If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments (Matt 19:17). This is what Jesus says to a rich young man today asking how to live forever. The commandments are the way to life. To which the rich young man responds, “Which ones?”

This is quite a question really. Our Jewish friends may tell us that there are 613 Commandments in the Torah. Some people might observe they these are all worth keeping – seeing as how they all come from God.

God is good and altogether good. Jesus has just pointed this out to the rich man saying, “There is only one who is good” (19:17). To keep God’s commandments cannot but be good. Perhaps we could look at his commandments at being a recipe for goodness.

But Jesus does not say, “All of them!” Nor does he list 613 commandments. Surely, Jesus knows all the commandments. He is the commander! But he seems quite willing to entertain the rich man’s question at first.

Others might have observed that the commandments that we do not even understand are just as important as those we do. For example, there is the commandment about not wearing cloth made of two kinds of stuff (Deut 22:11). We might ask, what purpose does this serve? Surely this commandment cannot be on equal par with “thou shalt not kill,” for example. Yet, someone might point out to us that God is totally beyond our comprehension and so it only stands to reason that some of his commandments will also be. And if we love God, don’t we trust him and follow him even when we do not understand?

Some children are like this and some are not. Almost from infancy, some children seem to trust their mother and father no matter what and they are compliant with their parents’ commands, even if they do not understand. Other children, again almost from infancy, tend to go their own way and pay little mind to the instructions their parents give. If a child has good parents, the compliant children have an easier life. The headstrong ones get hurt a lot.

Now, on the human level of course, not all parents are good. And in such situations, the compliant children may get hurt even more. God, however, is good and all good and the only good one. So those of us who comply to him, like trusting children, will have a better life. Because he knows us even better than we know ourselves. So, even if we do not understand, if we trust him and follow him, it will make our lives better and it will lead us into everlasting life in union with him.

Some of us, however, almost from infancy, are not so compliant but are headstrong and intent on going our own way. As a result, we have harder lives when it comes to our relationships with God. Still, he will not abandon us.

Yet, despite all of this, Jesus entertains the rich young man’s question and he gives a short list of easily understandable commandments that lead to life.

It is interesting what is on this list and it is interesting what is missing. He gives only six commandments, first of all, not 10, and certainly not 613. And, of the six, only five are from the 10. He does not even include in this list the commandment that elsewhere he calls the greatest commandment! What is the greatest commandment? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37). Surely this is a Commandment that leads to life!

Now, after identifying the greatest commandment, Jesus does go on to say, “A second is like it, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (22:39). And this latter half or addendum to the greatest commandment, he does now here include in his list of commandments that lead to life.

He includes here the human rather than the divine side of this commandment. That is fascinating! One might presume the divine side to be the more essential of the two sides. And yet here he includes the human but not the divine side.

Noting this, we can then look at the other five commandments in his list, each of which is part of the Ten Commandments, and we can now notice that these five also all deal with the human side of God’s commandments. He does not include the first three or four of the ten commandments, (depending on how you enumerate them).

“I am the Lord your God…. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image… you shall not bow down to them and serve them…. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…. Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:2-8)

None of these commandments, which have to do with our relationship with God, appear in Jesus’ list of commandments that lead to life. I don’t know about you, but I am flabbergasted by that.

When Jesus elsewhere describes the greatest commandments, he says, “On these two commandments depend the whole law” (Matt 22:40). Similarly, I would suggest that first five commandments Jesus gives the rich man today depend on the final commandment he gives: “love your neighbor as yourself.”

If you love others, you surely will not kill them, nor commit adultery with them, (which is not loving despite popular sentiment to the contrary – let us not call that “love”), nor steal from them, nor bear false witness against them, and, of course, you will honor your father and your mother if you love them. The sixth, you see, contains the first five.

It is striking that these commandments regarding love for one another are apparently all that is needed to enter into life. The whole law is seamlessly interwoven. When we love one another, we are in fact loving God, just as, if we love God, we will of course love one another as fellow creatures and images of God.

