One of the things that I love about Easter time, besides all the usual chocolate and the excitement of the Christian high festival, is the 1940s and 50s Biblical epic films that suddenly pop up all over the television. You know the type I'm talking about... DeMille's The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston and other like films decked out in full, lavish spectacle and the women of the ancient middle east looking suspiciously glamorous with heavy mascara.

My favorite of these films is The Robe starring Richard Burton and Victor Mature. The story revolves around Roman Tribune Marcellus Gallio sent to take charge of the garrison at Jerusalem thanks to court intrigue. There, Gallio, played by Burton, has the unfortunate task of nailing a certain upstart Jewish rabbi to a cross... But to make up for it, he did win the rabbi's single garment, a robe, in a game of dice. The rest of the film revolves around Gallio's emotional trauma and his journey into faith, spanning from Rome to the middle east in search of the robe of Jesus.

Enjoying this film immensely, it lead me to read the original novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, a Congregationalist minister who insisted that he wrote novels with a spiritual purpose. In this case, The Robe is perhaps the ultimate exploration of the process of conversion. The reader joins Gallio as he first creates the easy answers to dismiss the power of Christ, only to eventually come around to believing in the very Man that he helped crucify. One notable scene that sticks in my head is when Gallio and his Greek slave Demetrius (played by Victor Mature in the film version) are riding along a Palestinian road, and Gallio is constantly trying to reason out everything he has heard about Jesus and seen of the new Christian community. Over and over again he keeps telling himself that people do not just get up from the dead... Once they're dead, they're dead, and there's no coming back. Demetrius, who preceded his master into the Body of Christ, tells him that he had to deal with the same problem... But really, he was trying to convince himself not to believe what he, in his heart, had already come to believe.

There is another particularly notable scene that managed to get the novel into some degree of hot water. This scene was a retelling of our Gospel reading today: the feeding of the 5000. Gallio is talking with one of the Christians who was present at this miracle, and dissecting what had happened in his quest to dismiss Jesus. What the Christian tells him is of a miracle of sorts, but a more profound miracle than necessarily what we might expect, which is what ended up getting the novel denounced by the Vatican originally.

In Douglas' version, it's not that there wasn't enough food, but that there wasn't enough sharing. Those of the 5000 who had food were too afraid to share it with everyone else... They were afraid that there wouldn't be enough for themselves, or they were shamed by having food at all amidst the teeming, impoverished masses. Either way, they kept their private bounties of fish and bread hidden.

But when Jesus asked if anyone had bread and fish to share amongst the people, the only person that came forward was a child with two fish and five loaves. Though apparently futile, this gesture inspired those with food to share theirs also. The question of "what are they amongst so many people" sparked something within those who had brought their lunches (or had lunches to bring) which conquered fear and shame and led them to exhibit the same simple generosity as the child. Everybody began to break up the food and distribute it to the multitude, and sure enough, there was more than enough food to go around. In fact, they had twelve baskets worth left over! There was nothing to be fearful or ashamed about.

The Tribune Gallio felt that he had an "a-ha" moment at the conclusion of the story. After all, there was no REAL miracle... Jesus had just got people with plenty to share with people who had nothing. But that was the miracle, the Christian pointed out: Jesus had actually changed people's hearts! It wasn't the food that was the miracle that day, but the spirit of generosity and solidarity that passed through the assembled people. The miracle was the conquering of fear and shame, the breaking down of walls of privilege and mistrust. This was the establishment of the Kingdom of God based not on power and glory and Divine signs, but of reconciled relationships between people and of community forged between strangers.

Neither I nor Douglas would go so far as to suggest that this is how the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes actually happened. Personally, I don't know how it happened... If a guy could stop being dead, anything is possible. But there is something that rings true about Douglas' supposition, even if readers of the 40s couldn't see it when they read the novel. They accused him of modernism and apostasy, yet the version of the miracle that he wrote offers us a deep opportunity for reflection about our relationships with others. As nothing more than a parable, it confronts us with our own fears and shame concerning our neighbors, even the ones living on the street.

