BILLTESKA

We think of heaven as a reward for being good after we die. No matter how much we hear of grace and of the love of God as a mother’s love for a child, we still can’t stop thinking that heaven and hell are judgments of God on our lives. And no wonder: that has been the reigning interpretation for so long. (Just think of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel). All this is the result of a literal interpretation of certain passages in scripture that I think were meant to scare the smug and encourage the oppressed or, as the late, beloved William Sloan Coffin once said, “To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” But maybe heaven is not a reward nor hell a punishment after we die. Maybe they are both states of mind that we choose, here and now.

That would fit with the message of those disciples Jesus sent out, two by two, last week: “The Reign of God is very near, so repent!” “Change your mind.” Not that if you don’t forsake your sins in time, God will punish you, but that the only way you can enter the Reign of God is by looking at things in a new way ~ by changing your mind. And in the very instant you make that change (the instant you repent) you enter the Kingdom of Heaven: on earth, right here, right now.

Today’s Gospel is precisely about that change of mind. It was a little more explicit last year, coming as the culmination of a series of parables of the Kingdom. This year, it is set in the context of a series of signs and wonders, healings and exorcisms, as if to invite us to see in the Feeding of the Five Thousand one more evidence of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, which will become the theme of the Gospels later in the season, when we switch to John. But, unlike all the other miracles, this one is not merely observed by the disciples: they actually perform it. You give them something to eat, Jesus commands.

The disciples think He’s asking the impossible, but they produce what little food they have and He takes it, gives thanks, and blesses it, and gives it back to the disciples to set before the people. In that act of turning to the people, the loaves and fishes are multiplied. Somehow, mysteriously, the inadequacy of the disciples ~ their laughable insufficiency ~ turns into overflowing abundance. Jesus didn’t multiply anything. He handed back to the disciples the same five loaves and two fish they had given Him. It was only when they started passing them out that the miracle occurred. Jesus couldn’t do anything until they trusted Him enough to try to obey His command ~ until they changed their mind. The result was heaven on earth: the Eucharistic Community that perfectly mirrors the Most Holy Trinity.

It has sometimes been said that the Gospel offers no social program, but that is not exactly so. Alright, there is no detailed blueprint set down for all ages and cultures, but there is this: the community of love and mutual nurture Jesus Christ created when He commanded the disciples to give them something to eat. They sat down in groups ~ groups of a hundred and of fifty. Small groups of people, who probably knew each other. Not too small, though ~ bigger than families, or even extended families. But still small enough that all the members of each group could have personal relationships with each other. And they sat down on the green grass. It sounds good, doesn’t it. There is something compelling about that little detail: the beautiful earth on a spring day, warm enough to sit on the ground, but not yet so hot that the grass has withered to brown, as it does in that part of the world. The earth hospitable to human community. And all ate and were filled…

This is a picture of humanity at peace, wanting nothing, in harmony with creation, the Reign of God, heaven on earth. Not a detailed social program, but certainly a picture of a perfect society ~ the society God intends us to make, so that His will may be done on earth as in heaven. And the only direction He gives as to how to achieve it is: You give them something to eat. And afterwards they took up twelve baskets of broken pieces and of fish.

The disciples had no idea that there had been a miracle until then. After it was all over. The Reign of God is the sharing of bread. Even though it appears that we have too little, to share what we have with abandon, scorning our fears and our prudential objections and our consciousness of inadequacy: trading in all that for a new mind, and turning to the world in love. God can’t make that happen without our willingness to turn ~ a willingness to forget ourselves and sit down on the green grass with other people; a willingness to forsake our ego (the flesh of the Pauline Epistles, the illusion that we are separate from others and from the world); a willingness to trust in the interpersonal love of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity as the ultimate reality. The Reign of God is right in front of us here and now. We don’t have to wait to get it as a reward when we die (although many of us may not get it until then). But the door is open now, all we have to do is change our mind and we enter heaven on earth, now. And forever, unto ages of ages.

AMEN

MARANATHA

COME, LORD JESUS

# posted by billteska : 1:06 AM