Do you know how good it feels when someone praises your work? When they look at what you have done and they love what you have made, it can feel like love for you. Even more so, when someone admires our children, sometimes we take it as a compliment to ourselves. And it is, in a way. Our children are made out of the stuff that we are made out of. And they have been deeply shaped by how we have reared them. Loving my child is loving me, to some extent. At least it can feel this way.

This is so much more true of God. When we truly love his creation (not idolatrously – but truly), we love him. He made us in His image and his likeness. To love one another and to love ourselves is to love the image of God. Because we are finite creatures, we cannot love God without loving his image. Without the icon, we cannot reach the prototype. We must love God through his image – that is, through each other.  And, furthermore, we cannot love his image, that is each other, without growing in our love for God. If we really love each other, this love will lead us to the love of God. If we really and truly love each other, that will be enough. It will be the seed that grows into a great tree. Without the seed there will be no tree and the seed already contains the tree in potentiality. The seed, then, is enough. Provided we nurture it and allow it to grow.

Now, growth will be necessary. The rich young man claims to already have the seed – to keep the commandments and to love his neighbor (19:20). Many of us are not there yet. Many of us are unloving in various ways. And therefore we have yet to acquire even the seed that will give us life. But this rich man is loving of others and he keeps the commandments of God regarding other people – or so he thought.

Jesus, I think, reveals that the rich young man is perhaps not so loving as he imagines himself. Because what Jesus proposes to him, when he seeks perfection, is that he sell his possessions and give to the poor (19:21). Now, that would be a loving thing to do. Indeed, that is just the sort of way in which of the rich young man loves himself. He loves himself by allowing himself to have many possessions. If he loved others as he loved himself, he would then give these possessions to them! Furthermore, if he really loved himself, he would give these possessions away because then, as Jesus tells him, he would have treasure in heaven (19:21). The act would be loving of both others and self.

But that was sadly more loving than the rich young man was willing to be. If we think we are loving, Jesus will show us a way to deepen our love. Our love must grow if it is to be alive. The way to life is a love that grows, a love that deepens, a living love,  not a static artifice of love. The way to life is living growing love. If we want to live, we will follow Jesus, and he will show us the way to grow our love. And then to grow it again and again. Eternal life is eternal growth. That which does not grow is dead. That which is living is growing.

There is a difference, illustrated for us by Jesus in this parable about debt and forgiveness, between our sins against God and our sins against one another.

Our sin against God is represented by the servant’s debt to the king – a debt of 10,000 talents – a single talent being roughly equal to 16 years wages. This is an absurdly, ridiculously, hugely large sum. When the servant says he’ll pay the king back in full (18:26), that is a farcical. It is impossible, even with a whole lifetime of work – and such is the nature of our relationship with God. What he has forgiven us, we cannot repay.

Meanwhile, the debt that the one servant owes the other represents our sins against one another. It is a hundred denarii. That’s about one hundred day’s wages – it’s nothing to sneeze at. It’s enough to hurt. On the other hand, just one talent is worth roughly 6,000 denarii. The difference is massive to the point of absurdity.

St. John Chrysostom says,

Do you see how great a difference there is between sins against humanity and sins against God? As much a difference as between ten thousand tal­ents and a hundred denarii; no, much greater in fact. This comes about from the difference of the persons and from the frequency of the sins. For when someone is watching, we hold off and do not dare to sin. But God is watching all the time, and yet we are not afraid; in fact, we even say and do everything quite brazenly (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 61.1).

Perhaps another analogy could also help us to understand. It is of course a sin and a crime to strike someone unprovoked, as an example. But isn’t it intuitively clear that the same action is far worse if the person we’re striking is our mother? That is far worse for many reasons. We owe our very lives to our mothers as to no one else. Our mothers conceived us and carried us and gave us birth. And if we were blessed with good mothers, they also continued to nurture us and provide for us for many years beyond that. In a way, they participated in our being brought into being and sustained in being.

How much more this is so of God! This is so of God not just in a way, but absolutely. He is our creator and sustainer. He has his hand in every good we experience. We owe him love and gratitude for every good thing. Above all, for his love of us, despite our unfaithfulness.

Maybe we do not imagine ourselves to be so very unfaithful. Perhaps we do not think our sins very great. Perhaps we look at the sins of others and think, well, at least I am not like this publican.

