Sermon for Laetare, the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Paintings and movies don’t usually do justice to what it was probably like at the feeding of the 5000. Usually it seems to be depicted as everyone sitting or standing all orderly and quiet around Jesus. Yet how many groups of 5000 have you seen that are orderly and quiet? There was probably yelling, pushing, screaming children, people talking among themselves, all sorts of chaos. In the midst of this chaos is Jesus, ready to have compassion, ready to satisfy this huge group.