RebeccaMallinson

He invites us all to drink and then to produce the living water. This is fulfilled in the gift of the Holy Spirit which was given to the disciples at Pentecost and then through the disciples to the next generation of Christians until this day. It has been fulfilled in my own life through wonderful and very inspiring catechists when I was a child, my grandmother’s religious example and finally by personal direct religious experience.

It is not possible to know God’s will in its entirety as He is far beyond our human comprehension. God does not tell us even what is around the corner, let alone his entire will. However, we need to put ourselves at God’s service and try to do His will. We cannot do this without a real commitment to following the way shown to us by Jesus. This is because he needs our hearts as well as our minds. Only then will we be on the right path.

Young rabbis at that time were trained by famous rabbis. Jesus received his teaching direct from God. His disciples were trained by Jesus through example and explanation. The value of formal theological training is to cover the Bible in depth and all other possible aspects of religious study. As a lay person I find it very helpful to read theological books. They have broadened my faith. Learning to hear and obey the voice of the Spirit is separate and does not require formal study. It is extremely important. The way to do this is to develop a personal prayer life in which one achieves closeness with God and an openness to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus stayed in Galilee and avoided Jerusalem because of the hostility of the authorities in Jerusalem. This allowed him to spend time training his disciples and conducting his ministry in peace and without interruption. It is important to be aware of God’s constant care for us and to trust in Him. However, as we are reminded by Jesus himself when he was being tempted by the Devil, we should not put Him to the test. We should not take risks without the certainty that God wishes us to do so either through following scripture or as a direct call. For example, there is all the difference in the world between answering a genuine call from God to minister in a place where the Church is persecuted (risking death in the process) and going headlong into danger for no good reason.

The difference between the Twelve and those who left was depth of faith. The mark of a true disciple is faith. The Twelve had an advantage over the ‘crowds’ in having a personal relationship with Jesus as they followed him on a daily basis, leaving work and family behind them. The ‘crowds’ maintained their regular lives.

As mentioned in Question 4, I don’t believe these are metaphors. I believe that we are truly asked to have faith in Christ’s presence in the bread and wine of Communion. I see a big similarity with a mother lovingly breastfeeding her child (with food from herself but prepared by God). The baby suckles to physically survive. We take Communion for our eternal survival but also to be close to Jesus in the most physical sense having internalised Him.

As a Catholic, I believe that in practical terms “eating the Bread of Life” means partaking of the Holy Eucharist. This is our spiritual food. I know from personal experience how important Communion is to a feeling of oneness with God. I have experienced a feeling of great calm in difficult times. It also creates oneness with our fellow communicants. To partake in faith, it is necessary to meditate on Christ’s physical closeness to us. If people go to Communion as a matter of routine, without preparing themselves spiritually, there is no benefit. I suppose this could be called “nibbling”. The Eucharistic feast is a banquet prepared very generously by a God who serves us with his own self, to the point of death on a cross. It would be indescribably rude to nibble.

I can’t answer these questions separately as they are intertwined. There are many who therefore only have faith in material things. It takes a willingness to think outside the materialist box and look at the world in spiritual terms instead. We have to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to put our faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit comes from the Father, so we are therefore “drawn”. All around us we only see the material world. Predestination comes into it because we can do nothing without the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Therefore God must have chosen us. I am always uncomfortable with this as it seems so unjust to others, who are also God’s creation.

People try to follow the teaching of Jesus in caring for others, prayer and self-sacrifice. The most important work is to have faith in God. However, as written in James 2: 14 - 26, “faith without works is dead”. The important thing is that our works are done with love and the knowledge that God’s image is in everyone we serve.

People were following Jesus for worldly reasons such as physical healing, or the hope of freeing Palestine from the Romans. True disciples seek Jesus to follow the way of life that he demonstrated by his actions because they recognised that he was the Son of God and wanted to obey him.

The people’s desire to make him king would have completely negated everything that Jesus came to do here. The devil attempted to tempt Jesus in exactly the same way. The devil almost always uses things of this world as his temptations to us. The people’s desire may not have come directly from the devil, but it was a worldly desire, not a spiritual one. I doubt if they could have forced the Son of God to do their will, but Jesus avoided the situation anyway. Unlike Jesus, we are often put under pressure to do things that suit others but are not in either our own interests or in keeping with our spiritual values. We have to be very careful to take the narrow spiritual path, not the broad worldly one that leads to damnation.

