I’d like to take a little time this morning to reflect on the first verses of our Gospel reading, the passage describing the feeding of the five thousand. That scene is described in all four Gospels, but John gives it a special significance by designating it as one of the seven signs in which Jesus is revealed as having power over material things. It is also a first sign of Him as the Bread of Life.

Initially, Jesus has wanted to take his disciples away by boat from the towns of Galilee, to have some time alone with them to hear about their travels and to teach them. But he is defeated by the crowds, who have seen where his boat is headed and are determined to follow him. The crowds are larger than might normally be expected from the small local towns, even allowing for Jesus’ increasing popularity as a healer and teacher, because the time of Passover is near, and numerous pilgrims will be passing through these towns on their way to Jerusalem. Many of them will have had to walk a long way - about nine miles - to come to the deserted site where Jesus is meeting with his disciples.

Jesus takes pity on them as He knows how much they want to hear him speak. John does not say, but the Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus spends some time in teaching them, until the afternoon draws on and the question of food arises. The people are tired and hungry and must be fed. Jesus turns first to Philip, who comes from Bethsaida, the nearest town of any size. Philip is totally discouraging; to feed a crowd this size would take more than six months’ wages, a lot of money which they haven’t got.

So Jesus turns to Andrew, who at least has something positive to offer. A lad from in the crowd has come to him to offer his picnic lunch of five cheap barley loaves and two small pickled fish. That is sufficient for Jesus. He makes the crowd sit down. He takes and blesses the offered food which is then distributed among the crowd. There is enough for everyone to be satisfied. When they are finished, the leftovers fill twelve baskets.

The crowds know that they have witnessed a miracle. They want to take Jesus and make him king. But he escapes from them.

I do not doubt for one minute that a miracle took place. As John portrays it, it is a sign of Jesus’ power. It is also a sign of Jesus as the bread of life. But I have had lingering doubts about the actual mechanics of it. These were reinforced when I attended a Eucharist service at St Clement’s, a church in North Vancouver, Canada. The celebrating priest there did not use wafers as we do. Instead, a small round loaf of specially baked bread was duly consecrated. We all stood in a circle to receive; there were I think about 25 of us. The officiating priest broke off a piece of the loaf which she ate. She then passed the loaf to the person next to her to break off a bit, and so on around the circle. It was lovely – but it took so long! My grandchildren were getting a bit restive! And I found myself wondering how long it would have taken for five thousand people in the crowd each to receive a bit of the boy’s barley loaves and a bit of his pickled fish. It would have taken ages. And it was beginning to get dark. And they had a long walk home.

It was therefore with a sensation of relief and thankfulness that I read the words of the Reverend William Barclay, that great Scottish theologian of the last century:

“There may be another and very lovely explanation. It is not really to be thought that the crowd left on a nine-mile expedition without making any preparations at all. If there were pilgrims with them, they would certainly possess supplies for the way. But it may be that none of them would produce what they had, for they selfishly – and very humanly – wished to keep it all for themselves. It may be that Jesus, with that rare smile of his, produced the little store that He and his disciples had; with sunny faith He thanked God for it and shared it out. Moved by his example, everyone one who had anything did the same, and in the end there was enough and more than enough for all. It may that this is a miracle in which the presence of Jesus and his loveliness turned a crowd of selfish men and women into a fellowship of sharers.” [Barclay; the Gospel of John,  p. 206]

In other words, there were two miracles, not just one. The boy with his loaves and fishes and his willingness to share enabled both of them.

There are at least two lessons for us in this. First and foremost, we must never doubt the power of Jesus to work miracles. Through the Holy Spirit He can and does work for us today, just as He had power to multiply loaves and fishes to feed his needy followers. But second, sometimes miracles can be wrought through us, just normal people, when we look beyond ourselves to see the needs of others and offer what we have, even if it seems pitifully little and inadequate.

A recent Prime Minister – and we’ve had quite a few of them in the past five years – used regularly to criticise “Doomsters and Gloomsters”. He might well have had the author of today’s first lesson  in mind, for the Prophet Jeremiah’s name has long been proverbial for pessimism, and a Jeremiah is a speech or a piece of writing in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and predicts its imminent downfall. 

There is a great deal of doom and gloom in the Book of Jeremiah but today’s short passage suggests that there was much more to Jeremiah than sustained pessimism. It’s true that the first few verses roundly condemn the rulers who have been bad shepherds of their people. Jeremiah’s particular target was Jehoiakim, King of Judah, during whose reign King Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and forced much of the population of Judah into exile in Babylon. This, Jeremiah suggests, was God’s judgement on Jehoiakim’s corrupt rule. In the preceding chapters Jeremiah makes clear that Jehoiakim was guilty of ruling unjustly and oppressing the poor. 

But today’s passage doesn’t end on a gloomy note. 

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

“Justice and righteousness”. 

