Archbishop of Sydney

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
2 Kg 4:42-44; Eph 4:1-6; Jn 6:1-15

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
30/7/2006

Today, as it was for the Jews of 2,000 years ago, a central religious question for us to answer is this: who is Jesus of Nazareth?  We might also ask how shall we recognize him or judge his claims.

The answers for us are not as difficult as they were for the people of Jesus’ time, because we have the whole New Testament and 2,000 years of Christian history (good, bad and indifferent) as well as 2,000 years of writing and reflection to shape out thinking.  While we cannot see Jesus today, unlike the contemporaries who touched his circle, we are much better informed about his story and its significance.

Jesus was reticent about being called Messiah, forbidding his disciples to use the title and only using it with the Samaritan woman by the well.  He rarely used or admitted to the title of Son of God, except in the confession of St. Peter, preferring to use terms about himself like Son of Man or Son of David.

But his claims to divinity, to a unique relationship with the Father and in fact to being the long awaited Messiah (without all the political baggage of king and liberator which many Jews expected), were expressed not just through his teachings, but through his actions.  And in both his activity and preaching he returned again and again to the precedents of the Jewish scriptures, especially those of the prophets.

Elisha was the successor of Elijah, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, although Elijah wrote next to nothing, because he saved belief in the one true God in his dramatic struggle with Jezebel, Ahab and the prophets of Baal.

Elisha was not as dramatic a personality as Elijah nor as forceful a prophet.  Known as the leader of the sons of the prophets, a group of religious enthusiasts (prayerful, ascetic and charismatic), he lived about 850 B.C.

Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand men was an even greater miracle than Elisha performed in feeding 100 men by multiplying twenty barley loaves and fresh grain in the ear.  Devout Jews who understood their religion and knew their Jewish scriptures would have been struck by the similarity of the two activities and started to wonder what this meant; what was this Jesus of Nazareth saying about himself?

If we wanted to be a devil’s advocate we could ask why Our Lord performed this miracle if he did not want people to think of him as king and political leader?  Surely a man who could miraculously feed a huge crowd could also bring political peace, replace the evil King Herod and perhaps expel the Romans!

I am not sure of the answer to this question, although Our Lord escaped back to the hills by himself because he certainly did not want to be king.  However he did want the people to realise that he was making unique claims about himself and his work (which he described as the coming of the Kingdom of God) and that he was to be seen as continuing the line of the great Jewish prophets.  I also believe that the Lord simply wanted to help all those people who had followed him into the wilderness and had nothing to eat.  He was prepared to risk misunderstanding to help them and to help them start to think in the right direction by harking back to the Old Testament precedents for his miracle.

As well as encouraging us once again to meditate on how we identify Jesus of Nazareth; as poet or prophet; failed politician or a disconcerting mixture of beautiful insights and unbelievable claims; as Son of God or a profound religious thinker whose original claims were exaggerated by his followers and the New Testament authors (and it is good for us to deepen and renew our faith by examining and rejecting the mistaken alternatives); what other lessons might we draw from this miracle, which one commentator claimed is the only miracle recounted in all four gospels?

Let me suggest three points.

First of all we should not take our blessings for granted and should thank God for the many good things we have e.g. I suspect some of us only thank God for our climate, for regular rain when we are threatened by drought.

Secondly we should remember that Jesus was correctly identified as Son of God not only because of his teachings, but through his way of life and through his public activities e.g. his miracles and his suffering and death and resurrection.  So today outsiders will recognize, ignore or reject Christ very much on the evidence we present as followers of Christ.  Some of this is certainly good, but some is bad and indifferent.

My third and last point is that we too are called to be generous and helpful as Jesus was to the crowd.  The mean never have enough to enable them to be givers, even when they are rich.  They always have some reason not to give.  While the generous are always able to give, even when they are poor.

What would have happened if the small boy with five barley loaves and two fishes had refused to part with his meal?  Or if his parents had intervened and said the food was needed for their family, who shouldn’t be penalised because they were sensible enough to bring food with them, unlike all those other silly people who came out without supplies?  There would have been no miracle of the loaves and fishes.  The Lord always loves a cheerful giver.

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