ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

The Seventh Sunday of Trinity, 26th July 2009
Sermon preached by Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at the Parish Mass

Readings: 2 Kings 4. 42-end; Ephesians 3. 14-end; John 6. 1-21

Several years ago I met an artist when I was on holiday in Spain. He lived high up in the Sierras in an old farmhouse where he had his studio. He showed me around. I showed interest in a fresco that he'd painted in a sort of Renaissance style. It was a series of panels that told a story. This was the work that had gained him a postgraduate degree. He talked me through it. He wanted to combine various elements. He wanted to show that he was master of the technique of fresco. This is a complicated process that involves painting into wet plaster. He wanted to 'converse' with those who had decorated churches hundreds of years ago by telling a story that both informed and challenged the viewer.Before people could read and understand the liturgy in their own language the pictures that people saw in churches was a large part of their religious formation. And finally, he wanted his work to be amusing. For him story-telling Renaissance frescos were a forerunner of the modern comic stripcartoon.

So what the artist had done was to paint an imaginary funny story based on the gospels:

Panel 1. Jesus and his disciples walk a long a dusty road. They're locked in animated conversation. It's hot. The sun shines brightly in the sky. The disciples are sweating. Jesus is cool
Panel 2. The disciples spot the Sea of Galilee and point towards it
Panel 3. The disciples dash off to the shore
Panel 4. The disciples strip off
Panel 5. The disciples dive into the water
Panel 6. The disciples beckon to Jesus. 'Come on in. The water's lovely,' they're saying
Panel 7. Jesus saunters to the lakeshore
Panel 8. Jesus strips
Panel 9. Jesus dives
Panel 10. Boing! Jesus bounces off the water

In this morning's gospel Jesus walks on water. How does that happen? Was he water repellent? Well, we assume not. If he was, he wouldn't have been human like us. But to think that this morning's gospel is some sort of simple reportage would miss the point. John's Gospel is sometimes called the Book of Signs. John tells his gospel in a series of 'panels' each of which includes a sign. In chapter 2 after the story of the Wedding in Cana where Jesus turns water into wine John says that this was the first sign that Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him (v 11). Later in chapter 4 Jesus heals the son of a royal official. This, John says was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea into Galilee (v 54).

Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke who usually describe the miracles as 'wonders', John calls them 'signs'. There's an obvious difference. Think of fireworks. Fireworks are wonderful. They're an extravagant addition to any celebration. We go 'Ooh!' and 'Ah!' But if we're on the coast and see a single firework lighting up the sky we know that this isn't just a 'wonder' it's a sign. It's a distress flare. We go and get help. This is not 'Ooh!' and 'Ah!' but 'Oh, oh'. We're being told something. We need to respond.

Those who first read John's Gospel weren't detached aesthetes basking in his impeccable Greek. They weren't dilettantes luxuriating in his images of light and dark. John's Christian community was under threat from all sides. It was a persecuted church. They needed reassurance. They needed faith. John trades in the ancient signs. This is what gives his gospel its power.

It was Moses who turned aside to see the Burning Bush. In its intense and unquenchable light he received the revelation of God: I AM WHO I AM. It was Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt through the Red Sea. It was in the wilderness that God's people were fed with manna from heaven. And all of these elements are present in this morning's gospel. Christ walks on water to calm the disciples' fears. It is I, he tells them. I AM. It's a point rammed home throughout John's Gospel as the I am sayings rumble through it like thunder: I am the good shepherd, I am the vine, I am the way.

The boat in which the disciples are huddled against the waves is the church. Whenever I take groups of schoolchildren around church buildings I ask them to imagine what the church would look like if it was turned upside down. I can't use this idea at present with the roof scaffolded like this but if you can imagine the pitched roof and then turn it upside down we'd be in something that looked like a ship. The Latin word for 'ship' is 'navis'. 'Navis' gives us the English word 'navy'. It also gives us the word 'nave'. You are seated in the nave, the Ark of Salvation.
For the signs that we use in church 'to work' (if I can put it as crudely as that) we have to bring something to them. The church's signs and sacraments are not 'wonders' like the fireworks we let off at a party. They're signs, 'vital signs' of life. They speak because they are full of our cries, and our cries are ancient cries. As mortals conscious of our mortality tossed around by this storm and that we cry out in fear. We yearn for what is eternal, unchanging and ceaseless: the I AM that fires our imagination and warms our hearts.

We desire to turn the waters of destruction, the waters that can flood and drown us into the breaking waters of new birth. We desire baptism and blessing, the taming of water in font and water stoop. We long to be fed, to be nourished, to receive that most satisfying food - bread, harvest of the soil and ovened in the earth. We desire to belong: to know that this universe in which we can so often feel stranded and shipwrecked is in fact on our side; that it is the creation of a God who loves what he has made and reveals himself within it.

So these signs and sacraments that we value so highly here, these basic elements that we see and unlock what we cannot see need us not simply as witnesses but as participants. They need our offering as well as our presence. The early church obviously regarded the Feeding of the Five Thousand as one of the most significant events in the ministry of Jesus. It's the only miracle that appears in all four gospels. But it's told with subtle differences in each of them. Only John tells us that a lad provides the loaves and fishes, the harvest (the offering) of land and sea. We don't know how old the lad was but he was young.

Children are always our teachers. Look at their faces. I was in a shop the other day and a mother was buying something for her five year old. She gave her child the money to give to the shop assistant. The child's face was all delight as she handed over the money and received the goods. There was a vision of satisfied desire. Of course, it's fleeting. Whatever the child was getting wasn't going to last or satisfy forever. But the 'not lasting' and 'not satisfying forever' can breed in us adults a cynicism and a discontent and sometimes a bitterness that can blight our lives and the lives of those around us. A life that boils down only to transactions will become mechanical and tedious. We can be ruined by disappointment. As Nietzsche warned us, 'Christians will have to look more redeemed if people are to believe in their Redeemer.'

To rediscover this we must recover our sense of the gift. It's what we bring here to church that is as important as what we receive. The lad with his loaves and fishes is our model even if the bunch of frightened disciples in the boat is nearer the reality. In the economy of salvation it is of course God who gives us the raw materials of our offering. It is he who has made our 'loaves and fishes' but they feel like ours and so we present them and we do it with a sense of wonder and of praise for the little that is ours that is magnified in the Divine. This is the stuff of life, life in abundance, life everlasting. Life's troubles won't bounce off us. That's not part of the promise but it will enable us to bounce back. Boing!