Sunday 17 B (2015)

One of the threads running through John’s gospel

is the ‘signs’ Jesus provided.

Paying careful attention to these signs

draws us deeply into the mystery of Jesus.

For five Sundays we listen to chapter six of John’s gospel.

That chapter starts with the ‘sign’ we just heard

and then develops its significance,

as we will hear in due course.

If later today someone asked you:

‘What gospel did you have this Sunday?’

what would you say?

To put it another way:

if you were asked to supply a newspaper headline for today’s gospel, what would you suggest?.......

The crowd pretty much give their answer to this question:

The people, seeing this sign that he had given, said,

‘This really is the prophet who is to come into the world.

So their headline might be something like:

The New Moses is here.

More straightforward ones are:

Crowds fascinated by Jesus.

Food multiplied miraculously.

The gospel writer didn’t give a headline for this passage,

but I believe, if he had, it would have been something like

Jesus feeds many, abundantly.

This is the ‘sign’ that points to the truth

explored in the next four weeks,

the truth summarised in Jesus’ words: ‘I am the bread of life’.

Jesus feeds the multitude amply, with some minor assistance:

Andrew finds the boy with the food,

the boy hands over what he has,

the disciples marshal the crowd.

Jesus’ desire to feed the crowd,

his desire to sustain people in the depths of their being

illustrated in this gospel,

is undiminished today.

He wants to feed ‘the crowd’ in Sheffield in 2015.

We are the disciples, who provide assistance,

meagre though we may think it is.

This year our Bishops launched a significant initiative,

Proclaim ’15, to support, inspire and encourage

the development of new expressions

of Catholic joy and missionary outreach in parishes.

There was a national conference a couple of weeks ago,

with representatives from across our diocese,

which Richard Watts attended as our parish representative.

As a response to this initiative, we, as St William’s,

should look at how we live our missionary identity as a parish,

to see where we should develop, or change, what we do.

We all have a part to play in St William’s being a parish

that reaches out, a missionary parish.

Like Andrew in today’s gospel,

we may feel we have not much to offer,

or indeed, not much idea what is really going on.

All the same, Andrew is responsive to Jesus’ lead,

he recognises that Jesus sustains him,

and he assists Jesus in reaching out to others.

We can be sure, individually and communally,

that Jesus, who speaks to us and feeds us at every Mass,

will work with us and through us

as we reach out to others on his behalf.