If that is what we imagine, it is an especially good thing that we pray so frequently in every liturgy for the forgiveness of all of our voluntary and involuntary sins. There is a kind of sin that is not voluntary. And there is a kind of sin that is done in ignorance. Thank Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins done in ignorance as he was nailed to the cross, when he prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I think the immense debt of the servant is an especially effective image of this kind of sin. After all, enormous debt is usually incurred due to ignorance. Often it grows while we are not looking. It grows because we are not looking. Because we are not paying attention responsibly to our finances

But it is a debt nonetheless. Our involuntary sins and our sins done in ignorance are sins. They are forgiven sins, but they are sins. For them, as well as those done knowingly and deliberately, let us repent our whole lives long.

Unwillingness to forgive our fellow servants is partly symptomatic of ingratitude for the forgiveness we have received. (That’s what we all are to one another, by the way, co-workers and fellow servants of the Lord – syndouloi).

To help us increase our gratitude for the Lord’s forgiveness, let us try to remember that we are sinners. If, for example, while preparing for confession, we cannot see our own sins, we can rest assured that this is not due to our sinlessness, but rather to a problem with our vision.

Here is a place where it can be helpful to be married. If you imagine yourself to be sinless, ask your spouse if they agree. They will likely be able to help you remember some things you’ve forgotten.

A close and intimate friend may also be able to illuminate our darkness on this subject. Because, I reiterate, if we do not see our sins, it is because, in addition to being sinners, we are also blind to our sins. It is a not because we are not sinners. Let’s put away that prelest, that self-delusion, right now.

If your spouse or your close friend are true followers of Jesus Christ, you will not need to worry about asking them to expose to you your own sins and failings, because they will have already forgiven you. That is how we syndouloi of Christ are to treat one another.

When I once asked a former pastor of mine for forgiveness, he reminded me that he was in the forgiveness business. We are all in the forgiveness business inasmuch as we follow Christ. I have heard some Christians claim that it is not necessary for us to forgive those who have not repented. Such Christians have confused themselves with God when it comes to judgment and then forgotten to be God like when it comes to forgiveness.

Remember the smallness of the debt our fellow servants have been cured against us when compared to the greatness of the debt we have incurred against the king. Remember that our great debt has been forgiven and that this obligates us to forgive the debts against us.

If there is someone you have not forgiven from your heart, if there is anyone you do not love, do not dare to approach for holy communion. If you do so, you will eat and drink condemnation upon your own head. You will be eating the body of the Lord while failing to discern his body – that is, while failing to recognize another member of his body – while failing to see Christ in your brother or sister.

In his great mercy, the King forgave the servant his debt. He did not throw the servant into prison as his debt warranted. The servant remained a servant and not a prisoner. Until the servant failed to forgive his fellow servant – his syndoulos. Likewise, if we do not forgive others as we are forgiven, we will be imprisoned by our unforgiveness. We will be thereby exile ourselves from the kingdom and cut ourselves off from the body.

Such is our Lord’s love for us, however, that even still hope is not lost. From my perspective, the parable does end with some hope even for the unforgiving servant. We hear that he is imprisoned until he pays the debt (18:34). So, we’re back to that impossible task. The servant’s debt works out to about 2,000 lifetimes worth of work. Still, two thousand lifetimes is infinitely shorter than eternity.

Let us not neglect to pray for the dead. Some of them may still be lifetimes away from forgiveness, but even for them not all hope is lost.

In the meantime, let us forgive one another everything in this lifetime and rejoice in the forgiveness of our king.

The disciples ask Jesus, “Why were we not able to cast it out?” (Matt 17:19).

We, like the disciples, also have many demons in our lives and in the lives of those we love that we’d like to cast out. So we often ask similar questions.

Why can’t I make others do right? Why can’t I seem to help my addicted loved to sober up? Why can’t I convince my employer to give me the raise I deserve – or the company to hire me? Why can’t I make them love me? What am I doing wrong? What’s wrong with me? Why does it seem that my prayers go unanswered?

