Grace and Truth

Grace and Truth

Call to Worship:

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer."
Francis Bacon

Today's sermon is based on John 1:14-17

"14And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
 15John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
 16And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

Today we will discuss the law, grace, and truth, though not necessarily in that order. Since we have been dealing for the past several weeks with the "Word", it seems appropriate to begin with truth--expressed by and/or contained within the Word. There are many scriptures dealing with truth--too many to include in a single sermon, or, indeed, in twenty sermons. The phrase “I tell you the truth,” appears 79 times in Scripture, 78 times spoken by Jesus. He is the truth, and he tells the truth, so we can fully trust everything He says, although we may not always understand everything He says. Thus, the question is what is truth, and how must we wait for an answer?

John 17:17 says this:

"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."

Clearly, the Word and Truth are equivalent, in some sense, but not in another. Just as, in the beginning, the Word was with God and the Word was God, we have no doubt (Luther certainly has no doubt) that God came first, if anything outside time can be thought of as coming first. Likewise, the Word precedes the Truth, just as at the essence precedes the application. Thus Truth is a quality of the Word; like perfection, it is both constantly aspired to, AND it is ultimately unattainable by the human mind. However, it has a resonance that the devotee trained in spiritual sensitivities can recognize and partially apprehend. Steiner would say we experience the Truth of divine reality with our spiritual organs, as it is imprinted, for instance, on the astral body. This idea harmonizes with the idea that the Truth sanctifies the devotee with its heightened reality; the impact of spiritual energy on our physical bodies exalts the physical body and raises if from mere flesh to true humanity--a transcendent form of material reality; you might say that human reality is spiritual reality in transit. All these ideas are part and parcel to the concept of the Word becoming flesh.

John 3:21 says this:

"But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."

In this text, we encounter the familiar equation of the "Word" with "Creation"--the power of the True Word manifests divine reality in physical form. Divine Light motivates earthly deeds that radiate Heavenly Truth.

John 16:13 says this:

"Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come."

Here Jesus is described as the "Spirit of Truth"; as such He merely Listens to the cosmic vibrations of the Eternal and speaks the Word echoing in the Mind of God. This channeling of the Word into material reality not only conveys reliable truth about the essence of existence, the Eternal now, It prophesies "things to come". As we have mentioned many times, the Truth of Eternity spoken by Jesus comes from outside time, from a place where everything happens at once, where everything has already happened and will always happen. It should then be no surprise that prophecy is part of the package. My personal experience of the counsels of Jesus, that come to me in prayer, includes subtle, and sometimes not so subtle hints about my future. Indeed, lost in the personality of Jesus, I can see vast terrains of sequential time spreading out and away from me in both directions, past and future. This is part of the Truth spoken by the Father, through the Son, to me.

Now, how are Truth and Grace connected?

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary provides a wonderful substitution for the word "Grace" which is very meaningful to me:

"Full of grace and truth-So it should read: "He dwelt among us full of grace and truth"; or, in Old Testament phrase, "Mercy and truth," denoting the whole fruit of God's purposes of love towards sinners of mankind, which until now existed only in promise, and the fulfillment at length of that promise in Christ; in one great word, "the SURE MERCIES of David".

Isaiah 55:3;

"Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."

Acts 13:34;

"And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, [now] no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David."
"In His Person all that Grace and Truth which had been floating so long in shadowy forms, and darting into the souls of the poor and needy its broken beams, took everlasting possession of human flesh and filled it full. By this Incarnation of Grace and Truth, the teaching of thousands of years was at once transcended and beggared, and the family of God sprang into Manhood."

The word "Grace" always implies, to me, an indulgence, a free gift; but the term "Mercy" seems to include the idea of deliverance from a horrible fate. Indeed, "deliver us from evil" is one of the key phrases in the Lord's Prayer, and brings with it the hope that we sinners will not get what we deserve.

The expression "sure mercies" is interesting as well; the word "sure" seems to imply some kind of guarantee, a promise. God's covenant with David gives the devotee absolute confidence in his own ultimate redemption, regardless of his current physical state in time. Such a deal.


Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible expands on the idea of mercy, or gifts of the spirit:

"Full of grace and truth; that is, he dwelt among men, and appeared to have a fulness of each of these: for this clause is not to be joined with the glory of the only begotten, as if this was a branch of that; but regards him as incarnate, and in his office, as Mediator; who, as such, was full of "grace"; the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit; of all the blessings of grace, of justifying, pardoning, adopting, sanctifying, and persevering grace; of all the promises of grace; of all light, life, strength, comfort, peace, and joy: and also of truth, of all Gospel truths; and as he had the truth, the sum, and substance of all the types and prophecies concerning him in him; and as he fulfilled all his own engagements, and his Father's promises; and as possessed of sincerity towards men, and faithfulness and integrity to God. . ."

