CW* Trinity 9

John 6:1–21 (NRSVCE)

Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Feeding 5,000 people with 2 fish ey, pretty good. Carrie and I have a similar thing with our children. Most days it feels like we feed 2 people with 5,000 fish!

Two of the interesting differences between the feeding of the 5,000 in Saint John’s Gospel and the feedings in the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are that in John, Jesus gives the bread and the fish directly to the crowds himself, rather than giving the food to his disciples to distribute - remembering that the Gospel of John is written later than the other Gospels, after the worship of the church has started to take a certain shape and the church has had time to reflect on its worship, and that John the theologian is particularly interested in the liturgy and sacraments of the church, makes one wonder about this little difference in the Gospel of John in relation to the Mass. That Jesus gives the food directly to the crowds.

The second difference between the Gospel of John and the synoptics is that the Gospel of John adds in Jesus’s words to his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

The Greek word translated “lost” here is, ἀπόλλυμι, and the last time it was used in the Gospel of John was in the famous John 3:16 verse: “In this way, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

The word ἀπόλλυμι is translated in John 3:16 as “perish.” “In this way, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish/may not be lost, but may have eternal life.”

Near the start of the Gospel is this statement that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but have eternal life. Then, in chapter 6, we have Jesus feeding the 5,000 and telling his disciples to gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.

Then, in the next section in this chapter, Jesus gives his mysterious speech about the bread from heaven and it is the next time that the word ἀπόλλυμι appears. Once when he says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” And then again when he says, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”

This speach intensifies, with Jesus going on to declare himself to be the bread of life and then that “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day”.

Pause

“In this way, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life;” “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost;” “This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me … Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”

Many of you may well know that a common way of talking about the structure of the Gospel of John is that it is split into two parts, the first twelve chapters in which there are seven signs or miracles and then the final nine chapters which recount the final week before the third Passover festival in John on which Jesus is killed. It perhaps won’t surprise you to know that the verb, ἀπόλλυμι, to be lost, is used seven times in the first section of John, and three times in the second section, ten times in total.

What does this mean? Well I wonder whether when Jesus tells his disciples to gather up the fragments, so that nothing may be lost, is it so that none of the bread may be lost, or is it so that no one may be lost. The food that he has given has fed the 5,000 people who were there but does he tell the disciples to gather the fragments so they can take those fragments to others who weren’t there, so that they too might not be lost. And as with the multiplication of the original food from an unnamed boy, will those fragments be enough so that no one is lost?

An unnamed boy is willing to give the food he has and many are fed. The boy is happy to share what he has but note what doesn’t happen. Jesus doesn’t say to the boy I have the faith that somehow you will be able to go and reap enough crops in the next few hours for all the people here to eat. He doesn’t say to the boy, go and take out a loan from the bank so you can buy us all food and I have the faith that you will find the money to repay it. Jesus doesn’t ask the boy to do more than he can. He just asks the boy to do what he can and it does much more than he could imagine.

There is a subtle but very important difference here that often creeps into how Christians seek their purpose in God and often how Christian organisations are run. God does not ask us to have the faith that somehow we will be able to do more than our human capacity allows us, as if we were God, but God asks us to do what we can, to always be ready to share what we have, and to have the faith that what we can do will do much more than we realise. This is a very subtle distinction and one which we all need to think about carefully in our own particular contexts. We give what we can and it is enough, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Often what we have to give feels like just fragments we’ve gathered over the years, not even one unbroken loaf to give. But the fragments we have received are enough.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.