Jesus answers the disciples’ question in a way that I never could. For one thing, I don’t know other people’s minds and hearts, like Jesus does. Jesus knows what we believe. And he knows the degree of our faith and whether or it is “little.” I struggle sometimes to know even my own mind and heart. Nobody knows but Jesus.

And Jesus comes straight out with his answer to the question: “Because of your little faith!” (Matt 17:20). If you had faith like a mustard seed, even the mountain would move if you told it to! (17:20).

Pani Katie put mustard seed on the grocery list recently. She’s been making refrigerator pickles with our recent crop of cucumbers and mustard seed is an ingredient in the recipe. So I’ve recently been in contact with the specimen and, as I’m sure you know, it is indeed a small and puny thing. Especially when we compare it to the size of a mountain. Though, you know, for God the difference in size between the two is pretty insignificant. Remember, we are speaking of the one who made both the atom and the universe – both that which is infinitely small from our perception and that which is infinitely large.

I think that, from a divine perspective, there may be more of a qualitative than a quantitative difference between mountains and mustard seed. Mustard seed, like all seed, is a living thing. A thing with the potential for growth and life – compared to mountains made of rock, which have no life in them. So the missing ingredient between us and moving mountains, Jesus says, is a living faith – a faith that may be small, but a faith that’s alive and filled with potential for growth.

So if our faith is too little, how do we grow it? First, it may help to know what faith is and is not. Faith is not mere belief or opinion. It’s not simply “believing in things when common sense tells you not to,” as the mother in A Miracle on 34th Street tells her daughter. Faith, it is revealed to us in the letter to the Hebrews, is the substance or foundation of things hoped for and the evidence or proof of things unseen (11:1). It’s the proof! – not merely the belief. “Faith is a true knowledge,” says St. Maximus the Confessor. Faith is a divine gift. It is assurance from the only one who can truly assure – from God, who is Truth and the Author of all that is. So the only way we’re going to gain faith, is if God gives it to us.

Now, we also have to accept the gift. There is a synergy. God is the giver of faith and we are the receiver of that faith. Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you” (Matt 7:7).  So there’s more required of us. Asking and praying are also necessary.

Jesus doesn’t give his disciples only a one-part answer to their question. Just as there’s more than mustard seed in a pickle recipe, Jesus gives his disciples a three-part recipe for demon extraction and mountain removal. First, their faith must grow, like a seed grows. Secondly, Jesus says, “this kind comes out only by prayer” (17:21). And third, also by fasting (17:21).

As to the second ingredient – prayer – here’s a great prayer: “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). When the father of the possessed boy (in the parallel gospel story in Mark) prays this prayer, the Lord delivers his son (Mark 9:14-29). Mark’s version doesn’t mention the mustard seed, but only in Mark do we hear this prayer. This prayer exemplifies the mustard seed – the tiny faith with seminal potential for growth. A faith that prays for growth is a faith that will grow like a seed that is planted and watered.

But if we just sit here with our little faith alone and do no praying, the mustard seed stays in the spice rack and produces no life. In that case, I think the mountains are going to stay put. Their roots are deep.

Faith and prayer together can move them. Jesus puts faith and prayer together in his recipe. Together, they have great power. For example, St. James writes that “the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (James 5:15). Those are miracles as great as moving mountains!

The way to cast out the demon and the way to move the mountain is with faith and prayer. But we’re not done yet! Those are points one and two. Jesus has a third point: fasting! This is an especially appropriate thing for us to think on today because we are now halfway through the Dormition Fast.

Why would fasting be necessary? Isn’t it a vain and human activity? We might think that if we have a dualist perspective on reality and human life. If we put the things of the spirit and of God in one box and the things of the body and the earth in another box. But that’s not the way it works with us humans really. We are spirit and body at the same time and what we do with our bodies has an effect in our spirits and vice versa. And one thing Jesus teaches us to do with our bodies is fast.