From the Geneva Study Bible we get yet another interesting slant on the Incarnate Word:

"This word as does not indicate here a likeness, but rather the truth of the matter, for his meaning is this, that we saw such a glory which suited and was proper for the true and only begotten Son of God, who is Lord and King over all the world.

He was not only a partaker of grace and truth, but was full of the very substance of grace and truth."

I find the expression "substance of grace and truth" to be provocative; how, indeed can spiritual reality obtain "substance" other than by being made flesh? Thus, once again, we encounter an equivalency between the lower and the upper vibratory material of Creation. We have encountered this concept several times in the recent discussions of the Word made flesh.

Deepak Chopra takes the idea even further in his Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul:

"Every spiritual tradition invokes our so-called higher self, the side of human nature that the soul stands for. We recognize ourselves in the love Jesus preached, and in the compassion espoused by Buddha. Every spiritual tradition also makes it clear that our so-called lower nature, identified with sin and ignorance, must be transformed. Unfortunately, the choice is presented in a way that is unhelpful. How can you adopt love when you are told at the same time that your lower nature is sinful? Condemning the lower self is the opposite of love. How can you adopt peace when you are told at the same time to fight against temptation? You wind up being trapped in your divided nature instead of healing it. . . The whole business of making a stark contrast between the lower and higher self is futile to begin with. There is no separate, all good, all wise part of you that you must either win or lose. Life is one flow of awareness."

Thus, Chopra proclaims, in a way, the same equality of the lower and higher aspects of Man's multi-dimensional being we saw in several readings from the past few sermons:

From Andrewes:

"Besides, from the flesh, as from Eve, came the beginning of transgression, longing after the forbidden fruit, refused the Word quite; . . . But there is a kind of necessity to use the term flesh. If He had said man, man might be taken for a person. He took no person, but our nature He took. Flesh is no person but nature only, and so best expresseth it. And if soul, it might have been taken, as if He took not the flesh but mediante anima (by means of the soul); but so He did not but as immediately and as soon the flesh as the soul, in one instant both."

From the Requiem Mass:

"Remember, merciful Jesus,
that I am the cause of thy way:
lest thou lose me in that day."

[Sidebar: I need to provide a little context for this quote. The Requiem text is all about the Day of Judgment; it is kind of like a courtroom drama, where the soul on trial is making a case for his salvation. As he asks for mercy, one of the arguments he makes, in his defense, is the idea that without his sin, Jesus would have no reason for being there at all. Hence, "I am the cause of thy way" means that, without us, Jesus would have no purpose. Thus, once again, the inter-relatedness of the Word and the flesh is suggested.]

And from The Confession of Chalcedon, also known as the Doctrine of the Hypostatic Union or the Two-Nature Doctrine:

"The Definition defines that Christ is 'acknowledged in two natures', which 'come together into one person and hypostasis'. The formal definition of 'two natures' in Christ was understood by the critics of the council at the time, and is understood by many historians and theologians today, to side with western and Antiochene Christology and to diverge from the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria, who always stressed that Christ is 'one'."

This subject always reminds me of the story of the guru who disappeared one day from the ashram; his disciples looked for him for several weeks only to find him, eventually, sitting on a dung heap with a big fat smile on his face. They asked him why he was sitting so contentedly in cow poop, and he replied, "If God is everywhere in all things, why not here as well as anywhere else?"

The following quotation from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary develops the connection between the dual nature of the Word and Grace:

"John the Baptist came to bear witness concerning Jesus. Nothing more fully shows the darkness of men's minds, than that when the Light had appeared, there needed a witness to call attention to it. Christ was the true Light; that great Light which deserves to be called so. By his Spirit and grace he enlightens all that are enlightened to salvation; and those that are not enlightened by him, perish in darkness.

Christ was in the world when he took our nature upon him, and dwelt among us. The Son of the Highest was here in this lower world. He was in the world, but not of it. He came to save a lost world, because it was a world of his own making. Yet the world knew him not. When he comes as a Judge, the world shall know him. Many say that they are Christ's own, yet do not receive him, because they will not part with their sins, nor have him to reign over them.

All the children of God are born again. This new birth is through the word of God as the means, and by the Spirit of God as the Author.

1st Peter 1:23

"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever."

