Gather Us In
A sermon by Revd Jonathan Evens
Readings for this service: 2 Samuel 11: 1-15, Ephesians 3: 14-end, John 6: 1-21
Jesus takes the child’s five loaves of bread and two fish, blesses them by giving thanks for them, breaks them for distribution by his disciples to the crowd, then asks his disciples to gather up the broken fragments of the meal in baskets so that none is wasted. Jesus has yet to institute the Eucharist at the Last Supper, but we recognise the basic elements of the Eucharist in this story; bread that is blessed and broken before distribution in order that those receiving the broken body of Jesus are formed into the whole Body of Christ, which is the Church.
Could you look for a moment at the leaflet you have been given for ‘Something Worth Sharing’, our annual conference on disability and Church, as there you will see an image which has the same elements included? There in the centre is bread that is broken; a priest’s wafer broken into seven pieces each held by a diverse group of people. Are they taking the broken pieces of the host to themselves or are they reforming the host into a whole? We do not know from this image, which was the inspiration of Fiona MacMillan. The image encompasses both the breaking apart and the bringing together and that is significant as both feature in the pattern of the Eucharist which we see enacted here in the feeding of the 5,000.
At the beginning of June Carol Ashby spoke at our Bread for the World service on this passage, the feeding of the 5,000, reflecting particularly on the fact that Jesus told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ She said that, just as Jesus needed helpers and just as all the leftovers were gathered up and kept, so each one of us is needed here at St Martin’s and in God’s kingdom and nothing we offer or give is wasted or goes unused. I want to build on the inspiration that Carol provided by suggesting three further ways in which to think about the gathering up of fragments so that nothing may be lost. The first concerns the gathering up of food waste, second, the gathering up of the fragments of our lives and third, the gathering up that is the kingdom of God. All these relate to our being gathered up and gathered in today at this Eucharist.
So, my first reflection is very literal and concerns food waste. In 2016 the Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed ‘the Evening Standard’s campaign on tackling food poverty and waste,’ by saying that as ‘hunger is a complex, widespread and shocking blight on our country and more needs to be done to highlight this issue.’ In commenting on this statement, the paper noted that the Archbishop had good scriptural reasons to join the Food for London campaign. They noted that after ‘feeding the five thousand, Christ instructed the waste to be gathered up afterwards’ and said that it was in that spirit that the Archbishop had supported this campaign.
It was positive to see a major newspaper quoting scripture and doing so with some understanding. This contemporary reminder of the feeding of the five thousand and the 12 baskets of fragments that were gathered up afterwards give us one way of reflecting on Jesus’ words. In the UK we throw away edible food worth £470 per household each year and a third of perfectly edible vegetable crops are discarded from our fields due to supermarkets’ strict cosmetic standards. This wasteful food cycle has a big carbon footprint, making climate change worse.
Earlier this year, the Church of England’s General Synod backed a motion calling upon the Government to tackle food poverty and take steps to minimise waste throughout the supply chain. The motion outlined ways in which retailers and Church of England members can attempt to tackle food poverty in Britain. The motion called for the Government to consider steps to reduce waste in the food supply chain, urged parishes to help lobby retailers on food waste and stressed the need for church members to reduce waste in their own homes.
Following that literal application of Jesus’ teaching, we can also think in terms of a metaphorical understanding of the fragments as representing the disparate elements of our own lives. The catalyst for the feeding of the 5,000 was the offering up of his lunch by the young boy. His offering was offered to God, multiplied and the result was that there were 12 baskets of fragments to be gathered, so as not to be wasted. This suggests that our offering of ourselves to God provides a means by which what is disparate and fragmented within our lives can gathered up and unified.
That was certainly my experience in offering for ordained ministry. In my working life I had experience of partnership working to create employment opportunities, with a particular focus on assisting disabled people in finding and keeping work. In my church life I had involvement in setting up a church-based day care business and a detached youth work project reaching out to disaffected young people. In my personal life I was writing and painting and finding a limited range of opportunities to share my creative work.
I realised, as I went through the selection process for ordination and then my ministerial training, that ordained ministry could hold and utilise all these disparate experiences and, as a result, could provide a frame within which all these disparate fragments of my life could be gathered up, held together and unified. And so it has proved, as each context for my ministry to date has provided unique opportunities to make connections between faith, work, art and social action through partnerships and projects. That has, of course, never been more so than here where our mission model and HeartEdge, our growing ecumenical network of churches, integrates congregation, culture, commerce and compassion.
Mission and ministry in, from and outside the church provides a framework, forum or context in which all of our skills, experiences, interests and failures can be gathered up, integrated and used for God’s glory and in God’s service. My personal experience of this reality has been in relation to ordained ministry but, the model of mission that we use here is clear that this gathering up of all that we offer applies to us all, whether lay or ordained.
Later in John 6, Jesus gives a cosmic or eschatological twist to this phrase we are considering when he says it ‘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’ (John 6. 37 – 40). These words come in the middle of Jesus’ teaching about being the Bread of Life which followed the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus gave thanks over the bread, the word used is ‘eucharistesas’, the word which gives us ‘Eucharist’. Jesus shared the bread around in communion, then, when everyone was satisfied, he instructed his disciples to pick up the fragments using that same phrase, ‘so that nothing may be lost.’ Just as none of this ‘eucharisticized’ bread was lost after the feeding, so, because ‘Jesus is the bread of life, [those who] see and believe in him … receive eternal life [and] become a fragment which he will gather up on the last day.’ (John, Richard Burridge, BRF 1998)
This is the reason why Christ came, which he revealed both here and in the parables he told about things that were lost; the lost sheep and coin. The shepherd and woman in those two stories are exactly the same; because of their concern for the sheep and coin which are lost, they will not give up searching until these have been found. The sheep and the coin are loved and this love is revealed or proved through the search.
The point of those parables is for us to know that we are similarly loved by God because he also searches for us until we are found. That search is the story told in the Gospels; that Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he laid down his own life for us becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross – in order that all might be safely gathered in as those who are gathered in rise with him and return to God. Christ went on that search to seek and save those who are lost and thereby to ensure that none shall be lost and all shall be safely gathered in.
Those who are lost almost universally consider themselves worthless but these parables and this story of the fragments gathered up specifically deny that assumption. What is lost is actually the most precious thing or person of all; the person or thing for which everything else will be given up or set aside. What is lost and found, discarded but then gathered up, is us. We are the ones for whom Christ searches at the expense of all that he has, including, in the end, his own life. We are the most precious lost person for whom he searches, the discarded fragment that will not be overlooked and will not be wasted. We are precious, we are loved. As a result, we have a basis for saying with the poet Walt Whitman that: ‘Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, / No birth, identity, form — no object of the world, / Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing.’
And so we can pray, in words from a call to worship by the Wild Goose Resource Group that we used regularly in my previous parish: ‘Gather us in, the lost and lonely, the broken and breaking, the tired and aching who long for the nourishment found at your feast. Gather us in, the done and the doubting, the wishing and wondering, the puzzled and pondering who long for the company found at your feast. Gather us in, the proud and pretentious, the sure and superior, the never inferior, who long for the levelling found at your feast. Gather us in, the bright and the bustling, the stirrers, the shakers, the kind laughter makers who long for the deeper joys found at your feast. Gather us in, from corner or limelight, from mansion or campsite, from fears and obsession, from tears and depression, from untold excesses, from treasured successes, to meet, to eat, be given a seat, be joined to the vine, be offered new wine, become like the least, be found at the feast. Amen.