Now, almost everybody fasts every day. That’s why we call the first meal “breakfast,” because it breaks the fast we’ve kept all night long. Fasting is simply not eating food. Because we’re Byzantine, we like to make it a whole lot more complicated than that. But, when you get right down to it, fasting means not eating food. Sometimes our complications get so extravagant that we forget to actually fast at all! Maybe we keep all the rules in terms of what kinds of food to eat and not eat but we go right on eating all day every day! And that’s not fasting. That’s abstinence. That’s a diet. And it does have a value. It’s a good thing. It’s part of our tradition. But fasting, it needs to be remembered, means not eating food – for however long. One of our traditions is to fast until we receive Holy Communion. Holy Communion always breaks the fast. If we are going to receive Holy Communion, it is good for that to be the first food that we eat that day. It’s certainly going to be the most important food that we eat that day, so why not make it the first food we eat? Put first things first.

I remember when I was growing up, we always would eat a meal after church on Sunday morning and in my family we called that meal breakfast whether it was at 10 a.m. or noon or 2 pm. It was breakfast because it was the first meal of the day after receiving Holy Communion.

If it is a fasting day, some fast until noon. Another tradition is to fast until sunset and then to eat one meal. The meal can have as many calories as we need for sustenance, and all the right proportions of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, but it is important to have the experience of fasting.

Jesus himself fasts. And he commands us to fast. We fast every Wednesday and Friday. And we have seasons of fasting like this one. And we fast every day before we receive Holy Communion. And we fast every night while we sleep.

Fasting is an important part of life and health. It’s interesting to see this new trend of intermittent fasting which is essentially proposing what the Church has been proposing for millennia, but from a fitness and health perspective. That’s not actually surprising, because the body and health of the body are important also to spiritual health. The body is a part of who we are. We believe in the resurrection of the dead. We do not believe in the dissolution of the body. We are not Platonists. We do not regard matter is evil. We are not Gnostics. The body is a good creature of God. And he has united himself to us through the body.

So what good is fasting from a spiritual perspective? And what does it have to do with faith and with prayer? And how can it help to cast out demons and move mountains? It’s an interesting question. I think one thing that fasting can do for us is to inspire us – in the literal sense. That is, help to fill us with the spirit. I don’t mean by this to sacramentalize fasting (although, there is a kind of sacramentality of all things), but fasting imitates the spirits, who do not eat, and so can help to make us more aware of our own spiritual nature and also of the Holy Spirit who is within us.

We received the Holy Spirit in baptism and in our chrismation, we received the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are inspired – filled with the spirit.

But then, we sate ourselves with the things of the world. Do we not? I tell you, when I’m deep into a good meal, all the senses of my body are turned on. It gives the pleasure of taste and touch and smell and sight. My body is fully engaged in that meal. All kinds of dopamine is being released into the pleasure center of my brain while I eat it too. It’s not altogether unlike taking certain drugs. People get addicted to food. Believe me, I know.

Food is a beautiful and good thing. God made it. We need it to sustain our bodies. And, don’t forget, that he becomes our food. The Eucharist is God become the bread of life for us to eat. So I’m not here to malign food. And Jesus is not maligning food when he tells us we must fast in order to cast out demons and move mountains.

But if we never fast, if we’re always eating and sating ourselves, we become creatures of the flesh. I’ve warned against spiritualism, Platonism, and dualism which all deny the goodness of the body and its proper role in human existence. But even worse is materialism, which denies the spirit and sometimes even the existence of the spirit. While the truth is that the spirit is superior to the material. God is Spirit!

If we sate ourselves with the things of the world all the time, and I don’t mean just food, we forget God. We forget the things of the spirit. We forget our own spiritual nature. We forget that we are spirits. In the resurrection, Paul teaches us that we will have a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44).

Meanwhile, fasting makes us more like spirits. Spirits do not eat. However, it doesn’t make us better people, because spirits do not eat whether they are good or evil. Angels do not eat and demons do not eat. So let’s not let our fasting become something about what we pat ourselves on the back. Being spiritual is just what we are. Good for us. We are aware of what we are. That’s essential, but it’s not enough. This is why Jesus’s answer is three-fold. Fasting alone won’t do it. It needs always to be joined also with prayer and with faith. These three ingredients operating together in our lives will give us the power the cast out our demons and move mountains.