By his Divine presence Christ always was in the world. But now that the fulness of time was come, he was, after another manner, God manifested in the flesh. But observe the beams of his Divine glory, which darted through this veil of flesh. Men discover their weaknesses to those most familiar with them, but it was not so with Christ; those most intimate with him saw most of his glory. Although he was in the form of a servant, as to outward circumstances, yet, in respect of graces, his form was like the Son of God His Divine glory appeared in the holiness of his doctrine, and in his miracles. He was full of grace, fully acceptable to his Father, therefore qualified to plead for us; and full of truth, fully aware of the things he was to reveal."

I repeat: "He was full of grace, fully acceptable to his Father, therefore qualified to plead for us; and full of truth, fully aware of the things he was to reveal." This sentence says it all in a nutshell: coming from the Father, Jesus was the Father's gift of mercy to humanity, able both to forgive our lower nature its weaknesses and exalt our lower nature with revelations of eternal truth tailor-made for each specific individual in Creation. Next week we will go deeper into the role of Jesus as the channel of Divine Truth in Its various forms, and how He functions as intercessor between us and the Father.

The following is from The Concepts of Original Sin and Grace
A Lecture By Rudolf Steiner, Munich, 3rd May, 1911.

"Man cannot rise again to the Spiritual by merely talking about the Spirit but only by taking the Spirit into himself in the living, personal form presented to him in the Events of Palestine, in the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus does man rise upwards again under the influence of the Christ Impulse. In no other way can abstract ideals be invested with the force of personality than by allowing the Christ Impulse to permeate the whole of our spiritual life. If on the one side, through guilt incurred before the development of the ego, we have burdened ourselves with what is called Original Sin, if there we have something for which we cannot be held wholly responsible, neither are we ourselves responsible for the fact that it is possible to draw the Christ to ourselves. Our ego plays a part in what we do or endeavour to do in order to come near to Christ, and there we can truly speak of merit.

But the fact that Christ is present, that we are living on a planet where He once dwelt and in times after this actually happened — this is not due to any merit of our own. Therefore what flows from the Living Christ in order to bring us upwards again into the spiritual world, comes from beyond the sphere of the ego and draws us upwards as irresistibly as we incurred guilt without ourselves being guilty. Through Christ's existence on earth we have the strength to rise again into the spiritual world without merit of our own, just as we incurred guilt without sin of our own. Neither fact has to do with the element of personality in which the ego lives, but both are connected with happenings that precede and follow the coming of the ego. Man has evolved from a state of existence when he had only physical body, etheric body and astral body, and he evolves further through transforming his astral body into Manas (Spirit-Self). Just as man has worsened his astral body through incurring Original Sin, so he heals it again through the Christ Impulse. An inflowing power repairs the astral body to the same extent to which it has deteriorated. That is the Atonement, that is what in the true sense is called ‘Grace’. Grace is the concept that is complementary to that of Original Sin. So the Christ Impulse has made it possible for man to become one with Christ, to say with St. Paul: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, thus giving expression to everything that is designated by the concept of Grace."

This selection draws a connection between the lower nature of the flesh and original sin. Perhaps original sin and the Word are not so far apart. Steiner speaks, above, of the personal form of the Word--the fleshy form, the ego form--and is not the descent of spirit into flesh very much the definition of original sin? In fact Steiner, indicates that it is the ego that is empowered with the ability to apprehend and absorb the Christ Consciousness into itself. The ego is the manifestation of the Christ Consciousness in the flesh, just as Truth is the manifestation of the Word in material reality. There is no material consciousness without the ego--this is what we gained from our expulsion from Paradise. Thus, the source of Man's separation from Paradise and the medium through which he may regain access to Paradise are the exact same entity. Furthermore, the complicated processes of losing and regaining Paradise are all made available to us through the power of Grace to transform the justice of the law into the justice of the heart. Everybody is familiar with the truism, "life is not fair". Many things point to this. However, perhaps in terms of the big picture, life is fair, and more fair than fair.

Continuing on with the subject of truth, I think it is not inappropriate to review the concept of parable as the conveyor of truth. As we have concluded before, the parable allows teensy little bits of literal truth to seep into the corners of the human mind, whose powers of apprehension are too limited to take in the vastness of eternal truth. We have concluded many times that the imagery of parables, with their various levels of meaning, make various levels of truth accessible to devotees of various levels of mental capacity.

In the following excerpts I am attempting to draw a connection between the truth of the parable and the truth of the myth. Remember, in our discussions of the Parable from some weeks ago, we suggested the possibility that the multi-dimensional structure of the Parable is what allows it to speak universally to all the various consciousness levels of the multi-dimensional structure of Man --that every level of meaning to be found in the parables resonates with some different level of consciousness in different men.

Mathew 13:19



"When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart."