I think he asks them to collect the left-overs for two reasons. Firstly to demonstrate the scale of the miracle and secondly to comply with Jewish custom that nothing should be wasted. God has great compassion for the poor and needy. To waste food when others go hungry is a terrible sin. We can see God’s abundant generosity (as previously in the miracle at Cana) in this miracle. That abundance must be well used, not wasted.

We are not told exactly how Jesus distributes the food in John’s Gospel, but in the other three Gospels it is made clear that the disciples did the distribution. The baskets were later used to collect the remains of the meal. I assume they were also used to take the food around to the groups. I would guess that the disciples would have been amazed at how many people they were able to feed. As mentioned in the previous question, it was also a lesson in service to others, first from God to man and then from the disciples to the crowds.

As Dr Wilson notes it will make distribution more organised if everyone is seated. I think additionally, the injunction Jesus will later make to serve others is another part of the reason. The disciples will go to all those people and serve them all. Unlike Jesus, we are not able to prepare for miracles. They come from God as a result of need and faith. I think there is a big difference between congregations in the west and those in developing countries. Western societies are generally dismissive of miracles. People in third world countries rely on miracles as their lives are much more difficult.

I think Jesus is using the miracle as a learning experience for them. They will need to learn to put their trust in God rather than material resources. Like many trainers he knows that students learn best by doing rather than passively watching. The significance of the story is to show how God will provide abundantly in impossible situations if we only have faith.

We need to read the Scriptures regularly and meditate on what they mean and their application in our own lives. It is possible to memorise large chunks of the Bible, but concentrating only on being word-perfect without any real consideration of the meaning and the intention in writing the Bible. We must have a balance of following Christ through the Gospels, together with prayer and contemplation. Jesus emphasises repeatedly that we should not stray, but equally should not become like the Pharisees.

The value of miracles is as a starting point in the road to faith. The weakness of relying solely on miracles is that faith cannot grow and develop fully. We do have miracles, but they are not necessarily of the type that creates a public sensation. Many people, including myself, have experienced miracles in our own lives. We have to be open to them, rather than dismissing them as ‘unexplained science’ for example. Miracles are heavily dependent on people’s attitudes and belief (or lack of).

The doctrine of the Trinity is a very hard one to understand and there are so many ways of looking at it. It is a mystery and we cannot expect as mere mortals to have a full appreciation. My own understanding is that the Father is the head (as in a human family), but unlike in a human family, the Son is actually a part of the same being, a subordinate but very important and much loved part. The Holy Spirit is a part of both Father and Son. All three parts are essential to the whole. This is why Jesus is so dependent upon the Father for wisdom. I was a total misfit in my own culture and gave up looking for approval a very long time ago. Since coming to South Sudan things have been very different. My mission in South Sudan requires a lot of prayer and placing myself and my actions in God’s hands. I depend on God absolutely. I don’t ask for wisdom. I rely on God putting the right things into my mouth. Those things which are beyond me I ask God to help with, so that I am not depending on my own very limited wisdom.

Eternal life starts when we start to make God the Father and the Son central to our lives. Without Christ we live in a total material world which will end in death. It could be called a living death. I have difficulties with the question of what happens to those who never have the opportunity to hear the Word of our Lord. It is not their fault if nobody tells them. It is our fault. Ezekiel was told that we would be held responsible. However the Bible is very clear that those people have no hope. This is tragic. I saw a slogan from a religious order which read ‘You may be the only Gospel some people will ever read’. That is how our friends and neighbours who are outside the fold will initially hear Jesus’ word. Our role is to live a life in imitation of Christ, so they can see the Gospel and become followers of Christ.

Yes we are intended to emulate Jesus’ listening to the Father. Reading the Bible is no substitute. It is possible to read without faith, as with any other book. I don’t know why more churches don’t teach more about listening. Some individual priests do. I had the wonderful experience of a priest who said he would like to teach Christian Meditation to anyone who was interested. Christian Meditation is just that – sitting silently, emptying ourselves, making ourselves aware of God’s presence with us and being attentive to God. It revolutionised my prayer life. It led eventually to hearing God’s voice telling me to go to the third world as a volunteer. If everyone had that opportunity to learn to listen, it would be a very different world.

