Faith: The Glass Half-full or Half-empty

A Landscape Painting

I would like to compare this Gospel reading to a landscape painting. More accurately a series of landscapes (John 6:1-15, John 6:16-21, John 6:22-71) with this Sunday’s Gospel being the first.

In the background of the painting, the Passover was near. Jesus leaves the region of Galilee where he has been ministering by crossing the sea, and a large crowd follows him, “because they saw the signs he was performing.” Jesus also went up a mountain, and Jesus commanded the people to recline on the grass. 

While this detail could merely be practical, the Jews did not normally recline at meals except for the Passover. Jesus takes the bread (and fish), gives thanks, and distributes it. These actions would certainly remind later Christians of the Last Supper and of the Eucharist. Remember as well that initially the Breaking of Break took place as a community meal. The word for ‘to give thanks’ (eucharisteō) became the standard name for Our Lord’s presence in the Christian Mass, the Eucharist.

The crowds, however, are not Christians who are looking back, so what did they see?

A Prophet

As will be highlighted in the next narrative (John 6:22-71), Jesus in the wilderness, on a mountain, miraculously feeding the people, parallels Moses. St. Augustine even sees the five loaves as an allegory for the five books of the Pentateuch, written by Moses in Jewish tradition. Yet when the people saw the new sign that Jesus performed they said, "This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world" (John 6:14). What did they mean by "the Prophet"? We might compare this miracle to Elisha the prophet who we heard about in our first reading 2 Kings 4:22-44. In this Elisha narrative, we have a miraculous feeding, a doubting servant, and barley loaves.

Moses the Greatest Prophet

We might, however, be missing something important. In the Jewish mind, Moses is not merely the Giver of the Law, but more importantly, the greatest prophet in the tradition. Moses gave a promise near the end of his life, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kindred, and will put my words into the mouth of the prophet; the prophet shall tell them all that I command” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18). In fact, all other later prophets are in Moses’ image. They are like Moses. Yet, they remain lesser than Moses who was able to see God ‘face to face’ (Numbers 12:8).

Two Dads and a Promise

Another passage from the Moses tradition became important as the prophetic tradition developed. At one point Moses becomes burned out and complains to God that he cannot carry all the people by himself (Numbers 11:14). God helps Moses to appoint 70 elders. The Holy Spirit rests upon these men and they all prophesied. Unfortunately, two of the elders Eldad and Medad, apparently overslept and missed the meeting, so the Spirit fell upon them publicly in the camp instead of outside the camp with the other elders in private meeting.

This greatly alarmed Joshua, who tries to stop them, but Moses replies … “Are you jealous for my sake? If only all the people of the LORD were prophets! If only the LORD would bestow his spirit on them!” (Numbers 1:29). This desire of Moses to see the Spirit on all people becomes a theme, which is slowly developed.

The Spirit on all Flesh

Later Prophetic tradition promised that God would do something new with his Spirit. In future time the Spirit would come anew giving his people an interior transformation of their hearts. Jeremiah promises a new covenant, based on an interior knowledge of the Lord by the Spirit and forgiveness of their sins (Jeremiah 31:31.) Ezekiel writes, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Jesus makes the promise of a future outpouring of the Spirit in Isaiah, his own mission statement in Luke 4:18. “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; He has sent me to bring good news… (Isaiah 61:1ff.).

Perhaps the most obvious fulfillment of Moses' desire to see all his people become prophets comes in the prophet Joel, “It shall come to pass I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions (Joel 3:1).

St. Peter quotes this passage of Joel at Pentecost.  “These people are not drunk, as you suppose," St Peter tells the crowd, "for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel" (Acts 2:15–16). 

St Paul notes that as Christians we now live in the Spirit, we are no longer veiled as Moses was, but “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

So we see that the backdrop for our painting of this Gospel scene is the promise of a New Moses, perhaps even to the surprise of Jesus contemporaries, one who is greater than Moses (Hebrews 3:1-6, Matthew 17:1-8, John 1:17, Acts 13:38-39), who will bring about all that is promised in the prophets, especially the coming of the Spirit into the hearts of his people. This backdrop will become increasingly important as we journey forward through the successive narratives of John 6.

The Faith of Philip and Andrew

If this is the backdrop to the scene, who are the characters added to it? Two people especially standout as they interact with Jesus: Phillip and Andrew. We are told that Jesus wishes to test Philip. There is a stark contrast between the responses of their two Apostles. Looking at the crowd Jesus asks Philip, "Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?"

Philip replies, "Two hundred days' wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little."

By contrast Andrew says, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?"

When we look at the response of Philip, the impression we get is that he is saying, “Jesus that is impossible.” He ends the sentence with the word, “little.” We do not have enough resources to do this. It's impossible.

Andrew by contrast responds not by saying "this is impossible" but instead presenting the problem to Jesus. His words are essentially saying, “How is this possible.” His sentence ends with the word, “many.”