Here, Jesus is recapitulating one of the main themes of the parable: that seeds ungerminated in the heart, easily fall prey to the tempter. I think Jesus is saying that: the plain truth spoken in the ear of those not ready to receive it, makes them more vulnerable to Satan's power to twist and corrupt, than when there is just a vague understanding glimmering on the edge of their consciousness. When there is a grain of truth in what we hear, the lies of Satan, snaking around the sense of it, can misdirect it more easily than if we give him nothing to work with. Jesus is telling us to take care what we think, because Satan's towering intellect can insinuate its way into our heads in the most subtle and damning ways. Furthermore, He is telling us that He Himself is being careful not to open His congregation's mind to the whispering seductions of Satan's minions, by feeding it with dimly perceived half truths, which demons can falsify and grotesquely vulgarize. Indeed, it is clear that Jesus does not have a very high opinion of the common man's ability to get what He is saying, and is giving this warning therefore, not from a superior attitude, but, rather, from a quite protective one, shielding the folk, as it were, from too much truth, too soon.

So, let us hasten to remind you that there is no question of whether a parable or a myth is true. We KNOW it is true. The question is, rather, what is the quality of that truth? Which level of Man's multi-dimensional personality does it speak to?


This quotation from the internet article Movies, Myth and Preaching, by Dwight Longenecker, quotes, in turn, Freud, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Joseph Campbell:

"Sigmund Freud wrote, "The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognise them as truth." Joseph Campbell realised that "the old teachers...told the Truth not in obtuse religious jargon, but in the exciting and mysterious language of myth.

[Sidebar: Substitute the word "parable" for "myth", and we are firmly on the same page.]

Myth and Truth
J.R.R.Tolkien--a devout Catholic--understood the power of myth as well. In his biography of Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter relates Tolkien's conversation with C.S.Lewis which led to the great man's conversion.

Lewis had come to believe in God, but could not relate to Jesus' 2,000 year-old death. Lewis shared Tolkien's excitement with myth, and understood how myth interests and involves the audience in a vicarious way. Tolkien asked Lewis why he couldn't transfer his appreciation of sacrifice from the myth to the true story.

"But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through with silver."

"No." said Tolkien "They are not. You call a tree a tree, and you think nothing more of the word, but it was not a tree until you gave it a name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about Truth."

Tolkien went on to explain that although the myths were woven through with error, they also reflected a fragment of the true light as well. The light began to dawn for Lewis: "Then the story of Christ," he said,"is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened."

For Lewis, the myths were testimony of the 'true light that enlightens every man.' (Jn.1.9) They looked forward to the 'true myth' of the gospel. The stories of incarnate gods, annual deaths and risings all echoed forward the story of Christ.

The Old Testament stories with their typology of Christ looked forward in a different way. Here the stories had a symbolic, legendary and mythic quality, but they were locked into history--pointing in a way no pagan myth could--to the myth become fact in Jesus Christ."

Here are some more quotes on the subject of myth by several famous writers:

Ambrose Bierce

"MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later."

George Orwell:

"Myths which are believed in tend to become true."

(Or, truth, that transcends the language and time of its origin, becomes myth.-RFT)

Joseph Campbell:

"The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth."

Bertrand Russell:

"What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."

Thus, the belief in myth is grounded not in the logical mind of the ego, which is always screwing up its facts anyway, but in the instincts of Man's higher self, his higher desires, his intuition of the truth that is more true than the literal truth.

On the subject of LITERAL TRUTH we must return to something we mentioned quite briefly in passing, at the beginning of this sermon, and which has not been referred to since: THE LAW.

Considering Martin Luther's obsession with the pre-eminence of Grace as the primal cosmic power, it is no surprise that he makes the following disparaging comment about the law in his sermon on the Parable of the Sower, found in THE SERMONS OF MARTIN LUTHER, VOL. II., SECTION I. THE NATURE OF THE WORD SPOKEN HERE.




"This Gospel treats of the disciples and the fruits, which the Word of God develops in the world. It does not speak of the law nor of human institutions; but, as Christ himself says, of the Word of God, which he himself the sower preaches, for the law bears no fruit, just as little as do the institutions of men."

It is a clarifying thought that the law bears no fruit. When you put it like that, that law can be seen as some kind of sustaining or stabilizing force whose function is to keep things in balance without actually adding anything to the mix--it takes Grace to do that--it takes the Messiah to do that. While the law is static, inflexible, Grace moves us outside time to a place where the heart can make up its own rules whenever it is moved (I say MOVED) to do so.

