June 22, 2025 A Vacation Weekend
Genesis 14: 18-20 + Psalm 110 6 First Corinthians 11: 23-26 + Luke 9: 11-17
In every chapter of Luke’s Gospel there is reference to food. Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. Today’s story is set in a deserted place where food would be difficult to find, and with that detail, Luke expects us to remember the wilderness of the desert and miracle of the Manna by which God fed the people.
Perhaps because of the overabundance all around us today, this Feast has shifted our attention away from the Gospel upon which it rests today. At the mention or the reading of the words: Holy Body and Blood of Christ too many immediately think of and see in their minds an object, a host, often in a monstrance. When that happens, and if it persists, the Church will dissolve into a collection of isolated individuals like so many strangers packed into one space, but not really together. People will come to church and leave without meeting anyone. Whatever they take away won’t be from one another. Nor will they give anything to another.
We are still struggling to recover from ages of an old system that had everyone following the Mass quietly and privately involved in their private prayers and devotions if they followed the Mass at all. This is not the way it is meant to be, and live streaming has only made this worse. We have a deep need for community. Loneliness is a major cause of mental illness and depression. The world is crying out for community, and this is where the Eucharist rightly understand can be both a help and a challenge. The Body and Blood of Christ is not and object. It is not a thing. It is a people.
The whole of Luke’s Gospel is a rallying cry to the ancient and ever-new church of our day. It is a radical summons to community, to a life shared and lived together. His wisdom and inspiration to acknowledge and focus on food is nothing more than the Holy Spirit at work. Food shared is what nourishes the soul and the body. We all have memories of great family feasts when we laughed, remembered, and strengthened the bonds of love that hold us together. I think of my grandmother with her apron stirring pots on that old stove, with my aunts unpacking the other dishes they brought to share, then setting the big table while my dad and uncles sat around in the living room with their exaggerated fish stories. At the same time, all of kids were out in the back yard waiting to be called to that card table off to the side cleaning our plates so we would get desert. That experience is the bedrock of our Eucharistic life. We must re connect the Eucharistic celebration to the family of faith eating together joyfully, hopefully, and often. When we do, it will take us even further into the miracle that we have recalled today.
Over the years some preachers have attempted to explain what really happened in this story. Was food really multiplied? Or did people bring out of their own provisions and share them with others? I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. That thinking tries to explain away a miracle and misses the point of the miraculous abundance God provides through Jesus. If Jesus can change bread and wine into his body and blood, he can take five loaves and two fish and feed a mob. There is a miracle here. Yet the role played by the apostles must not be overlooked. They are the ones through whom the crowd experiences this generous gift of Jesus Christ.
Eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is inseparable from sharing God’s abundant blessings upon us, especially the gifts of food and water, with those who are needy and hungry. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is to be read not as a past event that Jesus did, but rather as present expectation that followers of Christ are called to undertake in today’s world. This is a challenge to extend that miracle in the world today.
Our worship cannot be separated from our service. If the Eucharist does not move us to service, it becomes an empty ritual detached from life, just as feeding the hungry apart from the Eucharist never really satisfies. The command of Jesus to those apostles still rings out every time we gather to feast on the Gospel and on the Bread of Life: “Feed them.” he says to us.