I keep hoping and trying at church. Today's gospel reading, taken from John 6:1-15, is the famous feeding of the multitude, also called the multiplication of the loaves and fish.
My homilist began by tying in a theme from the past Sunday or two, namely, that of good shepherd. He emphasized how in the Middle East in Jesus' day shepherds were honored and appreciated by everyone for their hard work. "Nonsense!" I thought to myself. The people of that time and place disdained shepherds as ignorant peasants who often would lose the sheep of the bosses for whom they worked. THAT'S why Jesus' parable of the good shepherd caught the ear of his audience when he preached it: the shepherd in the story was NOT a lazy, fearful slaggard. So my homilist was being influenced by this parable but in a sense in the wrong way.
Then today's gospel story: As I feared, the homilist was quick to emphasize over and over how the essence of the story is for us to feed the poor and hungry. A typical homilist's interepretation, eager to make practical application for the congregation. It's good for us to feed the hungry, but the primary purpose of the story, written here by John (and the only miracle by Jesus recorded by all four gospel writers---something significant in itself, but not mentioned by my preacher), is to teach the apostles and the other early leaders in the first-century Church (and secondarily leaders today) the Christological basis for ministry and the main method as to how to implement it.
Yes, I keep hoping and trying at church. Maybe I should begin to pray too.
-Old Gargoyle
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
If I remember correctly, wasn't Jesus' warning, "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees" coupled with this episode of ministry? From this I felt as though the feeding of the multitude was a metaphor for Jesus' own teachings. Where a listener was advised to avoid the teachings/bread of the pharisees, the bread/teachings of Jesus were few but filling. With what you just said, I imagine the apostles' roles in picking up the baskets were as inheritors of the Gospel. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.
Yes, the typical Catholic emphasize would be Christological-ecclesiological, i.e., the apostles' instructed to copy or "inherit" Jesus' ministry of feeding the multitude (the Church) both with his preached word (the gospel) and his sacramental body (the eucharist); in doing so, they inherit in a sense the dignity of the Old Testament twelves judges (heads of Hebrew tribes). This is a richer, more complex theme than merely feeding the hungry.
What I never understood though, assuming that this story is a metaphor for Christ's and the apostle's ministry, is whether the two fish and five loves were supposed to be symbolic beyond being "spiritual food." Fish isn't a part of the Eucharist, at least. Are the numbers important? Am I reading too much into it?
Strictly speaking in a literary context, "metaphor" is not the best categorization of the story. The story is an elaborated, i.e., theologized, event with some historical basis.
Yes, the fish is symbolic insofar as by the time the story is written by John and perhaps earlier, the artistically drawn fish was used as a symbol for Christ by the early Christians in their homes and in their hiding places under persecution. This could be why John also has the resurrected Jesus cooking bread and fish for the boys (the apostles) for their breakfast on the lakeshore (a story full of pre-Resurrection references). The five loaves and two fish (at least according to John, I think) equal seven, which is, of course, one of the primary sacred numbers in Judaism and hence in early Jewish Christianity.
Finally, the details of many gospel stories need to be read in light of similar events in the Old Testament, because the evangelists (authors) were Jewish Christians still strongly influenced by their O.T. heritage.
Post a Comment