John 1:17

"For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

Another way of saying this might be, "For the law came from Adam, but Mercy came from Jesus." The original sin of flesh came from the creation of Man by the Word, but Man's deliverance from the flesh also came from the Word.


Thus, we seem to have run full circle: the law, the flesh, the truth, and the deliverance from the flesh--they all come from the Word. We are all participating in a continuously revolving cosmic flow, a revolving door, or, better, a revolving escalator that is constantly moving between, and stopping off at, different floors--different stages on a continuum that extends from the higher to the lower and back again, in a unending circular modulation. Which floor we stop at is a function of some over-arching cosmic rhythm, similar, I'm sure, on a macrocosmic level, to the rhythm involved in the the re-centering epiphanic experience. But irregardless of the rhythm, and the level on which we find ourselves at any particular moment, (in the sequential series of time), we must remember that Jacob's vision at Bethel involves angels going up AND down the divine escalator to heaven. Truth is given to us through Grace, as a mercy, a way of dealing with material reality; the Truth is an articulation, a limitation, of the Word; Truth takes the mind-boggling vastness of the Eternal and breaks it down into terms that our human minds can sort of comprehend. In terms of the purpose for Truth, its reason for being, I can think of no more important function than its ability to push us onto the escalator: it is an instruction manual for jumping onto the escalator. Thus, the best Truth is not a single, static, constant entity, like the law, but is, rather, an ever-changing and evolving kaleidoscope of forms; it is shaped by the inconstant, anomalous rhythm of the heart, just like every other aspect of our multi-dimensional existence.

Let us pray: Jesus, open our eyes that we may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for us; open our eyes illumine us, Spirit Divine. Amen.

The Miracle of the Five Loaves and Two Fish

The Miracle of the Five Loaves and Two Fish

Today we will use the familiar story of the miracle of the five loaves and two fish as a springboard into a discussion of miracles and myths.

The tale of the miracle of the five loaves and two fish is distinguished by the fact that it is the only miracle of Jesus that appears in all four Gospels, but contrary to my usual custom I will not read all four versions today--they are more than usually identical. I find the version in Mark to be the most complete:

Mark 6:31-44
King James Version (KJV)
 

31And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.
 32And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.
 33And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him.
 34And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.
 35And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed:
 36Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.
 37He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?
 38He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes.
 39And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass.
 40And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.
 41And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all.
 42And they did all eat, and were filled.
 43And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes.
 44And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.

Now this miracle, sometimes referred to as The Miracle of the 5000, is closely followed in the gospels of Matthew and Mark by a nearly identical story, The Miracle of the 4000. This is Mark's version:

Mark 8:1-9
King James Version (KJV)
 

1In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them,
 2I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat:
 3And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.
 4And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?
 5And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven.
 6And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground: and he took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to his disciples to set before them; and they did set them before the people.
 7And they had a few small fishes: and he blessed, and commanded to set them also before them.
 8So they did eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets.
 9And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and he sent them away.

Now for today's Wikipedia commentaries:

Feeding the multitude
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interpretations

"These two miracles involve no healing and show the control Christians believe Jesus to have had over nature. In these two miracles Jesus multiplied food, in somewhat remote locations, while the Marriage at Cana miracle involved wine in a feast. Although these two miracles are often viewed as twin miracles, despite their similarities, each has its own distinct marks.

Jesus seems to have placed some significance on the number of baskets of leftovers from both miracles (the feeding of the 4000 and 5000): "'Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? When I break the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up?' They said unto him, 'Twelve.' 'And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up?' And they said, 'Seven.' 'And He said unto them, 'How is it that ye do not understand?'"(Mark 8:18-21) He never explicitly states the interpretation of the numbers, but it is clear from this passage that he attaches some importance to them."

Here I insert some comments about the difference between the miracles from Overview of Bible Study:

"Two nearly identical miracles performed under similar circumstances, probably only a few days apart, yet the disciples remained doubtful, and were surprised to find that the Lord could pull it off.

In both instances, Jesus drew crowds, who remained with him during long periods of teaching and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. They were in a distant place and evening was approaching.

In the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples, out of concern for the people, urged Christ to dismiss them, so that they might return to their homes, or to neighboring villages, and get something to eat.
In the feeding of the four thousand, Christ was the one who initiated the concern, and supplied the remedy.

It is interesting to note that, although Christ had fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes only a few days before, his disciples were doubtful as to how he would feed four thousand with seven loaves and a few fish."

Now back to Wikipedia:

"The Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha is the site where some Christians believe the miracle to have taken place.

