Standing Under the Scriptures
July 26, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

As I announced in last Sunday’s class, there will be no Standing Under the Scriptures class this Sunday. Bishop Salmon will be speaking about the General Convention at 9:00, our class time, and we will all want to hear what he has to say. Hence there are no readings to specify in this Notice. But we shall meet again, the Lord willing, the following Sunday, August 2.

I will however give an account of our discussion last Sunday, which was of Isaiah 57.14-21 and Mark 6.30-44. Regarding the first, we considered the likelihood that it could be assigned to Second Isaiah, so termed because of the scholarly consensus that the chapters of the book from 40 on have an origin different from that of chapters 1 to 39. The basis of the consensus is that the earlier chapters presuppose the period leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people by the Babylonians, whereas the later ones reflect the return from exile or at least its imminence. Our Isaiah reading for last Sunday seemed substantially in accord with this chronology.

Within we noted particularly one verse, namely 15.

“For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity,
whose name is Holy,
‘I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

This verse may be familiar to us as one of the Opening Sentences in Morning Prayer.

We remarked on the utter contrast between dwelling in the high and holy place and dwelling with the humble and contrite, that is, with the completely lowly. And yet according to this verse the Lord encompasses the gap. In this we saw an anticipation of the Incarnation, in which the Christ, without relinquishing his divinity, enters fully into the human condition. I might have added the concept that in the union of opposites there is a release of power, somewhat as in nuclear fission. And the more opposite the opposites, the greater the power that is released. The greatest opposition, metaphysically speaking, is between the divine and the human. Accordingly, the union of these opposites, in Christ, results in the greatest release of power.

We saw this power as abundantly manifest in our second reading, Mark 6.30-44, which narrates Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. To be sure, his multiplication of the loaves and the fishes lies beyond our normal experience. But we may think of it as comparable to the way the gravity of some stars is strong enough even to bend light. And divine power is never manifested nakedly, so to speak. If it were, then it would pertain only to some perhaps faraway time and place. Instead it is clothed with meaning, not just for those beholding it but also for us.

We saw this to be the case with the feeding of the five thousand. It is the sequel to Jesus’ sending out of the Twelve on mission. They have now returned and are reporting their experiences to him. And he urges them to come to a deserted place to rest, apart from the hubbub then surrounding them. But they are spotted as they head in the boat across the Sea of Galilee, and people run around the end of it to meet them as they land. Thus on arriving Jesus finds a throng waiting for him. And instead of being dismayed at this frustration of his purpose for the disciples and himself, he has compassion on them. For they are “like sheep without a shepherd.” Herein is a lesson for us. It is that, following in his steps, when we see a need to be met we are to meet it, even when doing so it is awkward for us.

But the disciples seem still to fall short of this level of obedience. Reminding Jesus that the hour is late, they suggest that he send to people away to find food for themselves in the surrounding villages, perhaps hoping thereby to get the rest they came for. We saw Jesus’ response to them as crucial: “You [emphasis in Greek original] give them something to eat.” This is to tell them, and us, that when a human need becomes evident we are not to look to someone else to fill it, as is our wont, but instead to take the responsibility for doing so on ourselves.

The disciples still resist, however. They ask rhetorically if they are to buy two hundred denarii worth of bread (a very large amount) and give it to the people, meaning to point to the impracticality of the project. But Jesus persists. Taking what the disciples have, namely the five loaves and two fish, and commanding that the people be seated, he blesses and breaks the bread and has the disciples distribute it. And not only does it prove sufficient to feed the five thousand, it leaves twelve baskets of fragments to be gathered up.

We could not help but be struck by the Eucharistic overtones of the narrative, in which Jesus performs of the actions of blessing and breaking that are performed in our celebrations. The early church was also struck by these overtones. There are representations of the feeding narrative in terms of the Eucharist in the earliest Christian art. .Thus this narrative teaches us to think of the breaking of the bread in the Eucharist not as what we do but as what Christ does. Thereby it shows us Christ’s presence in the Eucharist not only in the bread and the wine as his body and blood but also in the actions performed in it. Further, in the sufficiency and more of the bread that Jesus broke to feed the five thousand, we learn of the sufficiency of the Eucharist to satisfy our spiritual hunger and also, through us, that of others as well as in its power we minister to them.

So the feeding narrative frees us from inhibitions such as afflicted the disciples about what we can do with the resources that we have. It enables us to trust that, however meager they may seem, through the Lord’s power they will prove sufficient for the task he calls us to. And for this trust we can rejoice, giving thanks and praise.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted