Tuna sandwiches

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent

Feeding the five thousand? In Lent?

That's a bit cruel of those who wrote the liturgy for us, isn't it? Here we are, all good and a bit ravenous for a chocolate biscuit, and then we see Our Lord dole out a magnificent feast for a multitude from five loaves and two small fish. Is your tummy rumbling yet?

Perhaps not if you don't like tuna sandwiches.

Why is the feeding of the five thousand part of Lent?

[PAUSE]

There are two occasions in which Our Lord encounters large numbers of people on mountains - the Sermon on the Mount and this, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. A mountain pulpit in these cases is largely practical: mountain spaces are wide enough for large crowds and, by positioning Himself uphill from them, Our Lord can address them well.

However, it is important to notices that in both cases the crowds are already hungry. In both cases, the multitude comes to Jesus because they are hungry for what He has to teach them. He offers life, hope, joy, peace, and love as a reality, not just as a nice idea nor as a campaign for social justice. To Him come the people who are tired with the second-rate substitutes for happiness that the world offers. They come to be nourished with good things, and this means leaving their working lives behind, just for a moment, and finding what truly matters.

And Jesus feeds these hungry people with what they seek. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

At the mountain, Our Lord feeds the hungry with good things and then he feeds them with bread and fish. To Him, both body and soul matter together: you cannot be truly human unless you have a body and a soul, so both need looking after. In feeding five thousand, the Lord is demonstrating a wonderful miracle that He performs to this day. Every Christian who will have ever lived will be fed by Christ Himself by His word of life in the preaching of the Gospel and by His very self in the Mass.

In order to receive these, we have to be prepared to climb mountains, and this is the true purpose of Lent.

[PAUSE]

In Lent, we climb out of our comfortable world with all its junk food for both body and soul. We leave behind all that which feeds us but doesn't really nourish us, and make our way up out of the life on the flat earth and into a life more suited to heaven. Like Our Lord, we may be tempted to throw ourselves down again, but we can resist and, when we fall, begin the climb again.

When we find God, we know that we shall be fed truly and fully.

This is the climb for which we don't pack the picnic basket:  the buffet will be provided.