Yes, It Was A Miracle. Also, Yes, It Was A Setup.

I assume that almost everybody over 50 years old has heard some variant of the sermon idea (spin? take? clown show?) that Jesus didn't actually multiple the five loaves and two fish, but instead pulled off a ""miracle of sharing"" and got the people to share the food they were hoarding. Well, at least John's account of the feeding wrecks that idea. And also unless it's a legit miracle, the moment utter fails to do what it appears Jesus is trying to set up: showing himself as God's own anointed with all that authority and raw power, and then put his followers on the spot with some hard truths and see if they would stay with him or dip. 

(I did miss a good point from my notes in this one delivery, which is that the description of the twelve baskets at the end as being full of the fragments of "the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat", is huge. Saying that 1. they are all the same original five loaves he started with, and 2. those five loaves themselves were more than anyone could eat.)

Horizontical Fixes

Of the three attempts at this homily on Ephesians (with a lot of Galatians and Genesis too), all of them had two or more flubs, so I just had to pick one. On the one here I didn't really deliver the opening story the best I could have, and also meant to come back at the end and emphasis that Paul's depictions of the Messiah's work really is horizontical. But the other two had bigger issues. Alas.

How Not To Impress People

I covered at a different parish this week, so I had to do a little bit of background on 2nd Corinthians before diving into the reading of the day. So if you've listened to another homily of mine in the last several weeks a small part will be a review/repeat. (Actually, to be honest, I've covered for three of the last five weekends and I'm getting a lot of mileage out of introducing people to 2nd Corinthians.)