While studying this gospel (Matt 14:22-34), I came upon something curious in Matthew 14. Evening comes twice. Today we hear that evening came while Jesus was alone on the mountain (Matthew 14:23). And yet it was when evening came that his disciples had earlier called his attention to the need of the crowds for something to eat (14:15). We read the passage last Sunday. Each repeats the exact phrase: “And evening was come.”[i] How does evening come twice? Why does evening come twice?

Sure, the word can refer to a whole range of time from early evening until late evening, but why use the same phrase twice? Mark doesn’t do this in his account of these two sequential events. He makes a clearer distinction between a “late hour” for the first and “evening” for the second (Mark 6:35, 47). But Matthew duplicates the same phrase twice.

Objectively, I suppose, evening comes once a day. That’s the rhythm. On the other hand, I don’t know about you, but I have experienced evenings coming twice – especially since I have had children.

That is, a time comes each evening when I am ready to be done with the day. And many times, at this point I turn in. I go to my room. I shut the door. I get into bed. Perhaps I begin to read a book or even go to sleep. I have withdrawn from the crowds to a lonely place apart, so to speak (cf. Matt 14:13).

But then, the door will burst open! Or, a wailing from another room will be sounded. And the needs of the family will reassert themselves. And what I thought was the beginning of the evening will turn out not to have been so, at least subjectively. Many times, these needs will have something to do with getting a glass of water or a bedtime snack.

Incidentally, did you know that many cultures eat their dinner later on in the day than the Americans tend to? 6 o clock is our traditional evening meal time, I suppose. Well, when I was in the seminary, I would often come upon a Sicilian professor of ours eating at more like 8, which I found a little bit odd. Until I realized that was simply the way they do it. Many things we think of as normal or universal are really just our own cultural assumptions.

So it was not unusual, actually, that Jesus wanted to feed a whole crowd of people when it was already evening. In any case, as I say, I find myself doing the same thing many times, even when it is not my plan or intention. You might say I have compassion on the crowd (cf. 14:14). The crowd of children at my door anyway.

Well then, after this crisis is averted there comes what we might think of as a second evening. The intentions I had at the first evening reassert themselves and I once again withdraw to a lonely place and evening begins again (cf. 14:23). So, on some level I can relate to the two comings of evening at the end of one day.

And what Jesus goes through in Matthew 14 is not wholly dissimilar. Evening comes. He intends to withdraw to a lonely place (14:13). But the crowds follow him and he takes pity on them and addresses their needs (14:13-14). He heals their sick and feeds the hungry (14:14-20). And then evening comes again. And he withdraws again to a lonely place.

What can we learn about Jesus from this? One thing is, he will at time allow himself to be interrupted by us, like a father who loves his children allows himself to be interrupted by them. He will listen to us and address our needs. He set out to be alone for a while, but he allowed the crowds to delay that – not prevent it, but delay it. He has compassion on us.

We can see in good and loving families an image of our relationship with God. I remember what it’s like to be a child who cannot sleep after our parents have gone to bed. I remember the intense yearning to go and be with them where they are. And those of us who are parents know now the other side of it as well. The need to sometimes be alone. But also the love for our children and the willingness to sometimes let them in even when it’s inconvenient. There’s an incarnate image of God’s love for us in this.

But then, Jesus finishes what he started before being interrupted by the crowds. He instructs his disciples to cross the sea on ahead of him and leave him (14:22). And then he dismisses the crowd of thousands, whom he has just fed with the five loaves and two fishes. And then he goes up on the mountain alone (14:23). He stays there alone in prayer most of the night.

Meanwhile, his disciples are in distress. Their boat is beaten by the waves and the wind is against them. But Jesus does not come straight to their rescue. Mark says he can see them out there in the storm (Mark 6:48), perhaps from his vantage point on the mountain, but he lets them flounder in that boat most of the night.

And these are his closest disciples. Peter is among them. He had compassion on the crowds, but we might ask, where is his compassion for his disciples? Sometimes we feel like this while we’re weathering the storms of life. It’s storming outside today. Last I checked, there’s a flash flood watch until 2pm. But worse that this are our personal storms – the things we suffer in our relationships, illnesses of mind and body, the deaths of our loved ones. Aren’t we the Lord’s disciples? Won’t he take pity on us and deliver us?

