Do you suppose the authors of the four Gospels were aware of today’s first reading from the second book of Kings? Of course they were. The prophet Elisha fed a hundred men with twenty barley loaves in order to prove God’s power. This same miracle, now multiplied by more people fed by fewer loaves, is attributed to Jesus in all four Gospels. In today’s passage from John we even have the detail that the loaves were barley, reminding every pious Jew of that miracle that Elisha worked. Yet Jesus went into hiding when they wanted to make him king. It is the passage from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that gives us the reason for this. The power of Jesus comes from God. It is not meant merely to feed us, or to provide one group with a king. There is one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all who works through Jesus Christ and through us all.

Separation, isolation, and hostility are terrible things. We are, sadly, too familiar with all of them in our modern life, whether we look at world events or events in our own neighborhoods and families. All three readings today refer to these same sad human conditions.

The prophet Jeremiah describes world conditions as if the people of his time were sheep who had been scattered by poor leadership and corrupt shepherds. But “the days are coming,” he assures us (Jeremiah 23:5), when a new shepherd, a just king, will come. We meet that king in the second reading and the Gospel. Paul reminds us in the Letter to the Ephesians that all divisions can now cease in Christ Jesus, who has brought us together through his blood. In Mark’s Gospel we see Jesus himself, looking with pity on those searching for him as if they were sheep without a shepherd.