For the next five weeks, in our readings from the Gospel of John, we will be picnicking with Jesus. For the next five weeks we will be invited to reflect on Jesus as the Bread of Life. For us, it's the ideal time for a picnic! The sharing of food is the sharing of life in every human context and is raised to the level of a divine-human encounter within the Christian tradition. Little wonder then that the Eucharist we share now and every week has become the single most important public liturgy of the Christian Church and the menu we offer at St John`s every Sunday.

Speaking of picnics, I would guess that many of you here have memories of Sunday school picnics. They seem to be a thing of the past among city churches. The Sunday school picnic at the end of June was always a highlight for me. Looking back, it was really special because the Sunday service took place outside under the trees- a real novelty. It was special because it was one of the few times in the year when I could swim. The picnic was held 25 km away in the municipal park of the town of Outlook, Saskatchewan, on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River. In our part of the country, that was the nearest place you could find a tree. Furthermore, the town had built a swimming pool in the park and pumped water directly from the river into the pool. Today, of course, health officials would never allow such a pool to exist. The river water was so full of silt that your hand disappeared 6 inches under the surface. Naturally, no chemicals were used. To me, aa a youth this swimming pool was a paradise. In which I would spend the whole day going home so bad sun burned that I would suffer for three days. I can`t say that I can remember any sermon ever preached out those Sunday school picnics and yet they remain as vividly positive elements upon the religious landscape of my soul.

Today's picnic with Jesus is traditionally referred to as the "multiplication of the loaves" as it describes the feeding of the 5000 by Jesus from the meagre resources of two fish and five barley loaves offered by the a youth present in the crowd. One must assume that the people who gathered around Jesus were not picnickers who happened to be on the hillside when Jesus came by. Rather, they came in the thousands unprepared to stay the whole day, out of curiosity no doubt, and found themselves unable to leave despite the sweltering heat and lack of food.

"Let`s go and see what this guy is all about", it seems to me, would have been the prevailing attitude. And they stayed despite the lack of food because they felt themselves being fed at a more profound level.

The importance of this story for the first believers is underlined by the fact that it is to be found in all four of the gospels, in fact, Matthew and Mark narrate the episode two times each! And in John's gospel, as I have mentioned, it is the beginning of an extended reflection throughout chapter 6 of Jesus as the himself the Bread which satisfies and which lasts forever.

So why did it resonate so strongly with the early Christians? Biblical scholars draw out three key themes which brought it close to the faith convictions of the early Jesus movement. In spiritual terms I would call them "words of life" rather than themes in order to convey the life-giving nature of this story for believer:

1. The story is about the generosity of God towards humanity


2. The story is about the initiative God takes in transforming our meagre offerings into something marvellous


3. The story ties together the old and the new: the faith which they inherited as Jews with the new perspective offered to them by Jesus Christ.

The first Word of Life from this story is that our God is a generous God. All the other characteristics we attribute to God fall under this over-arching generosity: God`s mercy, justice, compassion, even God`s glory, are all expression of God`s generosity. If we imagine ourselves among those drawn to the hillside to hear Jesus that day, it would be this that would make our hearts leapt within us. Such generosity contrasts so starkly with the calculating and meagre generosity of our own souls and what we experience around us. To get a picture of the usual state of the human heart we need only read again today's passage from 2 Samuel-the sordid story about David and Bathsheba. Its all there, the lust, the greed, the abuse of office and the distortion of duty which fill our newspapers and television screens daily.

Generous. When people think of St John`s Church I would like the word "generous" to pop into their minds. Generous is welcoming, generous in reaching out, generous in reaching in, generous in taking risks for the disadvantaged, generous in giving of time, talents, and money. Generosity. It is the very basis for what we sometimes refer to as stewardship. Stewardship is not about calculating how much I owe the church. Most of our calculating, especially about money, has got to do with getting a bargain. Christians cannot be bargain basement people- trying to get the most for the least. Christians must be top-of-the-line givers. Paying the most to get the best.

