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This passage about the loaves and fishes is familiar. It is remarkable, and it is very controversial. If I didn’t know it was controversial, I surely found out about ten years ago. We had a highly respected scripture scholar, a theologian and a dear friend of mine, here speaking, and he spoke for several nights. One night, here with almost a full church, he talked about this passage. He said, “This is a story with many layers of meaning. It talks about the New Passover replacing the old Jewish Passover, talks about Jesus as the ‘Word’ that nourishes us, It talks about the Eucharist. In fact, this is John’s version, and John, who was at the Last Supper, has no account of the Last Supper. This is it.”

But one of our clever parishoners raised his hand and said, “But did it really happen?” And the theologian said, “It’s a precious story to make a point.” Now, this parishoner, like most of you, was persistent and agressive and was not going to let go. And he said, “But did it really happen?” The theologian said, “No. It never happened. Is that clear enough? It never happened.”

Now, I have no question. (There’s a fair number of highly respected and very holy and faithful theologians who would agree with that.) I don’t.... I don’t. One of the reasons is even the most cynical of scholars, when they look at the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament, they say there are two types. There are miracles of healing, and there is no question that Jesus did a lot of healing. Then the more challenging group are the nature miracles: changing water into wine, calming the sea, that kind of miracles. Now, the test they use is, it is a historical event if many of the gospel writers report it. But if just one mentions it, he has probably picked up a story and he wants to make a point to us about Jesus. The reason I mention this is, of all the miracles in the Bible, of all the miracles, this is the only one that is mentioned at least five times in the gospels, and it is in all four gospels. I think there is no question we are looking at a historical event.

But it’s a miracle and it is more than a miracle. By “more than a miracle,” It’s not just Jesus, the baker. It’s not just Jesus the food distributor. It’s not just Jesus opening the first Costco on the shores of Lake Galilee. It is more than that. Here, as elsewhere, Jesus crosses the line. He blurs the line, and he erases the line between rich and poor, between men and women (even though, later on, the gospel writers only want to count the men...), between those who are educated and those who are illiterate, between those who are righteous and holy and saved and those who are public sinners and not saved. He erases the line between them entirely. He gathers them together and gets them to share with each other by the thousands.

I think this miracle has a dangerous side and a political side. A recent example might help us see that. In 1978, Pope John Paul II was elected as the first Polish Pope in history. The next year, he went back to his homeland for the first time, a homeland, Poland, that was under oppressive Soviet domination and rule and control. When he came back, the Polish people came out in the millions to see him, to express their faith, to see one another, who they were, and to bond in solidarity for the first time since before the Second World War. And most scholars will say that triggered the beginning of the Solidarity Movement, the strikes in Gdansk and finally, the fall of the Soviet Empire.

Now, here we have Jesus by the Sea of Galilee, up in the north, and the authorities in Jerusalem hear that he is gathering people together, breaking down the caste system, getting them to share with each other, breaking our rules and regulations..... God knows what he is going to do next! But they know what they are going to do. They say, “What we are going to do is, the first chance that we get, we are going to crucify him.” And that is exactly what they did.

Scholars tell us that Jesus practiced (Wait til you hear this word! You can use it in crossword puzzles maybe.) open commensality ....”commensality,” fancy technical word for saying “he ate with people he wasn’t supposed to.” That’s what he did. In fact, students of human behavior say that if you want to understand a society, you have to study its eating patterns.

So, let’s look at our eating patterns in the United States. It might be a little depressing, a little distressful, or a little unnerving. But, number one, there is a lot of fast food, which means that there is less of the sharing and visiting that we could have time for at a meal. Secondly, we skip meals a lot, which means that there is less of the social glue for people that goes with meals together. Thirdly, as families, more than any other society, we tend to eat separately.

Once upon a time, the sign of a family meal was the table. I think somewhere in the sixties, it became separate tv trays around the one magic and wonderful television set. Today there are television sets in different separate rooms, and the sign of the family meal is often the refrigerator with separate snacks and meals inside and with memos and notes on the outside of it for our communication system.

Another thing is we eat a lot. Health experts say obesity is one of the great dangers to our young. We eat well and we eat a lot! Another thing about our society is we waste a lot. We waste a lot of good food. In fact, I would suspect that we waste enough good food every year to feed several starving nations.

And finally, even though we eat well, there is a big disparity. I think most of us today, here gathered, ate pretty well this week. At the very same time, at our front door, we had seventy-five cases (Now a “case” might be a family of six. It might be a couple.); we had seventy-five cases of people coming who had no food. At St. Anthony’s Dining Room in San Francisco they feed two thousand people every day. In fact, in April, they fed their thirty millionth meal to hungry needy people in San Francisco. So, even though we eat well, we have this big disparity. And, I guess the question is, “What do we do about it?” Now, why do I say “we?” Why do we have to do anything about it? What do we do about it? Well, the answer to that, I think, was in a cartoon I saw. It was at a football game. I think it was a good football game because the Raiders were playing and they were winning. But there were sixty-five thousand people watching, and suddenly, the clouds open, there is a peal of thunder, a bolt of lightning, and the voice of God says, “There is a green Buick, license 4APL051. Your lights are on in the parking lot.” And underneath it, it says “What the world would be like if God hadn’t decided to delegate!”

....God decided to delegate, and we’re it! And that’s why we have to ask, “What can we do about our society?” I think what we do is pretty good. I think it’s not bad what we do, the summer harvest for needy families and individuals, the food people brought this weekend for refugee families, our St. Vincent de Paul Society which you support so generously, the homeless shelter where many of our parishoners work, the summer work camp in Tijuana and Yakima that our teenagers go to, and the plea for Iraqi children in today’s bulletin. I am sure that you will be very responsive to that in a couple of weeks. That is not bad. What we do is not bad. But it is not easy.

There was a psychiatrist and spiritual writer by the name of Anthony De Mello. He died in 1987. And he said the three hardest things in the world are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. No. The three hardest things in the world are: number one, to admit you were wrong; number two, to return love for hatred; and number three, to include the excluded, to have a welcome table and hospitality for those who are different from you.

Those are the hardest things, and it is not easy. That is why we need the Eucharist. We need the Mass. First of all, the Eucharist as assembly teaches us and gives us the experience of welcoming people we don’t know and including everybody. Secondly, the Word of the Lord at the Eucharist comforts us and challenges us to stretch again and again. Thirdly, the table of the Lord gives us nourishment by the person and the example of Jesus Christ. And finally, the Eucharist sends us out to make this a better world.

The miracle of the Loaves and Fishes needs to be continued, the real miracle, the miracle of accountability and forgiveness, the miracle of compassion and love instead of revenge and anger and hatred, the miracle of welcome and hospitality, especially to include those most easily excluded from our care and our concern, that is, people different from us. The miracle needs to be continued.... by us, by us. Amen.