio right now.”

She might be a garrulous host, but off-air, Tarbuck keeps a resolutely low profile. She’d rather go on a dog walk than sashay up a red carpet and rarely grants interviews. In contrast to carefully stage-managed showbiz careers, her CV is refreshingly random. She’s the daughter of the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck (he and wife Pauline listen live every week, always getting fondly mocked). She has hosted The Big Breakfast and various game shows, including Blockbusters. She’s Rada-trained, and has alternated presenting jobs with acting roles in Linda Green, Watching, Upstart Crow and, most recently, feminist comedy The Change. Add voice-over work and a gardening podcast and it all makes for a charmingly idiosyncratic résumé.

Tarbuck dances to her own beat, which is why her show is so unique. She’s influenced by Kenny Everett and was once part of Steve Wright’s “posse”, but smelted her own glittering brand. The only drawback is that the giddy mood can lead listeners astray. “Like most people, I make the tea as I listen,” says Keaveny. “The trouble is, it’s too much fun. If I’m trying not to drink that day, I have a problem. Usually by the second hour, I’m halfway down a bottle of something.” Liza Tarbuck: so funny, she should come with a health warning.

So why am I troubled by my lie in, lunch, time with family, sport, radio and anything else that isn’t church on a Sunday? My Grandad used to go ape if I went out with friends on a Sunday! I used to challenge him he was watching the cricket on the telly on a Sunday afternoon and people were working to bring it to him. Sunday used to be sacred. Now it isn’t. 

The thing that bothers me most is that I didn’t miss going to church today at all. I found God in a bed I didn’t want to get out of, in a leisurely breakfast with my wife, in time with family. Even if not in the Torygraph I had time to read today. I found God in kindness and relationships and in the beauty of creation. There is SOME green space in commuter land! And what bothers me more is that the people who lie in in big houses or go out for coffee or brunch or who read the Sunday papers or spend time with family or do a sport or a hobby or follow a celebrity whose radio programme makes them feel included in a family have no intention or desire or interest whatsoever in coming to church. It isn’t even on their radar to consider. The gulf between church and society is wider than it has ever been. 

We talk of going out into the community. This is necessary. But we have to understand the community we are trying to engage with. We can’t any more think people will just come to us. We have to be relevant and offer what they want and so we need to know what they want before we offer something totally irrelevant! What mattered today to those people out for coffee or lunch in Fleet today? Do we care? We have to meet people where they are and we have to prove we are normal amongst them!!! I didn’t get asked what I do at the wedding reception yesterday. Normally my profession is a conversation halter at any social gathering like I should be holier than thou and not know all the words to the Abba tracks blasting out as the dancing started last night. You can’t suddenly make people include church in their Sunday. They have their Sabbath. But maybe we being amongst people might attract them to a different kind of rest and being. I don’t know. 

Can you be a Christian without going to church? I know so many good people of a similar age to me who left church years ago because it said nothing to them. Some of them read my weekly blog. They hold on to faith - it’s just the church that isn’t necessary. 

Will I go to church next Sunday? Maybe. The challenge is how we get alongside people for who it really doesn’t matter. My wife said to me earlier “we’ve not been to church today” - did she think that was a problem? For me today has been liberating. I’ll be back but sometimes isn’t it nice to break free and find God dancing and laughing in the world, in the rest, in the coffee shop, in what makes us laugh like Liza Tarbuck, in creation and in family? 

Discuss! 

Show us how to share our bread

The passage for this Sunday is the feeding of the 5000 and more in Matthew’s Gospel. Here’s my sermon for Sunday. 

Let me speak first to cat owners. Do your cats stare at you in the morning on the bed until you get up and feed them? Do they go to the food place and sit by the biscuit bowl until you fill it again? If you live in a multiple cat household like we do, do they all try to get the food you serve them out of the same bowl barging each other out of the way instead of waiting for all the bowls to be filled? Here Bella is eyeing up my sandwich. At this stage she didn’t know she didn’t know it wasn’t bacon in it or ham but vegan fake meat! 

Do we really know what it is like to be hungry? Perhaps not. We know the craving as we pass the chip shop or see the chocolate bar. We know when we need food but I suggest none of us really know food poverty. Hunger is now widespread in this country. Almost 10 million adults and 4 million children do not have enough to eat – nearly double what it was a year ago. More than 2 million adults cannot afford to eat every day. Someone has called it a “domestic humanitarian crisis.”

So in this area we see Ripon Community House and its food pantry and its waste not Wednesday, the food bank at the Salvation Army, Helen Mackenzies back to basics project feeding families and the community larders in the Circuit at Masham and at Boroughbridge being used more and more. In Boroughbridge we see around 100 people every Wednesday and afterwards excess food given is taken to the local schools, nursing homes and pubs to be shared.

Hungry crowds are nothing new. We remember those news reports we see from time to time in Africa of food being dropped from planes and desperate people fighting for it. Imagine being in the crowd Jesus faces. 5000 men plus women and children all hungry. We don’t know their story but I think like those we’ve thought about they knew about poverty. I want to focus on just one detail of the story. When the great multitude came to Jesus in the wilderness, he was moved with compassion because he saw they were tired and hungry. Late in the day his disciples suggested that he send the people home so they could find something to eat. You know the rest of the story :how Jesus blessed the we have only five loaves and two fish so that it fed 5000 and more with 12 baskets left over.

