Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sometimes when I sit with a family to choose readings for the funeral Mass of a loved one, they will chose the story of the raising of Lazarus as the gospel reading because the character of Lazarus reminds them of their loved one. They might say to me, ‘My mother was known as Lazarus in recent years because she came back from the brink of death so many times’. Believers have often identified with some of the characters in the gospels. It is one way of inserting ourselves into the gospel story.
Many of the gospel characters, like Lazarus, have names, but some are not given a name. Perhaps in some cases the gospel writers do not give a name to someone as an invitation to us who read the gospel to give the character our own name. In today’s gospel reading, there are four individual characters, three of whom have names, Jesus, Philip and Andrew. The fourth character is the small boy who isn’t named. Perhaps we are being invited to identify with him. There are good reasons why the gospel writer may have wanted us to identify with this small boy because he has something to teach us. When faced with a very large crowd who were hungry, the response of Philip and Andrew to this challenging situation of the hungry crowd was a bit defeatist. Philip calculated that they simply didn’t have enough money to buy food for so many. Andrew was aware of a small boy who had some food but concluded it could serve no purpose other than feed his own family. However, the small boy’s five barley loaves and two fish ended up in the hands of Jesus. The boy was prepared to part with his little parcel of food and give it to Jesus. He gave the little he had to the Lord, and the Lord worked mysteriously but powerfully through this boy’s small fare. As a result of the boy’s generosity, the Lord was able to feed the hunger of the crowd and to do so abundantly, as is clear from the twelve baskets of scraps that were left over. This was clearly a feast, with everyone eating as much as they wanted.
It was the Lord who fed the crowd, but he needed the small boy’s five barley loaves and two fish to do so. If we are being invited to identify with this small boy, what might the gospel reading be saying to us? There are times in all our lives when the resources that we have seem so insignificant before the situation we face, whether that is our material resources, or our physical resources, or our mental and emotional resources. We can easily find ourselves asking a version of Andrew’s question, ‘What is that between so many?’ It is the kind of question that can drag us down and disempower us. The small boy just gave away what he had and something wonderful happened. We may feel that we have little to give, that our resources are few, but if we give generously of the little we have we too can discover that something wonderful can happen. If we do the little that we are capable of doing, the Lord can work through us in ways that can surprise us. It is never all down to us, but our contribution, small as it may seem, can be vital. There are many times in the gospels when Jesus highlights the value of what is small and seemingly insignificant. He once said that whoever gives just a cup of cold water to one of his disciples will not lose their reward. He drew his disciples’ attention to the widow who put in a tiny amount of money into the Temple treasurer. He spoke of the transformative power of a tiny piece of leaven in a large batch of dough, and of the giant shrub that grows from the tiny mustard seed. The small boy was the leaven, the mustard seed, in the crowd. Jesus could do great things with his gift.
The nameless boy in the gospel reading stands in for all those who are prepared to offer their small resources to the Lord, by placing them at the service of others. The action of one generous boy was the beginning of a great work. In this life we may never become aware of how our little acts of generous service were the beginnings of some great work. We may not have the time or energy or resources to do great things, but if we do the little we can do, the Lord can accomplish great things through us. In the verses that immediately precede our second reading, Paul gives glory to God whose ‘power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine’. The Lord is at work among us in ways that we could never imagine and it is our small acts of generosity and kindness that create the space for the Lord to work in these ways. When the boy shared his five barley loaves and two fish with Jesus, there was a great deal left over. Sometimes, we only discover how much we have left over when we share the little we have, because, as Jesus says elsewhere in the gospels, ‘Give and it will be given to you’.