That phrase is used eleven times in the Hebrew Bible and five of those nine are to be found in Jeremiah. It is one of his key ideas, and his emphasis is always on the vocation of earthly rulers to provide justice and righteousness, 

That phrase brings us up with a bump against the difficulties of translation. The two Hebrew words which Jeremiah uses have overlapping meanings which aren’t clear in English versions of the passage. To quote the American Episcopalian priest and writer Fleming Rutledge:

“To our contemporary ears, ‘righteousness’ is a stuffy word connoting adherence to a set of moral codes.”

That’s not what Jeremiah meant by righteousness. A better translation of the Hebrew word would be “virtue” for virtue is a positive quality. Of course we want to be governed by people who don’t break the rules they are supposed to uphold,  but we also want to be governed by people who live virtuous lives, which is another way of saying people who live justly, people whose treatment of their fellow men and women is positive, supportive and caring. 

By way of an example or rather two; many years ago, travelling in a taxi down Regent Street in London, I caught a glimpse of one of my heroes. Bishop Trevor Huddleston was then a frail, elderly man and he was walking with the aid of a stick in his right hand, his left hand resting for support on the shoulder of a younger companion. As a young man, Trevor Huddleston served for some years as a priest in South Africa. He was a strong campaigner for racial justice in the era of Apartheid, and his African parishioners and fellow activists conferred on him the title Makhalipile, the dauntless one. One of the best-known stories about him is an excellent illustration of the power of virtue. One day in Johannesburg he saw a black woman who was cleaning the outside of a house, watched by her young son. Huddleston courteously greeted her by raising his hat. Her son was astonished. He had never before seen a white person treat a black person with respect. The boy’s name was Desmond Tutu and, under the influence of Trevor Huddleston, he grew up to become a priest and Archbishop of Cape Town, and an influential campaigner against Apartheid. 

When Apartheid came to an end, Tutu understood that there was a strong desire among many black people for justice in the form of revenge against those who had excluded and mistreated them. Part of his response to those feelings was to write a book with the challenging title No Future Without Forgiveness. The central theme of that book was that God’s justice is not about retribution, but about restoration – about putting things right. That’s not a sentimental or a wishy-washy belief. Restoration is costly, and may involve giving up privilege, acknowledging wrong-doing and  compensating those whom we have wronged. 

For Desmond Tutu, as for the Prophet Jeremiah, righteousness and justice were inseparable. Jeremiah believed in a God who wants to put things right and who has the power to make right what has gone wrong. He also believed in the possibility that human beings, including rulers, can be part of that divine project. His hope was that God would provide a righteous king, a descendant of David who would be the good shepherd and would execute justice and righteousness. 

What he didn’t foresee was how many centuries would pass before that divine initiative bore fruit and what form it would take. Not a king in the earthly sense, nor a politician but rather the Jesus of whom we read in today’s Gospel, the man of compassion, the teacher and the healer, the Good Shepherd. Those who aspire to political power need to follow that example and those in democracies whose duty and privilege it is choose them should, when politicians claim to be defenders of Christian values, consider carefully whether their lives and their actions demonstrate a genuine commitment to justice and righteousness.

There are two things going on in this morning’s Gospel reading. Firstly, we have the leaders of the synagogue hardly believing their ears and eyes at the teaching given by the ‘carpenter’. You can almost hear their indignation that someone (supposedly uneducated) could actually be teaching them something about their faith. Secondly, we have Jesus sending his disciples out into the towns and cities to carry his message of love and repentance into the world. Did Jesus, think that his disciples would have more luck in being listened to and accepted than he did? I doubt it, but what he is doing is furthering his message by using his followers to say the same thing. For the more people hear the same thing the more likely they are to eventually hear it and respond. 

That’s the thing about Jesus’ teaching. He does not force it upon anyone be it the members of the synagogue hierarchy or ordinary people. What he does is offer salvation by calling his listeners to repent and to trust in God’s unconditional love, that when they do repent they will be forgiven once and for all time. He offers those who hear his Word a choice, to accept or reject it but what they are unable to do is ignore it. They have to respond to God’s love in someway but the choice is that of the individual. It applies to us and the world today as much as it did some 2000 odd years ago. Accept Jesus’ or reject him but don’t simply ignore him and what he has to say.  Let’s pray that more people will do just that; listen to what he says and to make their choice; hopefully choice that enables them to come closer to God in doing so.

“Look into the eyes of another human being and you glimpse God.”

Sometimes it is the most unlikely of people that God chooses to use as a messenger or prophet; people that many of us might rather ignore or write off. Take John-the-Baptist for a start, a woolly, hairy man, half-undressed and living in the wild on locusts and honey – not the first person you might expect Jesus to ask to baptise him! Or Richard Holloway, who has said and continues to say things that are profound and help many understand what we mean by God. Many of the saints are similar and the records of their life bear witness to the fact that things they have said or done have so dramatically changed things that one can only assume that they came from God or were divinely inspired.

