“The problem with Chinese food is that it fills you up nicely but lets you down later. Halfway through the evening you start to feel hungry again”. I wonder if you’ve ever said that, or heard anyone else saying it? It’s probably not true, anyway – it’s more likely that eating Chinese food is simply a different culinary experience to fish and chips, roast beef with all the trimmings, pizza or chicken tikka masala.

We are privileged in this country to be able to eat more or less anything we like, providing we can afford it. But things haven’t always been like that: even a century ago ordinary folk had a much simpler and more monotonous diet than we do today and wouldn’t have known what to do with sun-dried tomatoes, aubergines or even corn flakes. Without refrigeration or air freight, most country folk had to eat the local food that was in season while city-dwellers had to cope with food that was impure, adulterated or just inadequate. One of the amazing facts about rationing in the 1940s was that, despite the shortages, many poor people actually enjoyed a better diet than they had ever had before.

For many people in the world, getting hold of food and then preparing it  take up much of their waking existence. Men are busy tilling the land, hunting, fishing or herding animals, while women may be engaged in weeding the fields or getting the food ready to cook – the characteristic sound of many an African village is the regular ‘thump’ of rice or cassava being pounded. Although fast food outlets and supermarkets are now found throughout the so-called developing world, you still can’t have cordon bleue cooking if you are scratching out a bare existence on thin and dusty soil. If that’s your situation, then hunger, malnutrition and disease are never far away.

As far as we know, the people who came to hear Jesus were not malnourished. But they were certainly enthusiastic; they followed him around or waited patiently for him to arrive, hoping to see miracles being performed before their very eyes. I guess that some of these folk were desperate, seeking to be healed from a debilitating and painful long-term illness. Others were merely curious, because Jesus was the most exciting thing that had ever come to their area and they didn’t dare miss the fun. After all, they couldn’t record him on their phones, they couldn’t watch him on television, they couldn’t log on to a video of him on YouTube – they had to see Jesus when he appeared and they had no guarantee that he would ever return. So they naturally took the opportunities as they arose – and one hopes they also listened to what Jesus said, even if he sometimes spoke in riddles!

On the day of today’s reading time has ticked on; and Jesus realises that everyone in his audience was stuck on the bare mountainside on the wrong side of the lake. They’ve missed the last boats home and, although no-one has yet said anything to him, Jesus knows that they must be getting hungry. So how are these people – no less than 5000 of them – going to eat? Jesus knows what he’s going to do, in fact he has a cunning plan – but he wants to test his disciples, too. Have they seen the problem? Are they beginning to panic, frightened perhaps that the hungry people might start a riot? How much faith in their Master do they really have?

In this telling of the story, it’s Jesus who takes the initiative – you can almost imagine a little smile flickering at the corner of his mouth as he turns to Philip and says, “So what are we going to do?” I’m sure that Philip was startled and thought, “Why pick on me? Why have you put me on the spot?”, but he does manage to stutter a reply: “I have no idea. I mean, just think how much it would cost to buy them all a decent meal! That’s money we don’t have – and, in any case, there’s nowhere near here where we could buy the food, anyway”. All Philip can see is an insoluble problem: I actually feel a bit sorry for him as I suspect we’d have reacted in exactly the same way.

It’s at this point that Andrew butts in with an absurd comment. He’s obviously been asking around to see if anyone has got any food with them and he’s come up with one positive response: “There is a boy here who’s willing to hand over his five bread rolls and two small fish”. Does Andrew say this to show that he had at least tried to ‘do something’ instead of merely standing around? Does he expect his colleagues to make fun of him when he reveals his ridiculously tiny offering? Or does he actually believe that – just somehow – Jesus might be able to work his magic and do a miracle with what he’s been given? What Andrew says – “How will these feed so many people?” – sounds more like despair than faith. But perhaps he has some hope.

So Jesus tells the disciples to make everyone sit down on the ground. (Were they muttering, “This is sheer stupidity, we’re wasting our time: however careful we are in sharing this food, no-one’s going to get more than a crumb or two”?). And we all know what happens next. Secretly summoned by Jesus on the mobile phone he’s had hidden under his robe, a flotilla of fast-food vans draws up in a cloud of dust; they open their hatches and start vending their wares: fried chicken, burgers, kebabs, chips and a vegetarian option (but no hot dogs because, of course, this is kosher Israel). Tempting smells and the sound of happy munching fill the air.

Well, no, that isn’t what happened: but the reality of what did take place is no less remarkable. For, after giving thanks to God, Jesus provides enough food for everyone, all from one boy’s picnic. Granted, there’s no choice on the menu: it’s the dish of the day or nothing. But it’s real food – and that’s what counts.