Yes it is possible to appear blessed outwardly, but to actually be lost. This applies to most first world countries, where people are ‘blessed’ with enough food to eat, governments which behave according to their constitutions and protect their citizens, and much more. Yet, those are the same countries which are falling away from God with the loss of many souls. I think Jesus confronted the healed man as he had unfinished business. Normally when healing somebody, Jesus immediately says, ‘your faith has saved you’ or ‘go and sin no more’. In this case, he didn’t, which left the former invalid without guidance. The point of Christ’s miracles is to bring us to God and save us from sin, so this was a necessary meeting. The passage does not tell us anything about the invalid’s reaction or future life. We know that he spoke to the Jews, but he was himself a Jew. I doubt if he saw himself as doing anything amiss. We, reading the Gospels with hindsight, know that the Pharisees will become enemies to Jesus, but the invalid could not have known that. I think it is easy to be hard on this unfortunate man, but there is too little detail to make an informed judgement.

The Pharisees are upset with the man because he is breaking the rules. It is very easy to be over intent on rules and lose out on spiritual matters as a result. As a young woman I made myself absolutely miserable by following what turned out to be misunderstood rule that I couldn’t go to Communion because I had left my (very violent) husband. Fortunately I was put right by the parish priest who said that Communion was my spiritual food and would heal me. He was right, I was wrong. I have known a person who was so rigid and vocal that she scared fellow parishioners away from the church. The sin of the Pharisees is rigidly sitting in judgement on others and abusing a position of power.

I am not sure why Jesus asked the invalid this question, unless it was to set an example to us. Unlike us, Jesus would have known the answer without being told. We can make big mistakes by making assumptions or judgements about people. People are individuals and should be treated individually, not as ‘the Sick’ or ‘the Poor’.

I don’t think it is fair to leap to conclusions. The man was old, sick and no doubt worn out from the difficulties of his condition. His underlying character may have been completely different and only Jesus would have understood his true character, whatever it was. In any case John does not mention that he was complaining or moaning about his problems. I don’t think the invalid’s faith comes into it as he was unlikely to know that he was meeting the one person who could truly help him. He merely answers Jesus’s question about whether he wanted to get well by saying that there is nobody to help him get into the pool in time. I am sure he was not asking for more than a helping hand to enable him to get well. This healing demonstrates the grace of God, in that He is there to help someone in desperate need, but who was looking in the wrong direction for help. We are often too astonished at God’s help and ask, why me? If I had been the invalid, astonishment would have been my reaction.

As I am living in a ‘mission’ country, South Sudan, I come across ‘crusades’ where evangelising pastors promise miracles. In the run-up, you see big posters all over town confidently promising healings as though miracles can be done to order. The whole tone is very arrogant. There is little or no emphasis on healing through faith in anyone except the pastor. It is pure showmanship, not true Christianity. The ‘converts’ are still as pagan as previously, with a veneer of Christianity on top. Their belief in local spirits and devils remains. Traditionally people here have always gone to witchdoctors for healing, now they go to the church for the same service and if it doesn’t work, back to the witchdoctor. Jesus prophesied that false pastors would come and cast out devils in his name. I think I have seen some of them. I do believe in miracles and have experienced some myself. However those I have experienced were quiet, totally spontaneous and had a very strong spiritual impact. I think the reason some denominations deemphasize miracles is to avoid the showmen. I haven’t come across a denomination that doesn’t believe in miracles outside the early church. However I have met many people who question the abundant record of miracles in early church and medieval history. They put the miracles down to ignorance of natural phenomena or pious fraud. There are certainly likely to be cases of fraud, as there are in the more easily proved case of relics. It is of course true that science had not yet probed nature in the way it has in more recent times. We have lost sense of the miraculous by failing to see God’s hand at work in natural phenomena, which was so keenly felt earlier in our history. Nature itself is a miracle of God’s creation and scientists are most unlikely ever to get to the bottom of it. I suspect (but am only guessing) that those churches that emphasize miracles grow faster, but it will be a very immature faith. Those who come to Christ primarily on the basis of miracles need to learn the importance of Christ’s teachings and of trying to follow the pattern of His life as the route to salvation of their souls.