This is one of the great miracles of the Bible. Suppose you had to feed 5000 tonight. What would you do? It’s late, the people are tired and hungry, and there’s no 24 hour drive through Macdonalds. Dominos Pizza doesn’t deliver to the wilderness. The disciples make a very practical suggestion: “Send them away and let them find food.” That’s logical. The suggestion is not made from bad motives. In themselves the disciples had no resources to meet this enormous need. They had no food and no money. What else could they do? Answer: They could do nothing! They didn’t see 5000 people; they saw 5000 problems they couldn’t solve.

Most of us would have said the same thing. We’re quick to see what we can’t do and quick to talk about what we don’t have. The disciples saw the crowds and realised their inadequacy. Somehow they forgot that the Son of God was standing right there with them.

I love it when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat” (verse 37). It’s funny because the disciples have just explained why they can’t feed this massive crowd. One wonders if they were thinking something like this: “You want us to feed this crowd? You are joking! Didn’t you hear what we just said? We don’t have any money and we don’t have any food. What we have here is a failure to communicate.” But Jesus wouldn’t let his disciples off the hook. He wants them to get involved in the grand adventure of helping others.

This is how Jesus often works with his followers. Over and over again he puts us in positions where we are helpless, and then he says, “Do something!”In our desperation we cry out to heaven, “How?” and he replies, “I’m glad you asked.” It’s not that Jesus wants us to fail, but he does want us to know that without him we can do nothing.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this story: “Some of the crowd must have laughed out loud, while some of them were mystified and still others were embarrassed for Jesus, that he should have promised so much with so little to deliver.”

Let them feed themselves, say the disciples. “They need not go away,” says Jesus. “You give them something to eat.” Not me but you; not my bread but yours; not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now. Stop looking for someone else to solve the problem and solve it yourselves. Stop waiting for food to fall from the sky and share what you have. Stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead.

Bring what you have to me; that is where we start. Remember that there is no such thing as “your” bread or “my” bread; there is only “our “bread, as in “give us this day our daily bread.” However much you have, just bring it to me and believe that it is enough to start with, enough to get the ball rolling, enough to start a trend. Be the first in the crowd to turn your pockets inside out; be the first on your block to start a miracle.

No one knows how it really happened. Your guess is as good as mine, but what Jesus has been saying to his followers forever, he goes on saying to us today: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” If it is a saying that strikes fear in our hearts, that makes the loaves we have seem like nothing at all, we have only to remember what he says next. “Bring them here to me.” We have enough here if we offer it to Jesus. With Jesus anything is possible. There will be enough and basketfuls of providence left over. And you know what? I think this story shows us what Jesus is all about. 

Earlier in chapter 14, John the Baptist had just died a gruesome death by order of Herod, and after John’s disciples buried his body, they went to tell Jesus what happened. The very next verse tells us, “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” It seems that upon hearing the news, Jesus needed some time to pray, to reflect, to grieve, to think about what would happen next, and he slipped away to find some quiet. When he returned, a crowd had gathered on the shore. When he saw them, he had compassion for them and began to move among them, curing the sick. He knew pain, he knew grief and remember in the wilderness he knew hunger. He had compassion for the people. Compassion – literally suffering with others. He identifies with the crowd and despite being wobbly and fragile and needing space he can do other than meet their needs – and more. In John Gospel the crowd come back the next day for another free feed. And next day Jesus follows practical help with theology – yesterday I gave you bread, today I want to tell you that I am the Bread of Life. 

Jesus spent time with people who were marginalised by the social structures of his community, including women, children, those stigmatised by their physical health and people who were impoverished. Jesus highlighted the needs of the marginalised in such a way, that it is reasonable to conclude, that to abandon people experiencing poverty is to abandon the gospel. Our tendency when we want to change is to look towards the wealthy and powerful, those with influence, Jesus often looked towards those who were oppressed, those who were marginalised. A crowd fed, leftover food, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all people, where no one will hunger and all will be satisfied. 

We all know this story. We heard it in Sunday School. People outside the church know it. It’s so important it’s told in all four Gospels albeit slightly differently, today we have no little boy who finds his packed lunch stolen! My college principal used to say in his criticism of our services where was your clincher young man? What do you want them to do? Well this is it. To truly follow Jesus we need to find a way to emulate that same compassion, love, and care for all those around us, even when it may feel most difficult. We need to be a church that feeds the starving, materially and spiritually. Seven days a week.  How generous are we? Not just in what we offer here, but will we work for a world where all are fed? And ask difficult questions of those who can make a difference? Will we hope for the day when food banks are no more and poverty is eradicated? That is the work of the compassionate church of Christ and of a God who has open hands and satisfies the needs of all living things. Our cats are happy when they are fed and then they go off to snooze on the window sill in the sun. 

 

God with us, in all our speaking, fill us with your word. In all our thoughts, grant us your generosity of spirit, in all our deeds, show us how to share our bread.