In Mark chapter 8, in the passage that describes Jesus warning his disciples to "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod" (v.15), it is significant that in the course of the ensuing conversation, Jesus refers retrospectively to both the feeding of the 5000 (v.19) and the feeding of the 4000 (v.20). This creates a difficulty for those who interpret the two passages as if they described the same event twice.

The account of the miracle in John 6 is followed later in the same chapter by the conversation Jesus has with the crowds who had followed him to Capernaum. The main motif in the passage (v.26-59) centres on Jesus saying, "I am that bread of life" (v.48). Though there is no previous food miracle in John other than Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, this section of Jesus' teaching might allude to a much earlier food miracle, that of the manna that was provided as food to the children of Israel in the wilderness at the time of Moses. More strikingly this miracle echoes that of Elisha who fed 100 men with 20 loaves of bread in 2 Kings 4:42-44 saying "For this is what the LORD says: 'They will eat and have some left over." The feeding of the multitude therefore may be seen as a demonstrative prelude to Jesus words, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger: and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." (v.35)."

Now let's talk about parables for a moment. Remember that we have discussed the idea that parables provide a mere veneer of truth on first hearing, and may only reveal their deeper meanings over time, after the significance, or resonance, of the story's symbols have had a chance to "sink in." Let's just pretend for a moment that the miracle of the fishes was not an historical event, but a parable, or, better yet, that it was an historical event with a metaphorical meaning just like a parable has. What is the metaphorical meaning?

Well, Jesus Himself provides us with one answer in John 6:35:

"I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger: and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

"See? You followed me and I fed you! I fed your physical bodies with physical food. How much more, then, must your souls benefit from the spiritual food I have to offer?" What better way to impress a crowd with a spiritual truth than by sending it to straight to their stomachs? Do think they "digested this truth?"

I collected a few other slants on this idea:

From Shanda Renee's blog, A Journey for Christ, we read:

"Although the Miracle in the fishes and loaves was in feeding 5 thousand, I believe the story can be applied to our lives in so many ways. Believing that what ever little we have, is more than enough to do what ever it is God wants to be done."

from Overview of Bible Study:

"In the multitudes of hungry people, we have a representation of the spiritually famished state of mankind
In the compassion of Christ, we see hope for the perishing sinner

In the disciples bearing the food to the people, we see the design of Christian ministry

In the abundance, we see the fullness of the gospel

In the satisfaction of the multitude, we learn that personal partaking of Christ is essential to our happiness"

Hence, even in humanitarian acts of kindness on the mundane level, Jesus may be seen as a teacher--teaching, through example, that even our most ordinary everyday occupations resonate in eternity. To me, the magnificence of this miracle is not in the magic show, but in the lesson it teaches and the direction in which it points our attention--but we'll get back to that.

Now let's talk about miracles.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"A miracle is an event attributed to divine intervention. Sometimes an event is also attributed (in part) to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that God may work with the laws of nature to perform what people perceive as miracles. Theologians say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well."

It may surprise you (or not) to hear that there is some disagreement about the character of this miracle.

The following is from
Bread from Heaven: Loaves and Fishes: Natural Sharing or Supernatural Miracle?

"Today, I heard a homily that claimed what really happened about the five loaves and two fish, is that bystanders took out food they were hiding under their cloaks and shared it."

[Sidebar:

I myself thought of this interpretation years ago, and actually wrote a musical composition about it. The piece is a "klangfarbenmelodie" (German for sound-color-melody). Klangfarbenmelodie is a musical technique that involves distributing a musical line or melody to several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument. In the case of my piece, it was a single chord that evolved and grew through the manipulation of instrumental forces. I was trying to capture the idea of a single loaf of bread multiplying itself, kind of like the cells of an embryonic virgin birth.]

"Jesus’ preaching inspired the melting of selfishness, and this was the true miracle according to this preacher. He went on to justify his reading that this was a miracle of sharing rather than a miracle of multiplication, because:

How many of us would go on a trip away from home for a couple of days without our credit card to provide food and lodging?
If we wouldn’t leave home without making plans for food and lodging then what makes us think these people, in the crowd with Jesus, made no provisions?
Were they any different that us? Therefore, Jesus changed their hearts and they shared all they had with each other. This is the true miracle.
This is appealing to people these days because we lack FAITH. We lack the Faith to believe that Jesus/God can do ANYTHING. So, those who subscribe to this interpretation hope to make the Gospel more palatable to modern men. But the above appeal to reason does not ring true for the following reasons:

1) This passage does not say anywhere that the people had been away from home for more than a day. So the above pastor built his rationale on a false premise. Of course, people then, just like us, make plans to provide for themselves on journeys. But there is nothing in the passage that indicates this was anything other than a day trip. And the parallel passages in Matthew, Mark and Luke indicate that the people could have gone into nearby villages for food and lodging.
Luke 9:12 “and the twelve came and said to Him, “Send the crowd away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and get something to eat; for here we are in a desolate place.”
But Jesus had other plans.
2) There is NO mention that Jesus performed a miracle of convincing people to share. And we would have to believe that the disciples were so stupid and out of touch with their culture that they had no clue the crowd were all hiding food under their cloaks.
There is not the whiff of a hint that this is not a supernatural miracle of multiplication of the loaves. The Gospels say Jesus gave the food to the disciples who gave it and kept giving it to the people. Not a single word about the people giving food to each other.

