Homily For The Sunday Next before Advent 2025
We are on the eve of a new church year. Our Gospel for today - the feeding of the 5000 - also occurs in Lent. What does the Church tell us in the repetition of this miracle on these two occasions in the Church Year? We are reminded again and again of our need as creatures. We need God's provision to give us hope as we look to the future. We require God's love as we look to his atonement for sins. We need to be fed with Word and Sacrament. We are reliant upon the kindness of God regardless of our posturing and our assurance of our power to effectuate outcomes in the future. We need help. There are no words more worthy of our profession and contemplation than “we need help.” We need aid from on high. We do not merely live in a physical desert, we are in the midst of a spiritual wilderness, a desert where no food is and only God can convert the barrenness of our circumstances into the fullness, the feast of God's presence even in the wilderness of this world.
St. John tells us the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. We read that Jesus saw a great company, a mass of humanity coming to him. He asked Philip, “Where can we get bread to feed these people?” What we should notice is the intention of Jesus in asking - St. John tells us “And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.” The Lord knew exactly what he was going to do. His purpose in asking was to test, to prove the faith of Philip and the other apostles. He presents the impossibility of a circumstance, from a human perspective. Philip is busy calculating the impossibility - the crowd is so big that wages for half a year will only give each needy person a morsel of bread. It would be an insult more than provision. At this point, Andrew enters the scene and says to Jesus - there is a lad here who has some bread and fishes - but what are these among so many? Jesus doesn’t argue with them but instructs them to organize the people so that they can be fed. There is no small amount of faith in obeying Jesus for the disciples. They must rely on the Lord’s words. They do what they are told and the men sit down.
Beloved, the miracle of the loaves, the feeding of the 5000, represents the way in which God works in and through his Church. The Lord can create ex nihilo - he can make something from nothing. Generally, he asks his people to offer up their meager supplies in order to test them, to strengthen their faith. The Lord knows what he intends to do through our limitations. He wants to prove that our neediness is no impediment to His work of redeeming the world. In fact, it is the conduit for his work. It is a good reminder as we look out into the world and see immeasurable need. He calls us to enter into his joy by offering up ourselves, the limitations of our resources so that he can bless and multiply it for the saving of the nations. Moreover, it is the means by which God feeds and sustains his people in the present. Our need is not the problem, it is the solution that God has chosen in this world to build our faith, a means to deepen our trust in Him.
Our Lord takes the smallest bits and through His blessing, thanksgiving and multiplication provide more than we can ever imagine. We should never despise our limitations for generally God works through the little pieces that he has blessed us with to provide for our needs and encourage others. We shouldn’t miss the foreshadowing of the Eucharist in today’s miracle. St. John tells us “And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks and then distributed to the disciples…” In St. Luke’s account there is a bit more detail - Jesus “took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.” In the taking, looking up, blessing and breaking, we see elements of God’s provision in the Holy Communion for sustaining his people.
Indeed,the Holy Communion is where the Lord takes the small bits of consecrated bread and wine and make them for us in some mystical fashion the very body and blood of Jesus.
While he doesn’t physically transform the bread and wine into body and blood, He is really present. Through the smallest obedience of faithful reception, Jesus comes to strengthen us in our journey to heaven.
In the final segment of our Gospel, we should pay attention to Jesus’ instructions to gather the fragments that remain that none be lost. What a ridiculous thought! Philip lamented that wages for half a year would not give each a morsel and Jesus had just handed out five loaves and two fishes. To the human mind, even if it were sufficient for everyone, what is the likelihood that there would be extra? Yet, we read that they gathered 12 baskets of fragments - so much more was left over after consumption, after all being filled - to bear witness of God’s work. Indeed, the crowds recognized that the second Moses had appeared on the scene. The one who could feed the multitudes in the Wilderness through his multiplying power over creation, his dominion over the limitations, the scarcity of his disciples.
So much of our lives are wrapped in what we don’t have… Jesus invites us to consider on this eve of the new church year what we do have. Gather the fragments that remain. Look at the provision of God, the abundance of Our Lord as he sustains us moment by moment. At the end of this year, think through all the ways that God has provided. We must give him thanks. We must look at the mystery of his provision - day by day and then direct that faith toward our concerns in the present. The big issues have been dealt with. We have a loving God who has sent his Son into the world to redeem sinners, to bring us hope that we do not deserve. The Lord will provide what we need in this journey to the heavenly Jerusalem.
Yet, he would have us look up, rest in His promises and see the hope that he promises to those who love and serve him. The kingdom of God is one of abundance, of feasting, of inclusion, of peace, joy, rectitude. The culmination of the Kingdom is coming.
Today, the Church as the manna of heaven, in the Eucharist, we have the food of the infallible Word of God that can make us wise unto salvation. We have union with Christ’s body in the present. All of these things are given so we might faithfully anticipate life in His eternal kingdom. As we enter a new year, look at how God has brought us this far, how he has sustained and indeed blessed us. Let the reality of God’s presence and goodness shape, temper our perspective, our ambitions in the future. God wants so much more blessedness, wholeness for us than we could ever imagine for ourselves. Let us trust Him as we continue our pilgrimage in this Wilderness, the external uncertainty of the days to come with an absolute commitment to follow Jesus - the author and finisher of our faith.
May Advent 2025 usher us into greater faithfulness to the God who has redeemed, sanctified, and indeed fed us in our pilgrimage to His Kingdom. Gather the fragments that remain, that not one bit of thanksgiving and joy may be lost. Amen.
