Jesus asks pointed questions. Always has, always will. No matter how I slice it, he gets me where I live. For example in last Sunday’s gospel, to test Philip and the other disciples, he posed this beauty:
Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat? (John 6.5)
Simple enough. Perfectly reasonable on the surface and yet any Parish Priest, Vestry member or disciple knows it’s impossible.
I can just see the look on his face. Eyebrows raised a little. Lips pursed and drawn to one side. Looking skyward. Waiting. Rather like the look on Stephen Fry’s Jeeves’ face when he asks Bertie one of his leading questions in the Jeeves and Wooster series.
Jesus still asks such impossible questions. Especially when the equivalent of some hungry crowd is bearing down on me. How am I to provide for their needs? And there you are. There we are in our little Anglican (or fill-in-the-blank) churches. Jesus testing us to see if we’ve been paying attention. Reminding us that somewhere close by there is someone like that little boy—or a little girl in the crowd, a teenager or an elderly saint nobody pays much attention to in our congregation—someone with something Jesus knows the crowd, or its equivalent, needs.
If only I, like Andrew, could see them.
Impossible. What they have never seems to be enough and is usually not neatly sliced. But when obediently and prayerfully placed in Jesus’ hands, they become a miraculous cornucopia of blessings. More than ever you or I could ask or imagine. And once Jesus has finished doing that infinitely more thing he does so well we are left amazed—wondering what on earth to do with the leftovers.
I’ve got to get better at listening for those questions, keeping my eyes open, handing what I see over to Jesus, doing what he says with it and preparing to deal with lots of leftovers. So do we all. You never know when The LORD—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—might decide to rain bread and glory (Ex 16.4, 7), or some other thing or blessing he has waiting in the heavens for whoever is bearing down on us hungrily.
What might might help me to do that? The other two readings have some pointers. Stop my grumbling (Ex 16.2, 7, 8) and do what I’m told. Live free and in the Holy Spirit (Gal 4.26-5.1, Ro 8.2) rather than letting myself be hobbled and spiritually paralyzed by fleshly desires and habits. No matter how I slice it, Lent is a good time to work at that by honing up my spiritual disciplines and fanning my Holy Spirit-given gifts into flame “by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word” (BCP, p612).
Note: I realize that not many of you would have heard the gospel lesson we did at St Mary the Virgin in Regina last Sunday. Canon Claude Schroeder, our Rector, uses the BCP Epistles and Gospels during Lent. He believes that they have a important and consistent seasonal theological integrity. I’m inclined to agree. So we heard Ex16.2-7, Gal 4.26-5.1 and John 6.5-14 rather than the RCL’s readings o the day.
Gene+
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