Only one miracle of Jesus is recorded in all four gospels–the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Even the miracles of raising the dead are not recorded in every Gospel. While sharing is a wonderful virtue, it just is not a supernatural miracle. Why was this miracle so important that every Gospel writer included it?
Because this was a prefiguring, on a small scale, of the Eucharistic sacrifice. This is the supernatural miracle of the multiplication of the body and blood of Christ for the faithful at every mass, every day of the year, around the whole wide world; the Mass, the source and summit of our Faith. John, purposely locates this story right before Jesus’ discourse on the necessity of eating His Flesh and drinking His blood in order to have Eternal life."

As you can see, this author is mainly concerned with this miracle as an historical fact whose significance is that IT HAPPENED just like it is described in the text, as if the supernatural powers of Jesus were their own justification. Is this really the true significance? Is Jesus the legitimate SON OF GOD, the Messiah, anointed of the Father, merely because he can mass produce anchovy pizza?

The following is from a sermon by Unitarian minister Davidson Loehr, 15 September 2002, First UU Church of Austin; it takes an even more frankly materialistic perspective than the preceding referenced homily:

"This story about the loaves and fishes wasn’t an eyewitness account. It was written many decades after Jesus died. He was hardly known at all during his life, and never gathered large crowds, certainly nothing like hundreds or thousands of people.

If you take courses in the Bible, you’ll most likely learn that the story is understood as a story not about Jesus but about the church. It’s found in the gospel of Matthew, the “church gospel.” It’s a story saying the way a few words of wisdom, a few bits of spiritual nourishment, can feed thousands is because the church multiplies the loaves and fishes through the participation of its members.

Both with real food and with spiritual food, a church is a gathering of people who spread the nourishment to others. Over three hundred of you experienced some of this here last night, at that lovely church party where we fed hundreds of people. The same happens with spiritual food. Here’s a church with one minister and one ministerial intern, yet there are more than a half dozen adult classes, covenant groups, Tai Chi classes, men’s breakfasts, a whole host of offerings, plus e-mail chats and all sorts of discussions here and with your family and friends during the week.

Now just describing it that way, it doesn’t feel very miraculous; it just feels like potlucks and various kinds of classes. But there is something else going on . . .
Jesus died around the year 30. The gospel of Matthew, where these stories are found, was written more than fifty years later. What had happened during that half-century was that as the church began to grow, people came to hear its messages and they felt fed. They felt a kind of hole inside of them being filled, and it was a feeling they’d never had before. They found a community of people who were also asking questions about who they were, who they were meant to be, and how they were supposed to live. They felt their lives were being taken more seriously, and at a more significant and personal level, than ever before. And as they got fed and filled up, they wanted to feed others with the overflow.

And so they did. History says the early church had common meals like we had last night, that they fed the hungry and cared for the poor, both the economically poor and the poor of spirit, just as we try to do. In the version of Christianity that “won,” Paul’s sect, communion is a magical act involving eating the body and blood of a savior. But in most of the Christian communities even by the end of the first century, it wasn’t about that at all. The Christian communion was simply a common meal, much like what today we call a potluck. Early Christian documents (The Didache) never mention any association with the body or blood of a savior.
The miracle of the loaves and fishes was that the people who had been fed brought their own loaves and fishes to feed others, until the food that had first fed a few people began to feed a few thousand people. What does this mean in simple, down-to-earth ways?

I’ve heard some of our people here in their 20′s and 30′s talk about the small groups, or covenant groups, they have joined here. Some have said that after a month or two in such a small group they find that they’ve learned how to know and feel close to a half-dozen other people on a personal level, and they’ve never once talked about how much money they made or what they did for a living. They find their lives being measured by a new currency, a kind of personal or spiritual currency, and it feeds them.

If it ends there, they’ve just been fed. But when they start a new covenant group, or invite friends to come join them so that others are being fed, something miraculous is happening."