So what actually happened that day? Was there really a miraculous multiplication of food? That’s the obvious sense of the story; yet it seems to go far beyond the bounds of science and belief. So are there other possible explanations: a sharing of provisions which amazingly turned out to be sufficient for all, a secret cache of food which was uncovered, or sheer duplicity and trickery? You have to decide what you feel you can believe; but it’s clear that people were fed in a remarkable way, and that they attributed their feeding to Jesus.

It might be easy to dismiss this event as hokum, legend or something written up to supposedly ‘prove’ that Jesus was the Son of God – after all, John’s declared intent in writing his Gospel is to do just that and he alleges that here the people said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world”. But, before you do dismiss it, I must remind you that the Bible includes several supernatural feedings. For in the Old Testament we read about the mysterious manna which fell from heaven and sustained the Hebrews in the wilderness, and then about the jar of oil and sack of flour which did not fail Elijah, the widow and her son during the long drought. These stories, especially the first, would have been very much in peoples’ minds as they happily ate their fill. And from the New Testament, we can look both backward and forward from this particular event: backward to Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and his refusal to perform the cheap conjuring trick of turning stones into bread; and forward to the Last Supper where Jesus took bread and said, “Eat this to remember me”. All these allusions would have been significant to John’s Jewish readers.

Before I go on, I must recognise how this story might anger us. For we know that there are millions of people today who are constantly struggling to eat: people who live in places which have seen droughts, floods or locust invasions; people who have been displaced from their homelands by conflict or big business and can no longer farm; people who live in cities but who can’t afford to feed themselves well. All this makes us ask: surely there is a far more compelling case for God to act on their behalf than there was in that desert place in Galilee? For what we read about was merely the potential for a few thousand people to miss their supper and go hungry for one night. Jesus acted then – so why doesn’t he act now? Is the problem too big for him to handle?

As so often, I can’t answer that: there must be many people who pray for a miracle every day but never see one happening. But I will say one thing, which is this: just as the boy brought his loaves and fishes to Jesus, feeding those who were hungry, so both the richer nations and individuals of the world can offer their resources to those who are in desperate need: we can thank God for charities such as Christian Aid or Tear Fund which may not always get things quite right but which have done a huge amount to relieve suffering over many years.

That’s why I’m so angry at our Government’s recent decision to slash foreign aid even though it has squandered so much money on useless PPE, on the Track and Trace system which doesn’t work properly, on the High Speed Rail Project which has gone hugely over budget and on a National Yacht which no-one except the Prime Minister seems to want. In April the UN’s World Food Programme warned of “biblical” famines in 2021 without billions in aid, while charity groups claim that the cuts could see a million girls lose out on schooling, nearly three million women and children go without life-saving nutrition and 5.6 million children left unvaccinated, causing up to 100,000 deaths; in fact they say that “blood is on [the Government’s] hands”. I know that we’re facing huge problems here in Britain, but I’m still ashamed to be a citizen of such a mean-minded country. And if you accuse me of bringing politics into church, I must plead “guilty as charged”!

Having said all this, we must remember that Jesus said that “people cannot live by bread alone” – I thought he’d invented that phrase but in fact he was quoting from Moses’ farewell speech. By this he’s not telling us to add fish, fruit and vegetables to our menus (although a balanced diet is a good thing!). Rather, he’s recognising that we need emotional and spiritual nourishment just as much as food for our bodies. And, while folk are looking for this sustenance in many different places, from the aesthetic experiences of art and music, through therapies which allegedly rebalance their lives and make them feel good, in what I feel are the weird and wacky ideas of some contemporary spiritualities, Christians would say that they should be looking for it in the Church and, more specifically, in the person of Jesus. How about putting a sign outside the church saying, “This is your spiritual larder, come on in”! Sadly, they often don’t, because they see churches as “stuffy”, “old-fashioned” or even “unspiritual” – we don’t have time to think about why that is this morning, but it’s an interesting subject for discussion.

Jesus saw people who were hungry and asked his disciples to think seriously about how they might be fed. In recent years Christians – including some from this church – have risen magnificently to the challenge of getting food to those who need it in Britain; they may well have felt that Food Banks should never have been necessary in a country such as ours but that thought didn’t stop them from getting “stuck in”. Of course, not everyone who helps at a Food Bank is a Christian but, believer and non-believer alike, they couldn’t think of people remaining hungry when they were in a position to feed them.

The question of spiritual hunger is harder to solve, partly because people feel that hunger yet can’t easily describe it. Yet we know that we can offer them Christ’s food which will satisfy: what we have to think about is how we do that offering – ramming our faith down peoples’ throats is never going to work! Perhaps the best we can do is follow the definition of evangelism put forward by the Sri Lankan evangelist and ecumenical leader D.T. Niles many years ago; he said that it was just “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread”. That little boy could have refused to give his loaves and fishes to the disciples and kept them all for himself: If he he’d done that, the crowd would have stayed hungry; because he didn’t, everyone was fed.

We believe we have Christ’s Bread of Life: how dare we fail to share it?