Profanation of the Sacred, Consecration of the Profane

There are few instances where I find modern liberal theology more pretentious and embarrasing, than with the occasionally popular spin on today’s gospel recounting Jesus’ miracle of feeding five thousand with a few loaves and fish (John 6:1-15).  Too often, Scriptures are savaged by fellow priests, proudly proclaiming the meaning of this miracle in profane and even unholy terms that goes something like this: when the people saw a boy share his food, they too began to unpack and part with their own hidden wares, wondrously providing food for the masses. 

The “miracle,” if one dares to call it such, was that sharing engenders generosity.  Any reference to the truly sacred or divine intervention on the part of our Savior is wasted, reduced to ruins.  Even non-believers would be hard pressed to come up with a less acceptable interpretation that diminishes the fullness of this miracle into a debased and meaningless symbol.  And yet, there it is, for all to marvel and wonder at: those who are hungry can and ought to feed themselves. 

It takes faith to believe in miracles.  It takes humility to profess the limitless power of God.  And what a wonder to behold, when the little overshadows the great in the divine scheme of things.  God’s word is much more than a seed sprouting into a tree or potency coming into being, though it humbly presents such wonders as almost ordinary occasions for meritorious belief.  It seems to me that only a very proud man would diminish the accomplishments of a colleague through thoughtlessness or spite; yet that is how this miserable interpretation reduces God’s word to rubble.  There is nothing sacred to behold, nothing holy to admire; there is no need to uplift common everyday experience already revered and redeemed.  As the marvelous philosopher Josef Pieper bluntly states: it is almost as if “we Christians are no longer able or allowed to acknowledge anything as sacred” (In Search of the Sacred, pg. 16).

Modern theology is rife with tendencies to desacralize, toning down the “vertical” for the sake of expanding the “horizontal.”  It diminishes divine intrusions into something friendly and familiar that one can digest comfortably and comprehensibly. But then, one would wonder why we bother to call this theology at all.  And rightly, one would be lost for words how any worthy preacher could proudly minimize the marvel of miracles into folklore that is shallow, ordinary and dull.