St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Reverend Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr in the City and Diocese of Cape Town at the Cathedral Eucharist on the Seventeenth Sunday of the Year, 30 July 2006

Today our Gospel is the well-known story of Jesus miraculously feeding 5000 people on the hillside above the Sea of Galilee. Everyone knows it and all are moved by the generous impulse of the young boy who with simple innocence offers his five barley loaves and two fish. But there is much more to this miracle than a wonder worked on a mountainside. It marks a pivotal moment in our Lord's ministry and defines the trajectory of the rest of his life. The evangelists recount over 40 miracles that Jesus performed, but this one is unique – it is the only miracle found in all four of the gospels. Something very important happened on that hillside beside the lake. What happened there had a dramatic impact on the life of Jesus. What happened there has profound implications for those of us who dare to call ourselves Christian, desire to walk in his way, seek to live by his truth and claim him as our Life.

Have you noticed that we heard the story from John's Gospel and not from Mark whose Gospel we have been reading these past eight months? And why, you might well ask, does the lectionary shift from Mark to John, when – if we were to pick up reading Mark where we left off last Sunday - we would be reading Mark's account of the feeding of the five thousand? Why shift to John when Mark tells the same story? One of the central themes of John's Gospel is that in Jesus those who follow him have access to the abundant life he offers. This is the Good News of John's Gospel – that the fullness of God is in Jesus and that through our allegiance to Jesus Christ we have life abundant, plentiful, pressed down and overflowing. 'I came that you may have life,' Jesus says in John 10:10, 'and that you may have life abundantly.'

Right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, John describes how, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus changed water into wine when the wine had run out. There, in the face of scarcity, Jesus provided an abundance of the best – lavishly and extravagantly, when everyone else thought that there was nothing left. Today we find Jesus on the mountainside above the Sea of Galilee. Here he takes the young boy's meagre and big-hearted offering and, in the face of scarcity and enormous demand, he provides an extravagant abundance so that after all 5000 had eaten there were 12 baskets left over – way more than they needed.

John's Gospel, which we will be reading for the next five Sundays, holds before us the tension between the belief that at the heart of all things there is a frightening scarcity and the affirmation that the universe teems with a staggering and extravagant abundance, more than enough to satisfy everyone and everything.

Of course, we meet this tension first of all in Genesis, don't we? Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden, a Paradise of plenty, of pleasure and of peace. The first man and the first woman live there in abundance. But the serpent convinces them that there is scarcity in the Garden of Abundance after all – a scarcity of knowledge. 'Have I got a deal for you,' the sly snake says, and then whispers knowingly, 'God is stockpiling knowledge, reserving the tree for his own exclusive use.' The serpent offers a strategy for Adam and Eve to get in on the deal, early and profitably. The moment they fall for the serpent's view of God as a God of scarcity, Paradise was lost. And all the rest is history.

We are the children of Adam and Eve, you and I, aren't we? Believers in scarcity. There's not enough respect to go around – just look at how they treat me. There's not enough love to go around – so I am jealous, protected, suspicious. There's not enough time to go around – so I am harried, hurried and rushed off my feet. There are not enough people to do what must be done – so I must do it all by myself, and gripe and moan and remain exhausted. There is not enough talent worthy of our heritage – so I am defensive, protective and cynical. We are the children of Adam and Eve, you and I, aren't we? Believers in scarcity.

The economic theory that has shaped and informed Western civilization is in fact just such a heresy. We have been taught, over and over again, that resources are scarce, and as such they must be labelled, parcelled out by the powerful, controlled by those with the most guns, bought at the highest prices and sold at the most profit. There is not enough land, there is not enough water, there is not enough fuel, there is not enough food. It is this economic theory – or to give it its proper name, the heresy of scarcity – which holds Palestine and Israel in bitter conflict, continues to destabilise Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, threatens India and Pakistan, undermines the stability of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, robs thousands of employment and keeps millions of men women and children in murderous poverty.

When Jesus took the young boy's humble offering, he was turning the world upside-down, shattering the status quo and subverting the economy that kept the people on that hillside hungry, and poor, and voiceless, and powerless. By his act of taking a little and believing that it was enough he turned the hearts of the people from apathy and gave them power. By demonstrating the confidence that a little is a lot and a lot is enough, and enough is more than enough, Jesus blazed a trail or freedom and dignity, respect and mutual interdependence that is the heritage and vocation of everyone that bears his name.

So it is that we have come with our bags of groceries today. For in giving what for each of us is a very small portion of what we consume each week, we are learning the lesson that we will have enough, no matter how much we share. These bags of ours are our testimony that God is good, that God cares, that God provides. They stand here as so many affirmations that we will not thwart God's goodness, we will not stand in the way of God's provision by stockpiling what is not ours and by selfishly hoarding what belongs to all of us. May it please God that these simple bags of groceries feed those who are hungry, and that we who have given them may learn more and more to live in the plentitude of God's abundance – and turn our world upside down. In the turning we will find ourselves freed from greed and worry – and discover ourselves apostles of abundance and advocates of the stewardship of all God's gifts for all God's people

Here at God's table we feast on the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, extravagantly given and freely received. Let the bread in our hands and the wine on our lips draw us ever more into the confidence that God provides more than enough, lavishly beyond our needs or our asking. May it please God to give us grateful hearts ready to trust rather than possess, depend rather than control, give rather than receive.

May Christ who calls us to follow him give us the grace to walk in the ways of his abundant life.

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