The Glass Half-full or Half-empty

If I carefully measured a glass of water in front of you so that you were convinced that I had filled it half full and then I asked you, “Is the glass half full or half empty?” I think most people will say it is  half full, thinking that it is better to maintain a positive attitude. Clearly, someone might look and say, “Look, I still have half a glass of water left” while another could say, “Dang! I drank half the glass. Now I only have half left.” Yet it is the same glass of water in both cases. 

A clever person, therefore, might answer that the glass is both half-full and half-empty. Therefore, we might ask what makes the difference between these two interpretations. The glass of water does not change. Instead, what we bring to the glass from our hearts makes the difference. I think Philip is seeing the glass as half empty. There is too little food. Andrew sees that the glass is half full but is still unsure that Jesus can make this work for many. We might call this hopeful but realistic.

I am sure Philip later learned to think differently, but on this day, he seems to respond to Jesus with raw skepticism. “Jesus the glass is half-empty and this is impossible.” By contrast, Andrew says, “Jesus, the glass is only half-full so how is this possible for so many?” Lord, I believe, help me to understand. Andrew illustrates an important attitude that leads to faith.

Many times in life, we are left discouraged by what we actually see before us. It may seem like there are not enough of us to make a difference. We may suffer trials and setbacks. Yet if we offer Jesus what little we have, he may surprise us with the result. As the Lord reminded St. Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Faith is trusting in what we do not see.

The Grass is Greener Where you Water it.

In a Catholic Marriage ceremony, the bride and groom exchange solemn promises with one another that form a covenant bond between them.

The bride and groom exchange promises to be faithful to one another, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love and honor one another. The couple also promises to enter a permanent relationship, which lasts “all the days of our life.”

Modern psychological research has demonstrated that the pillars of a lasting marriage are commitment and trust. A Catholic Marriage ceremony dramatically highlighted these values.

When we think about commitment in Marriage, we need to realize that commitment grows slowly over time. Commitment is an act of the will, a firm decision to value our partner above others. We must do this in both difficult traumatic times, and in mundane busy times. Our commitment carries us forward.

Trust is also something that builds slowly, as we experience our partner being trustworthy. We build trust with our husband or wife in small day-to-day interactions that may seem inconsequential. Trust is also lost in a thousand small cuts when in little ways we prove untrustworthy to our partner. Brené Brown has observed what she calls the paradox of trust. In order to build trust we must be open with them and risk vulnerability. Yet at the same time, it is the building of trust, which inspires vulnerability. In small ways, then we must take the risk by offering our own vulnerability, in order to begin to inspire trust, this trust will in turn help us to be more vulnerable.

In an extensive four-decade-long study, “trust” emerged as the key factor for strong Marriages. Trust, however, is not like a light switch or an attribute that we either have or do not have. We build trust slowly in small interactions and experiences with another person. In the case of spouses, in our daily life together.

We build up trust slowly as we prove ourselves trustworthy in our interactions with our partner. Each moment, we have the choice of turning toward them and connecting with them or turning away and ignoring them. In these interactions, trust either is built up or declines as the cumulative effect of these interactions.

Some simple activities for inspiring trust in our married relationship include showing up and being there for the other person. There are many distractions in our lives, and most of them are on a screen. Setting time aside to be present and to listen to our partner is a simple way to build trust.

In conversations between couples, our partner often makes small bids for connection. They give us a signal that they want us to stop and pay attention to them and listen to them share about their life. In these small moments, we need to turn towards and not away from our partner. In doing so, we will slowly allow our trust to grow in the relationship.

Consistently turning away from our partner erodes trust and eventually makes us spiral into negative thinking about our partner. Once we have allowed this negative climate to become normal, one study showed that we are 50% less likely to respond to our partner’s needs. Negative thinking often leads people to think the grass is greener somewhere else. Neil Barringham points out, it is more true to say “the grass is greener where you water it.”

In Sacred Scripture, we learn that love is not a passive emotional state, but a call to action on our part. St. Paul tells us, “Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

In his great ode to love, St. Paul notes, “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; … Love does not insist on its own way…it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, cf. Philippians 2:1-5).

What can we do to water the grass in our relationship? The answer might be deceptively simple. We need to pay attention to our spouse and be ready to respond to their bids for connection. Although this isn’t hard to do, often when we are tired or already engaged in some entertainment, it is an effort to stop or to turn off the screen and respond.

In a study of 3400 couples followed for more than 40 years, the couples who turned toward their partners 86 % of the time remained married, while those who did so only 33 % of the time later divorced.

If we have allowed our relationship to become somewhat negative we need to make a serious effort to change or replace negative thoughts with patience, kindness, and forbearance. We need to learn to compromise rather than ‘insist on our own way.’ Rather than ‘rejoice in the wrong we see,’ we can forgive, and learn to ‘rejoice in the right.’ We can take these things to our prayers (cf. Philippians 4:8).

One powerful way to change our thinking is to take time to appreciate our partner. Make a list of things you appreciate about your partner and share it with them. Perhaps read The Five Love Languages together and figure out how your spouse best likes to be appreciated and loved.

Schedule time together for date nights. Build rituals for connection.

St. Paul tells us that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endure all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).