John 6:1-15 (NRSV)
After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world." When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
All of us have had the situation in which we knew of someone who experienced a terrible loss. Perhaps someone we know has been in an accident that left them with a life-long injury or a woman who has experienced a miscarriage or still birth. Our hearts are so crushed for the other person and we want to do something. We may tend to think that what we want to do is just too small. Yet it is the little things that mean so much that can bring consolation and healing.
Here was Jesus amidst 5,000 hungry people and a boy with only five barley loaves and two fish. Most likely in that crowd there were people who had been denied health coverage, or people who were homosexual, bisexual or transgendered. Most of the people there may have been rejected from the temple or other synagogues with in the area, because they said something that the local church community did not like. Jesus was most concerned about how he would feed the hungry souls looking to be satisfied by the Goodness and Presence of God. Jesus was most concerned about how God could reach out to all of the souls who want to know the God they want to love so much.
Jesus, knowing that he is God in the flesh, receives all that the boy has to offer and through the Goodness of God Jesus provides food and nourishment for all who was there. God can take the smallest of our offerings and use them to do marvelous things. God desires to feed us all at the point of our need for God. God wants to know and love us all intimately and completely.
Among our many understandings of Holy Communion is that it is union with God through the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Just before the Priest serves Holy Communion in the Episcopal Church she or he says:
"The Gifts of God for the People of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving." (BCP. Pge 365).
Through the Eucharist, we partake of the great wedding feast of heaven and earth, in which Christ and the Church are one in an intimate and perfect union. Very much like have sex. In the Eucharist, Jesus who is God made a human being, who is in love with every person of God's creation, becomes one with us as Christ's Body and unites us to God's Self. We experience companionship with God's life-giving presence.
As God's children lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people God endows us with gifts. We have been blessed by God with the faculties of loving someone of the same sex, or loving both opposite and/or same-sex and/or having a transgendered understanding of ourselves. What the religious right calls sinful, God sees as endowments that we are asked to place at the service of Christ, the Church and society. God can use the abilities we have to transform biased systems. The transformation of a heterosexist society begins not just with changing laws and church rules, but changing hearts and behaviors. We can do that when we place ourselves and all that we are in the hands of God and trust in the Holy Spirit to use what we have to fulfill God's will.
How will we offer God what we have so that God can use it to accomplish great things?
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, BCP, Page 215).
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