Be Still - 17th Sunday in OT

17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Holy Family Catholic Church, New Albany, IN

7/25/2015

Where can we buy enough food for them to eat? This is Jesus question to the Apostles in the Gospel today, how can we feed the people here. Now, I want to look at the different answers his Apostles give him to this question, but first let’s look at how John sets the scene for us. Jesus has just crossed the sea of Galilea. We have been hearing the last few weeks in our Gospels that Jesus crossed the sea quite a bit, and every time the Gospel writers tell us that part of the strategy was to find some alone time, but that never really worked, the people always followed, because they wanted to see what Jesus would do next. And in this particular moment the people have followed Jesus and his exasperated Apostles to the shore where there are five thousand of them waiting to see what Jesus does next.

One of my favorite details that John gives us in today’s Gospel is that the area they were standing had a lot of grass, thanks John. But perhaps this can give us a clue to the time of year, it was spring time and the time of Passover was coming near. So Jesus and his apostles were probably thinking quite a bit about the story of the flight of the Israelite from Egypt.

So in the midst of the chaos of the growing hoard on that grassy knoll, Jesus asks his Apostles, where can we get enough food for them to eat? Now Jesus knew what he was going to do, he knew the answer, but he wanted to see what his Apostles would come up with. With school starting this week, sorry to mention it, I can’t help but think of all the teachers who have used this same tactic on me to teach something, Jesus is trying to see if the Apostles get how Jesus operates yet.

And first we hear from Phillip, it is always the brave student who answers first. And Phillip responds by creating a budget, Phillip says ‘I have figured it out, to feed five thousand people we would need to have two hundred days of wages, and we clearly don’t have that kind of money right now.’ Perhaps Phillip went on to start thinking about fund raising strategies. Next up to answer is Andrew. Rather than calculate all that they would need, Andrew takes an inventory of what they do have, perhaps Andrew was hoping that the people would be able to help themselves and Jesus and the apostles wouldn’t have to feed the people, but alas Andrew finds that there are only five barley loaves and two fish, his resourcefulness did not solve the problem, and in his own failure to solve the problem he asks, “what are these few loaves for so many people.”

We can be like the Apostles in today’s Gospel, because I believe that if we listen carefully, Jesus is asking all sorts of questions to us in our lives, some arise in the day to day challenges we meet and some in the silence of our hearts. For those of you who are parents with children in the house, the question might be similar to the question to the apostles today, how can you give your children everything they need? Like Andrew you may be taking stock of what’s available and saying, ‘there is only so much of me and my time and my energy to go around! Those of you who are about to go back to school are going to start hearing about the homework and the projects and the soccer practices, and if you are like me you might ask, doesn’t the teacher understand that I have a life outside of all this homework, there just isn’t the time! You may calculate like Phillip: this paper will take me 5 hours, and that is time I just don’t have! In the many responsibilities and worries we each have, weighed against the realization of our own limitation, we can find ourselves saying with Andrew, ‘what good are these for so many, what good is the little I have left in me for all that I still have to do.’

But let’s look at Jesus response, everyone recline, lay down for a little bit. Jesus tells the Apostles to stop what they are doing, stop their calculating, stop their taking stock, and calm down, or as we might say, Jesus tells the Apostles just to chill out for a second. We saw earlier that John connects this story to the Passover and the flight from Egypt. When the Israelite are at the end of their rope, God tells Moses what they need to do that night, stay home and have a meal together, and God will take care of it. When Moses is marching in front of the Israelites on their way out of Egypt, Moses encounters the Red sea and cries out to God in frustration that they would be led out of Egypt only to be caught between the Egyptians and the sea. But God tells Moses, “be still and I will fight for you.”

Be still, calm down, recline, watch for the Lord. I think these are the last things we want to do when faced with the seemingly insurmountable! But see what the Lord does when we stop and watch for him! He sets the Israelites free, he parts the sea in two, he feeds the five thousand.

So like Andrew did, we can bring the little we do have to Jesus. This is what the offertory is for, as we bring forward the bread and wine, pray not only that the Lord accept those gifts, but that in and through them he may accept all that we do have as we try to face all that he has called us to face. And then be still, and watch as it is blessed and broken and distributed in the power of Jesus, the little we have transformed into the abundance of Jesus’ gift of himself, given for us to receive. When we watch and wait to receive from the Lord all that we need, we can be confident that there will always be enough, and more when we need it, twelve baskets full, and even more.