Yes, he is coming. But sometimes he allows his disciples to wait all night. After I have sent my children to bed for the second time, I often expect them to stay there until morning. They often do not want to, but there comes a time when I must put my foot down, even though they do not understand why. The Lord, too, will sometimes delay his coming, though we do not understand why.

But he does come. Jesus walks on the water to his disciples on the sea in the fourth watch of the night, which is really just before dawn – a time we nowadays more usually call early morning (Matt 14:25).

This give us a beautiful image of Jesus coming to us in the midst of the storm at the rising of the sun. At the irmos of ode 9 on Sunday in the 5th tone, at Matins, which is traditionally celebrated not long before the rising of the sun, we sing of Jesus, “His name is rising of the sun.” Or, “Orient is his name.” This is also sung at weddings and ordinations. The rising of the sun is an image of the coming of the Lord. He is coming, after the long and stormy night.  As surely as the sun will rise, he will come. When we’re in the midst of the storm, we may doubt it. But he will come. And when he comes, he will calm the storm and the wind will cease (cf. 14:32).

Though he comes to his disciples only after the passing of the night, whereas he allowed the crowds to interrupt him, and this is a difference between these two stories, they also have much in common. According to Matthew, evening comes twice, and both times Jesus goes off to be alone, and both times he has compassion on the people and then ministers to them, first the crowds and then the apostles. Perhaps with this duplication, Matthew is calling our attention to the similarities between these two miraculous stories.

The multiplication of evenings draws attention to a multiplication of the Lord’s coming to his people. There is the ultimate, final, and second coming of the Lord at the end of days. But there are other comings which point to that ultimate coming. There is the coming for which we wait while we are buffeted by storms and there are the comings of the Lord in the meantime, which comfort and sustain us as we wait.

We experience these comings of the Lord perhaps especially through the holy mysteries of the Church, each of which is an encounter with the Lord. Baptism is a coming of the Lord into our lives. And the Lord’s walking on the water and delivering his disciples on the sea is an image of baptism. Holy Communion is a coming of the Lord into the church, and the bread which the Lord multiplies to feed the crowd is an image of the Eucharist. Furthermore, we experience the coming of the Lord through loving one another.

 

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[i] ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης

My little girl asked me if there is any such thing as magic.

Well, I believe the capacity of children for wonder is a holy gift, not to be trampled upon. We, like children, can learn to stand in awe before creation and before our life experiences or we can look at the same things with cynicism and skepticism. I have no desire to inject this cynicism or skepticism into my children, so I went on for some time describing the miracles and wonders worked by our Lord and his Saints.

There is a whole group of saints whom we call “thaumaturge” or “wonderworker”. You may have heard of Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus. You certainly know Saint Nicholas, who is also called “the wonderworker.” Then there are the holy unmercenary wonderworkers Cosmas and Damian, the holy great martyr George the wonderworker, and on and on and on. There’s a wonderworker on our calendar probably every other week.

So, with all of these wonderworkers, where are the wonders? A better question, I think, is where is our wonder? We can learn about that from our children. I believe that wonders and miracles are happening around us every day all the time if we would open our eyes to them.

Now, perhaps it is necessary to make a distinction between magic and miracles. We do not call Jesus a magician. And a few references to magic in the scripture are in connection to rather nefarious characters like Simon the Magician. Magic is used by them for self-promotion. And magic, certainly, is sometimes used to refer, on the one hand, to tricks or deceptions, and, on the other hand, to surprising feats performed with the aid of spirits. As has been rightly observed, not all spirits are holy. Magic tricks can be fun and entertaining. While magic of a more diabolical kind is of course something to be shunned and abhorred. In neither of these senses do Jesus or his wonderworkers do magic.

Still, we can overdo this distinction. Let us not abandon our childlike wonder while we pursue fine distinctions. And remember the Magi, whom God led to the Christ Child through their wonder at a marvelous star. And we do call the saints thaumaturge, as I mentioned earlier. And that same word is sometimes also used to describe magicians in the ancient world.

