Sermon Sunday
31st. July, 2005
Outside the High Court, just
up from St. Giles, there is a statue, a new statue. Of a man dressed in roman
style clothes, holding a tablet on his knee. On a summer’s day, like today, most folks
will pass by without a second glance,
paying more attention to the pipers playing in the street. Those who do pay any
attention to the statue, usually do so at night, and for the wrong reasons –
climbing up to put a traffic cone on its head.
But the statue is of David
Hume the philosopher and historian, born in the Berwickshire, 250 years ago. In
his day, Hume was famous, for his refusal to believe in miracles.
David Hume thought that the
world, the universe worked, along unchangeable rules, cast iron laws, none of
which could be changed. So for him, the blind couldn’t receive their sight, the
deaf hear, or the lame walk, or the dead live again,
as we read in the gospels, because it was against all the rules.
So, you can guess that for
David Hume,
Jesus feeding those thousands
of hungry people on the rock strewn shores of the sea
of Galilee,
For David Hume such a thing
just couldn’t happen.
He and others like him thought
that the world, the universe was
like a great engine,
running along under its own power. The universe, was like a
great engine turning all the time, you couldn’t stop it, or interfere with it,
or change anything about it, or
add or remove any of its pieces.
But, what the Bible declares
is this:
that the world, the universe is not like a giant mechanism,
turning under its own power,
but that
the world and the whole of this universe,
everything that is, depends on God, from moment to moment.
God holds the world in being
and,
declares the Bible, he hasn’t left it, to run on itself,
He is the Creator who is still wonderfully, inexpressibly,
marvellously creative,
and how important is that word – He is still creative and
at work in the world……….
He who called the universe
into life, into being, still acts in creative power.
The living God, who in majesty, and inexpressible ways is the source of the world’s
life, still shapes and creates.
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In what ways
?
Well, for the prophet Isaiah,
God has not just called the world into being, and created it,
He has called a people,
Isaiah the prophet writes: God
who created you O Jacob, he who formed
you o
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God, who in the beginning, the
first verse of Genesis, tells us, created the heavens and the earth, when the
earth was formless and void, and darkness over the surface of the deep….. whose Spirit hovered over the waters, God who said “let
there be light…..” and there was light…………….
The living God, who in inexpressible ways is
the source of the world’s life, still shapes and creates,
with that in mind,
Lets turn to that familiar story in the gospel about the
feeding of the five thousand,
and try to understand it for what it is……….
a miracle……………
let us be bold, and speak clearly and decisively, about
the feeding of the hungry
as the living God, in action, through Jesus
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The gospel tells us this, that
Jesus has come to a remote place on the shores of the sea of Galilee – There is a reason, for His
coming here.
He has come seeking stillness,
the quiet places of the shore, after hearing the news of the violent death of
John the Baptist, his cousin.
John, just days before, had
been brutally executed, on one of those pointless, violent whims, of King
Herod, the local dictator.
So Jesus has come to this
place, in grief, as Isaiah 53 says, as a man of sorrows, acquainted with
grief. Surely He must have been aware
too, of the forces gathering against Him.
In times of grief, when we
seek the places of stillness, and quietness, in Jesus,
we have one, as the book of Hebrews says, who knows what
we are going through, and in Him we will find comfort, rest for our souls|
Matthew tells us, that having
come here to seek just a day apart in stillness, to speak with His Father in heaven, Jesus was soon joined by His disciples.
And the gospel tells us that
soon massive crowds from the surrounding towns and villages – men and women
seeking, searching began to arrive.
A tumult of moving, rootless,
purposeless people, arrives in the desert.
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The people of
yet – here disordered, formless, void……….
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And as darkness begins to
fall, despite the complaints, and incredulity of the disciples Jesus speaks of
food, of feeding for this huge crowd,
All that can be found is five loaves and two
fish,
It is in these brief moments,
even as darkness is falling, in the midst of this hungry crowd, that the
situation changes…………..
For, Looking up, we are told,
into heaven, Jesus gave thanks and blessed the bread – and at that moment, in
Him, the creative power of the living God, who is the source of the world’s
life, is loose upon the earth, shaping and creating, calling into being what
was not, feeding this great crowd……… the hungry, the lonely, the lost
feeding them in such abundance that the gospel records there
were twelve baskets full of bread left over.
Jesus, in the creative power
of His Father feeds, and nourishes the crowd,
fills their emptiness
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But Matthew invites us to see
yet more here in this gospel,
Matthew is making an even
bigger claim here…………..
He invites us to look at Jesus
Jesus, who
feeds the crowd, out there on the edge of the desert.
and to see in Jesus Christ,
the One who has the bread of life, for the hungry, lost and rootless of this
whole earth, and that includes ourselves………….
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That through the grace of God,
who reaches down into the desert places of this life of ours in Jesus, we find
new life.
God, who in the beginning created the heavens
and the earth, when the earth was formless and void, and darkness over the
surface of the deep….. whose
Spirit hovered over the waters, God who said “let there be light…..” and there
was light…………….
the same living God, the source of the world’s life, still
shapes and creates, through Jesus Christ………….
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The creative power of the
living God, who raised Jesus from the dead, that creative power is moving and
active, in the world,
and the promise is that that same creative power,
will one day raise us to life in Jesus AMEN