Jesus has a huge following, but the crowd seem to be drawn more by His healing miracles than by His teaching. Miracles, as we know, are meant to be seen through more than to be looked at. If we come only to stare, we will remain on the surface. If we come to ponder in our hearts, we will receive revelation.
Mountains are a favoured teaching place for Jesus. Mountain tops are where the Sacred and the Ordinary kiss. Jesus himself is that meeting place. So, He sits in the posture of a teacher with His disciples around Him. What unfolds will be a teaching on how the Sacred and the human work together. The lesson begins as Jesus looks up with the eyes of the Spirit and sees a large crowd moving towards Him. He wants to teach them how Spirit reveals itself in the flesh. This is who Jesus is and it is what He always reveals.
But His disciples do not see reality the way Jesus does. Jesus, the Teacher, tests them to see if they are ready to receive the revelation. Phil and Andy are mired in the material world. They see ‘not enough bread’ and ‘too many people’. They see scarcity and impossibility. They do not know how to bring the spiritual to the physical, so Jesus has to teach them.
The disciples must learn the Spiritual Law of Abundance. Their learning activity is to gather up all that is left over so that nothing of this teaching is lost. They must remember and integrate this spiritual teaching into their own lives and the lives of their community. First, Jesus has the disciples inviting the people to sit. They are on the green grass of Psalm 23 and the Lord is going to restore their soul. Jesus is not daunted by the huge number of guests. Andy and Phil can only do division. They divide five plus two into five thousand panics! Jesus prefers multiplication! He sees the five loaves and two fish as a spiritual starting point. Five plus two is seven and this indicates that this is the perfect place to start. For Phil and Andy, what they have will never be enough. For the Beloved Son of God, it’s already becoming too much.
The lesson unfolds like this. We are not our own. We belong to, and are sustained breath by breath, by the source of all life. The Spirit fills us to overflowing and we overflow with gratitude. Our cup overflows to others. The growth happens when what we have is given away. In the physical world, what is given away leaves us diminished. In the world of the Spirit, the law of abundance sees giving away as expansion leading to sacred fullness.
The people see the sign but they cannot follow it to its source. The giver of the sign withdraws into His true identity – more than a king, more than a prophet – a mountain dweller who holds the conversation with God.
So, what about us? In our own lives, as it says on the gravestone, ‘it’s always something’! Taxes and prices rise as wages are reduced. We get a new job but it means uprooting ourselves and starting over somewhere new. Our son calls us at four in the morning from the police station. Our daughter is keeping the wrong company. The surgery calls to say they want to redo the blood test. Someone we love dies. It’s always something! When we face these challenges, we reach for the resources we will need. Usually this means asking for support from family, friends, community and fellow sufferers. At a push, we might even go the whole nine yards and ask God for help! In a world of problem solving, what we might really need to do is restore a foundational disconnect. Once we arrive back home in the centre of our soul, we might engage with the next ‘problem’ with more understanding. Physical resources will always be limited, but when we drink from the well of the Spirit, it never runs dry.
This teaching of Jesus is hugely important for all disciples. Our soul is restored by exercise. With each act of generosity, the souls influence multiplies. Since this is our true identity, we are satisfied. We have no need to worry about scarcity. There is no scarcity of the Spirit. How grateful should we be to those first disciples who gathered up the abundant fragments. Otherwise, we might forget how to live with the One who restores our Soul.