There may after all be room to say to a child that God has created a magical world, that is, a world to be wondered at and full of miracles.

We hear of one of these miracles today. The feeding of thousands with five loaves and two fish. For no other reason, as far as I can tell, than that they are hungry and that he has compassion on them, Jesus gives to the thousands who have followed him into a lonely place a wonderful picnic – a picnic to be wondered at. Looking at this as an example may help to reveal to us the quality and purpose of true miracles as opposed to magic tricks.

The workings of this miracle are mysterious – or perhaps even secret. They’re not performed in a dazzling or showy way the way a magician might on stage. Jesus simply takes the small amount of food, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to his disciples to distribute to the people. There is one thing to note about this, he works the miracle through his people. They cooperate, too, in a rather childlike way. Sure, they raised their objections, but now they obey him and walk out into a crowd of thousands with the intention of feeding them with so little. That’s a childlike step out in faith. Or anyway a kind reckless willingness to be thought of as a fool. Do we have that willingness and childlike trust in our Lord?

After his disciples carry the pieces into the crowd, the next thing we hear is that all eat and are satisfied. The mechanism of the multiplication is not described at all. It’s really only clear that there has been a multiplication after the fact, when the twelve baskets of pieces left over are gathered.

In the movie Millions, St. Peter appears in a vision to a young boy who’s trying to do the right thing with a big pile of money he’s found. In the movie, St. Peter says,

“This kid comes up to us with these loaves and fishes. And Jesus blessed them and passes the plate round. Now the first person he passes it to passes it on. He doesn’t take anything he just passes it on. Do you know why? Because he had a piece of lamb hidden in his pocket. And as he’s passing the fish, he sneaks a bit of the meat out and pretends he’s taking it off the plate. You see what I’m saying? And the next person exactly the same story…. As the plate goes around, they all got their own food out and started to share. And that plate went all the way around and back to Jesus and still got the fish and the loaves on it…. Jesus says, ‘What happened?’ And I just said, ‘Miracle.’ And at first I thought I’d fooled him. But now I see, it was a miracle. One of his best. This little kid stood up and everybody there just got bigger. That kid wasn’t planning on doing a miracle. He wasn’t planning anything except lunch. Something that looks like a miracle turns out to be dead simple.”

Well, that’s one interpretation of the event. The mechanism of multiplication is, as I say, not disclosed in the gospel. Further I’d go so far as to agree that inspiring generosity in a crowd of thousands would be a kind of miracle. We could do with more of that generosity in our world today. Every time I celebrate Litija, which I do at Great Vespers for all Great Feasts and Feasts with a Vigil, I pray,

“Lord Jesus Christ Our God, you blessed the five loaves in the wilderness and fed the five thousand. Likewise bless these loaves, wheat, wine, and oil and multiply them in this city and through your whole world.”

You see, we’re imitating Christ at Vespers. We bless the loaves, we break them, we ask him to multiply them in our city and the whole world. Where is the miracle?

Let me tell you, he has performed the multiplication! It’s done! Do you know, that this wonderful world in which we live produces more than enough food to feed all of its more than seven and a half billion inhabitants?

Why then are some going hungry? Because the people of the world are failing to do as the disciples did and carry the particles to the hungry. It’s inexcusable. It is a failure of generosity. We destroy food. We destroyed even more food during this pandemic, while people go hungry. Jesus invites us to participate in the miracle. And he expects our participation. He works his miracles through our participation.

This miracle of the loaves and the fishes also points to the miracle we’re about to witness hear it in the church – the miracle of the Eucharist. The bread which is the body of Christ is being multiplied throughout the world on this day of the Lord to feed his faithful throughout the world. We are going to witness a miracle. We would do well to stand in awe before it, with childlike faith. To look upon it with wonder. And to take inspiration from it to participate in the miracle Jesus is inviting us into. To become his instruments. To become those through whom he works his miracles. Our participation is as simple as us offering whatever we have however small. Be like the child who offers you a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Be like a small boy offering five loaves and two fish. If we obey Jesus and offer this, he will multiply it and we will delight in his wonderworking through us.