So we must ask ourselves, does the generosity of God which so warms your soul translate into our generosity toward others? Are we generous or are we miserly in our giving to the church, which should, after all, take first place in the generosity of Christians? Very few of us in this congregation can respond with an unqualified "yes", I`m sure. Last week you received statements of your givings to this church until the end of June. I was shocked when the envelope secretary told me that 146 of the 350 statements issued contained no identifiable contribution. That is 146 who has not given one cent in seven months toward the support of the ministries of this place. While I know there are credible explanations for some of this number, I cannot imagine that such explanations account for anything near 146 ! Generosity, as it is the hallmark of our God, so should it be the hallmark of the committed Christian.

The second Word of Life from this story is that our God responds to our generosity in surprizing and delightful ways.

One of my favourite prayers in the BAS is the one we share at the end of the Eucharist:

"Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine,
glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever."

It is, of course, taken directly from the Ephesians 3 which we read this morning. The choice of this reading to go with the gospel is not coincidence. When I say this prayer I always think, what a wonderful last word to the celebration of the Eucharist, what a wonderful about our God to go home with.

The youth who offered his five loaves and two fishes could not possibly have imagined how richly that gift would be multiplied. Indeed, the worried disciples represent the typical human response. One of them has even calculated how long he would have to work in order to pay the catering bill!. None are more surprized than they at what Jesus does.

It is a pity that the name of the boy with the loaves and fishes is never mentioned. If it had, I'm sure that it would have been a favourite choice for the naming of churches. Speaking of the naming of churches, have you notice how churches are coming up with very different names from what we have been used to? In Ottawa we have "The Life Centre", when I was travelling in the USA I came across "Living Waters Methodist Church", "Fountain of Hope Pentecostal Church". We Anglicans still pretty much stick to the calendar of saints, which may be just as well because we all know how quicly names go out of style. For better or for worse, we Anglicans tend to see ourselves in busy for centuries and so we want a name that will become a wreck of time.

It would seem to me difficult to draw a church name from our wonderful gospel. None that I can think of seem to work: the loavers church? The Church of the Two and Five? The Church of the Multiplication? How about Hillside Picnic Anglican Church!

Seriously though, we must ask ourselves, "do we really believe that God will multiply the gifts we give so that they go far beyond what we can ask or imagine in doing good.?" Such a conviction is of the very essence of Christian spirituality. If we don`t believe that then why would we bother to pray? Our prayer can be effectual only because God takes it, puny and powerless as it is, and is able to add yeast- and boom, it becomes impressive and fragrant, and a delight to all, including ourselves. -

And the last Word of Life for us from this gospel story is that our God brings new things from the old. Our God is about integration, wholeness, and salvation: the conviction that things fit together and that all is well. There is a consistency and continuity about God and God`s dealings with us. It was powerful for the early Christians to hear this story because they would immediately remember the story of how the desperate Hebrew tribes were fed manna in desert and they would immediately remember Jesus breaking bread and sharing it as a sign of his promise of eternal life. The pale tasteless wafer of bread we receive at the Eucharist is a feast beyond all others when it is linked to the actions of God in ages past. The power of Eucharist is that it is a symbol capable of holding a vast biblical tradition of feeding, sharing, and being renewed by God.

As people of faith we want that connectedness to the past. We yearn to identify ourselves with something bigger than ourselves and bigger than our present time. It is one of the important dynamics at play, for example, in our renovation plans for St John`s. Even in the symbolic elements of our worship space we want to hold onto that sense of connectedness to previous generations. We know that we are both new and old as a community. Our spiritual genes come from those who have gone before us in this place and among the vast Communion of Saints. There are so few places in our kind of society where a sense of rootedness in a rich and life-giving past is possible.

So our first picnic with Jesus is over. We have joined him on the hillside not expecting to stay and certainly not expecting to be given such a banquet. We have been amazed by the generosity, abundance, and depth of Jesus of Nazareth. We have been filled with a new sense of God`s immense generosity and our own potential for generosity.

All in all, its been a grand picnic.