You may have noticed that we do not have an altar frontal today. The reason is very practical – it’s not an easy task to regularly change the frontals so in order to lighten the load on our loyal sacristans, I decided to remove it for the moment. But somehow in this incidental event an unexpected gift was discovered, that for me, shone a light on the celebration of the Eucharist.
When we gather together, there is, to some extent, a separation of whoever is presiding from the people; from the other members of the body of Christ, the congregation. So this morning, I will stand behind the altar, and nearly all of you are down there. You may feel you are, to some extent, looking on as I celebrate the Eucharist at the altar.
I remember jokes being made about receiving ‘magic hands’ when I became a priest, so that I could now be the one up here, holding my ‘magic hands’ over the elements at the consecration, when we call on the Holy Spirit to transform the wafers and the wine. It is an extraordinary thing, to be the one standing up here, but I want to be really explicit – I do not have magic hands! Also, and importantly it is not me alone who celebrates the Eucharist. Of course, what I do with my hands is important – through the gestures I make, I seek to express the doing-it-together nature of our celebration of the Eucharist.
We gather together, and I, with a great sense of gratitude, have been given the specific task of presiding at our gathering. But – and this is really important – we all celebrate the Eucharist together. In the past, in some Church traditions, it was considered desirable that the one presiding was as anonymous as possible. It was, I suspect, a futile wish, for one cannot be anything other than oneself, and the attempt to remove oneself resulted in monotone pious tones when reading, preaching and presiding. In fact, part of my service as the nominated presider is to be seen by all of you, to be in contact with all of you, through word, gesture, look, body posture and movement.
And so here is the unexpected gift that I discovered on removing the altar frontal. I realised, standing behind the altar on Wednesday morning at the Eucharist, that I felt, in some ways, more exposed. Suddenly you can all see my lower half, clothed though I may be in my cassock alb! But I also felt less separate, more connected. It felt more like gathering together round the one table, leading to a greater felt sense that we are indeed celebrating the Eucharist together.
At the same time we all have a chance to see and appreciate the beautiful Holy Cross altar that, while it is not a Charles Rennie Mackintosh piece as was at one time hoped, it is nonetheless a striking and beautiful Glasgow Style altar of that era.
The chance act of removing the altar frontal, anticipated as a reduction, a lessening perhaps of our Eucharist celebration, in reality became an enriching of our space and our Eucharistic celebration. Something that seemed small became for me a generous gift.
And this links, I think, to a common theme that runs through our readings this week. Generosity. And how, in God’s hands, less becomes more. Our first reading this morning, from Isaiah, is extraordinary in its description of God’s generosity.
Hear, everyone who thirsts;
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
… eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me.
God’s generosity is laid out for all to see, and with these words comes, too, an invitation. Four times we hear the word ‘come’ ending with the invitation, ‘Come to me’. God says ‘There is enough! Come, hold out your empty purse, and I will fill it with all you need, and more.’
In our Gospel, Jesus draws generosity out of his disciples and the crowds who gather to listen to him, enabling an experience of God’s extraordinary generosity. Immediately before this passage the disciples have told Jesus of the execution of his cousin and friend, John the Baptist. We can imagine the shock for him, hearing of this horrific act by Herod. In response Jesus withdraws from the people, and goes, in a boat, to a deserted place by himself.
The first Gospel verse we heard today reveals with tenderness Jesus’ humanity. Jesus has had some terrible news that has affected him deeply, and he needs to be alone, just as any of us might need to be in such circumstances. I love moments in the Gospels when we can see Jesus’ humanity. It helps us to recognise that he felt as we feel, struggled as we struggle, felt pain, joy, confusion, as we do.
But Jesus can’t get away from the crowds, who follow him. In an act of kind thoughtfulness the disciples try to send them away. They are concerned, no doubt, about how Jesus will deal with this shocking news, and they want to protect him. And then the disciples recognise there are others in need, because the people who have come to Jesus are tired, and hungry, and they feel concern for them too.
Turning to Jesus for help, he somewhat abruptly tells them, ‘You feed them!’ Surely an impossible task. But God does not ask us to do the impossible. This is not God’s way. As the Psalmist writes, God is gracious and merciful. God has compassion over all that is made. God’s hand opens to satisfy the desire of every living thing.
So, trusting in Jesus, in God, the disciples do what they can, and gather the little that they can find: five loaves and two fishes. This little they offer, that to them no doubt seemed far too little to be of any use with such a huge crowd, is taken by Jesus, somehow becomes enough to feed everyone. In fact, it becomes significantly more than enough, for everyone had enough to eat, with plenty of leftovers. So the Gospel message of this miracle seems to say. “There is plenty for all. Come to God, trust in God, hold out your hands even if they are empty, and they will be filled to overflowing”.
This generosity of God is witnessed every time we gather round the altar for the Eucharist. Just think for a moment of just how many people are gathering round altar tables this morning. There are millions of us across the world. We gather in small groups, as the people did on the hill, and we place our trust in God. We bring our offerings and present them to God – a few wafers, some wine and importantly: ourselves and our lives – and, celebrating the Eucharist together round the altar, we hold out our empty hands to receive, and are nourished, and strengthened to enable us to go out and be the body of Christ in the world.
The little that we offer becomes so much more. Through God within us, it becomes love, and generosity, and hope in the world. God gives us everything, more than we could ever need, and God calls us to learn to be generous in how we live our lives, and in our encounters with others. And this task, with God’s help and grace and generosity, becomes a gift to the world.