What strikes me so forcibly about Ezekiel’s comment is that God can talk to us face to face if he pleases. Stand up and face me he says, join me in face to face conversation. Wow! Usually we hear of people hiding from God but apparently this is not always the case, if he wants to God will talk directly to one as person to person.

I have an unusual friend who may be one of those people to whom God talks to directly. But I would

never tell them so for fear that it would drive them mad. A lot of the time their conversation is quite bizarre but just occasionally what they say takes my breath away. I have certainly learned not to judge by appearances. What these encounters have also taught me is not to assume that what I see is always what it may seem to be, even in the most difficult or troubled beings God may choose to reveal himself.

I am sure that my friend does not know how profound they can be at times in their explanation of God and God’s ways. They may not be an obvious prophet but then what does a prophet look like any way – a carpenter from Nazareth?

I am heartened by the fact that God can talk to us face to face if he wishes, although we may not always realise that he is doing so until after the event. He talks to us through each other through the mutual image of God that we share. When we look into the eyes of another human being we can spark the image within them and ourselves and it is this that I believe is looking at God face to face.

“O mortal, stand on your feet and I will speak with you.”

If God chooses to speak with us face to face it may be that he chooses to do so through someone most unlikely, this is what my encounters with my friend

has taught me. The moral of this sermon is then; ‘watch out’ for whom you are talking to because you never know who might be talking to you through them. Keep alert and you too may find yourself talking directly to God but probably without realising so until well after the encounter.

Fifteen minutes! You’ll be happy to know that that is not the length of my sermon! That’s my rough estimate of the time it took for the life of a desperately ill woman to be totally changed through her contact with Jesus. It wasn’t long, as Jesus was being pressed by an important man to come home quickly with him. But fifteen minutes changed forever the life of an insignificant, ordinary woman, whose name we don’t even know.

Let’s try and imagine the scene. Jesus has just returned from the far side of the Sea of Galilee. His reputation as a teacher and healer has become known, so a large and excited crowd is there to greet him. Suddenly the crowd parts to let through Jairus, an important man in the community, a leader of the synagogue. Jairus begs Jesus to come and save his dying daughter. So Jesus sets off, with the crowd still pressing around him.

Then there is an interruption. Jesus stops, turns around and asks “Who touched my clothes?” Understandably, with a crowd pressing around, the disciples are sceptical; how can Jesus have felt someone just touching his clothes? 

But a poor and desperate woman has done just that. For twelve years, she has been bleeding incessantly. She has seen many doctors. Some have poked and prodded. Some have prescribed remedies of various sorts. But nothing has done any good, in fact often matters have been made worse. So for twelve long years she has been unclean according to Jewish law.

It is hard for us to realise what a hard and lonely life she has led for those twelve years. The Jewish law which applied in those days as set out in the Book of Leviticus, was strict. Anyone with any form of discharge was ritually unclean. This applied not only to women but to everyone. For instance, a soldier or huntsman whose wounds wouldn’t heal was also ritually unclean.

That uncleanness affected the whole life of the sufferer. Anyone who touched a pot or dish which he or she had used became unclean. The pot or dish had to be broken up and thrown away. If the sufferer sat on a chair, anyone who then sat on it became unclean. Anyone who touched the body of a sufferer became unclean and had to bathe and wash their clothes and remain unclean for the rest of the day. 

Hardest of all, no unclean person was allowed to go to the synagogue. The whole object of the laws about ritual cleanliness was to keep the clean people of Israel separate from anyone who might defile them. So one way and another sufferers were mostly cut off from their Jewish family and friends. They had to live alone to avoid the risk of making the people whom they most loved unclean. Unclean family members and friends would also be cut off from the synagogue until they had gone through the necessary purification procedures specified in the Law, which not all of them could afford.

Recently we, because of the coronavirus, have had to experience something of what that woman went through. We may have had to self-isolate and to take precautionary measures such as frequent hand washing and social distancing to avoid infecting family members and friends. I know that this has been desperately hard and difficult for some people. But we only had months of it. This poor woman had twelve years of it. Imagine! She couldn’t touch Jesus, nor even ask him to touch her, as he would then become unclean. She hoped and believed that just touching his cloak would be enough to stop the bleeding. So she pushed through the crowd and touched his cloak. Immediately she was healed. And she knew it.

And Jesus knew that something important had happened.  So he stopped,  and asked “Who touched my clothes ?” By then the woman had shrunk back into the crowd.  But Jesus knew, and the woman knew, that Jesus had even unwittingly been a channel of God’s grace and power. Even though she was embarrassed and afraid, she had to come forward and confess the truth. Jesus sent her away with the lovely words “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

Fifteen minutes, hope and faith, and everything in that woman’s life changed. When we are going through a really dark time in our lives, let us remember how that woman of Galilee was healed. How Jesus changed her whole life. Let us also hope and believe in his power, in the mercy and grace of God in the face of all human suffering. Amen.