Jessel Gerard

John 6, 1-15 Feeding the Multitude & Gospels about banquets

The banquet is a very powerful image to the ancient Israelites where everyone partakes of the food and wine in perfect friendship and equality with one’s neighbors. It is easy then to see why Jesus would use the table as a symbol of God’s kingdom. Whether in the great banquets of kings to the meal time of shepherds, the table was a place of peace and equality. Everyone regardless of status shares a basic need as hunger, and a common reason to celebrate as the presence of a great prophet. In the Gospel of John, the

Kingdom

of

God

as the great banquet is mirrored in the simple meal of barley loaves and fishes.

And thus, all meals are not just acts of physical replenishing, to be done quickly so that one can rush to the television or dash to the computer. Meals are important events. First, it is an event of gratitude for all that God has given us. It is a time to praise, honor and thank our Creator. Today, seldom do families and friends pray before meals. “Bless us, O Lord, and these Your gifts, from your bounty…” Hardly do we remember that each meal— or snacks for that matter — are events of God being a good parent and a good provider. In John’s Gospel, the miracle of feeding the multitude happened after Jesus took the loaves and had given thanks (John

6:10

).

Second, it is an event to celebrate the bonds of family and friends and eventually deepening relationships. Today, many families do not anymore sit at table together. The reason can be work-related or simply that today’s culture does not give importance to common family time. For example, with the advent of telenovelas, primetime television affected common family meals. People eat to replenish themselves and then hurry to their favorite soap operas, afraid to miss a segment of the story. Little do we realize that we are missing an important part of our lives: we would miss a day’s events in the life of our loved ones, an opportunity to listen to their stories, a time to strengthen our bonds, and most importantly, to remember God’s miracle of love during the day, shared in a simple meal. In the Gospel of John, the crowd is not only hungry, but weary, lost and detached from one another. With the lost of interacting between family and friends, people easily becomes detached from one another.

A miracle happens when everyone shares the same food and drink. A miracle happens when everyone shares their whole lives in openness to one another like a personal problem, a common concern, or a day’s triumph. A miracle happens when even a single person, like a simple boy, shares what one has like fish and the poor’s barley loaves (Judges

7:13

; Ezekiel

4:12

) used as feed for animals (1 Kings

4:28

) to a hungry crowd. The single person is not only contented, but is no longer an isolated individual, but a member of a community, like a family around the dining table. The multitude becomes a community. It is what happens to each individual person in the congregation at mass: we, who shares Christ, the bread of life himself, become one. The table of the Lord becomes a place of peace and love, and the stranger who once felt alone and rejected, is never turned away.

And so, when we receive Christ in the Eucharist, it also means that we must also be the genuine presence of Christ in our own community: feeding those who are hungry for food or our love, we must make our tables a place of peace and friendship. If we look into our past, we see that families did take extra care to prepare the meals so that the family table became an important event, not just a refueling of physical hunger. So we must take extra care to prepare ourselves so that when we have given ourselves as food for our neighbor, the quality of service is excellent.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 8th, 2005 at 11:58 am and is filed under Homilies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.