As you may remember from a letter of mine written to Anchorage Christian School, the question of miracles is of little concern to me. I'll remind you of that earlier comment:

"I have be honest--I don't really CARE about the whole evolution controversy: my whole life is a stream of little miracles, one after the other, such that it is no problem for me to accept the possibility of creation in a moment of time. In a supernatural world, created by a supernatural God, what DIFFERENCE does it make whether six days is an allegorical expression or a literal expression? The miracle is there regardless of how you think about it, and it defies us to achieve any rational apprehension of it. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, and yet it takes no faith to see the world right there in front of us--right now. Thank you God!"

So you see, once again, the miracle is not what happened but what it means as an expression of the personality and benevolence of Jesus as a teacher and an example. Sorry, I still DON'T CARE, if the miracle was in the supernatural multiplication of fish, or in the sharing of strangers united in a common good. Either or both is equally miraculous in terms of the level of perceptible divine intervention. The point here is that we can participate in miracles every day, if we give God the credit and the glory for every single article and aspect of our paltry existences.

Furthermore, the miraculous quality of this story leads us into myth:

The following is taken from a C.S. Lewis-Review of Lord of the Rings:

"The value of myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’… If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. By dipping our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys in myth we see them more clearly."

So you see, to C.S. Lewis, making a miracle into an historical event does not enrich it with materialistic legitimacy, it "veils it in familiarity", as though the fact that something materially HAPPENED is the only way to make it true.

From C.S. Lewis' autobiography, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1955), 236, we read the following:

"I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion — those narrow, unattractive jews, too blind to the mystical wealth of the Pagan world around them — was precisely the matter of great myths. If ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another, but nothing was simply alike. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time... yet also so luminous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god — we are no longer polytheists — then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not "a religion," nor "a philosophy." It is the summing up and actuality of them all."

The way I see it, the problem with miracles is not that they occur, but that modern scientific man (I mean man from about 1600) finds it difficult for them (the miracles) to co-exist side by side with the materialistic truths we have come to know as "science". Thousands upon thousands of hours of thought and reams of paper have been devoted to the thankless job of reconciling the two, science and spirituality, once again, as if reconciling the two could somehow make either of them more real.

On this subject, Louis A. Markus makes these remarks in his article,
Why C.S. Lewis's books remain models for Christian apologists in the 21st century:

"The scientific community joins forces with the academy and the media to ridicule us for our belief in God's creation of the world, and perhaps to sigh together in disbelief that modern, educated men and women could accept as literal events the miracles recorded in the Bible. Certainly we've gotten better at answering such critiques; we tend to be less insular than we were in the past, and we sometimes manage to move from defensiveness to shaping the debate. But we're still fighting our battles on "their" turf, on a scientific and philosophical groundwork that was defined during the Enlightenment and all but completed by the end of the Victorian Age. Scientists such as Michael Behe have done a remarkable job at countering modernists' data, and law professor Philip Johnson has exposed the flaws in their logic, but we've yet to shift the playing field from the theories to the competing assumptions that underlie those theories. We've yet to educate ourselves, much less the culture, that many of the "givens" we take for granted (most notably, that the foundation of all true knowledge is material, empirical, and quantifiable) are as recent as they are unproven."

In conclusion, I have one more quote, this time from Myth Matters:
Thoughts on myth, spirit, and our times an interview with Joseph Campbell, by Tom Collins:

"[Myth] puts you in touch with a plane of reference that goes past your mind and into your very being, into your very gut. The ultimate mystery of being and nonbeing transcends all categories of knowledge and thought. Yet that which transcends all talk is the very essence of your own being, so you're resting on it and you know it. The function of mythological symbols is to give you a sense of "Aha! Yes. I know what it is, it's myself." This is what it's all about, and then you feel a kind of centering, centering, centering all the time. And whatever you do can be discussed in relationship to this ground of truth. Though to talk about it as truth is a little bit deceptive because when we think of truth we think of something that can be conceptualized. It goes past that. . . .

Because the imagery that has to be used in order to tell what can't be told, symbolic imagery, is then understood or interpreted not symbolically but factually, empirically. It's a natural thing, but that's the whole problem with Western religion. All of the symbols are interpreted as if they were historical references. They're not. And if they are, then so what?"

Yeah, so what? The Miracle of the Five Loaves and Two Fish, is a story of Jesus, vibrant with life and significance even after two thousand years. It inspires us to have faith in the benevolent generosity of God who continually supplies our needs to overflowing if we only look and see what we have been given.

Let us pray: Jesus, we stand before you once again in grateful obeisance and marvel at the rich gifts you shower on us out of your boundless bounty. Remind us always to be grateful for these gifts and mindful of their source. Amen.