Spiritual growth is rooted in the courage to be vulnerable

In the story of the feeding of the five thousand we need to look beyond the confines of conventional interpretations, beyond the banal limitations of time and place, and seek instead what are timeless, eternal truths. The gospel writers each use the same story to achieve different ends with different listeners in different Christian communities. We might therefore ask ourselves, with such a vastly greater separation of time and context from the action, how we might tell and interpret the story today, whilst still retaining, and indeed underscoring the resonances at its first telling. If we are to grow, if we are to progress in our spiritual life and experience of God, in our relationships with others and within ourselves, then we must be open to the entirely new. Jesus calls us to uneasiness and skepticism about well-worn paths, to reject the safety of the familiar, the pedestrian, the everyday. Spiritual growth does not take root in certainty and dogmatism, the sanctuary of the known and expected – it flourishes in the rich soil of humility, of vulnerability, of risk.