In this case, it confronts us with our fear of scarcity and our shame of wealth. Here in Alberta, the refrain is so familiar, so stereotypical, and so broad reaching that it's almost boring. We're deathly afraid of being taken advantage of... We're afraid of the poor taking advantage of us through welfare. We're afraid of the east taking advantage of us through reappropriation of provincial funds. We're afraid of the sick taking advantage of us through universal healthcare. We're afraid of foreigners taking advantage of us through aid packages and we're afraid of immigrants taking advantage of us by taking "our" jobs. We're afraid of the First Nations taking advantage of us through treaty programs. We're afraid of the old taking advantage of us through pensions and the young taking advantage of us through free education. Everyone, it seems, is out to take advantage of us unfortunate relatively wealthy white Albertans.

But why such fear? How is it that we have come to be so mistrustful of others, so suspicious, so sure that everyone is out to get us? Why do our newspapers drip with this fear and our politics so pungently stink of it?

One simple response is the transmutation of shame into anger and resentment and ultimately fear. Shame is one dark curse inherited from the Fall and from before. In Paradise Lost, Milton places a diatribe in the mouth of Satan about power and pride and ambition, and the fruits thereof, being shame. And indeed, this passage could come just as easily out of the mouths of so many of us:

O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
DISDAIN forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduc'd
With other promises and other vaunts
Then to submit, boasting I could subdue
Th' Omnipotent. Ay me, they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vaine,
Under what torments inwardly I groane;
While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,
With Diadem and Scepter high advanc'd
The lower still I fall, onely Supream
In miserie; such joy Ambition findes.

When the Accuser became a serpent to seduce Adam and Eve, we received the curse of shame. No sooner had they taken a bite of that fruit than did they notice their nakedness... Not only the nakedness of their bodies, but the nakedness of their psyches. So they clothed themselves both literally and figuratively, masking their thoughts and feelings from each other. And from that came the blame game: "No God, it wasn't me! It was her! She made me eat the apple!" "No God, it's the snake's fault! He made me do it!" Suspicion, the mirror of our own guilt, had set in.

There is a line in a song by a favorite band of mine that repeats the maxim "they say that a liar won't believe in anyone else". If we are caught up in guilt and shame because of our pride or ambition or just the sheer heaviness of our power as an elite class in an elite society profiting so much off of others, then it becomes difficult - if not nearly impossible - to look at others without projecting ourselves onto them.

This is the dilemma that faced King David when he brought his solider Uriah home in the hopes that Uriah would lie with his wife and thus cover the shenanigans that David got himself into with her. What David didn't contend with, though, was Uriah's honor. While his fellow soldiers were enduring hardships and discomfort, Uriah refused to take a place of privilege. No matter how hard David tried, he was frustrated at every step by Uriah being more honorable than him. Finally the king felt he had to just orchestrate Uriah's murder and take Bathesheba as his own.

David couldn't conceive of people who were, frankly, better than himself. He couldn't imagine that someone wouldn't want to take the same advantages and privileges as himself. He couldn't trust in the goodwill of others because he lacked goodwill in himself. Is that our problem as well? Are we so afraid of being taken advantage of by everyone unlike ourselves because we feel deep down that we are not the honorable, upright people that we like to think we are? Is it shame that lashes out so often as anger... The screams of "get a job you bum" from a car window because we know how close we are to being in poverty ourselves, or the subtle whispering about how "they" are coming over here and trying to change everything knowing that this is darn well what "we" did? Are we the ones that the Psalm speaks of, who confound the plans of the poor?

If it is, then we are in desperate need of the Miracle of Loaves and Fishes ourselves. We too need Christ to break through our lives and our walls and our excuses and our shame. We need to free all that up and allow Him to open our hearts and minds to new possibilities and new ways to live. The Kingdom of God has a hard time finding purchase on the sheer cliffs of cold hearts. Generosity cannot exist where there is fear that our generosity may be abused... Certainly it would be abused, because taking advantage of others is exactly what our society trains us to do under the guise of so many economic -isms. But we must learn to live fearlessly, knowing that those who take advantage of us are ultimately only hurting themselves because THEY are the ones forsaking the sweetness of reconciliation.

As for us, the prayer of Paul holds out a beautiful vision: "I pray that, according to the riches of His glory, He may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through His Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love." With love as our gift and the Spirit as our guide, we are free... Free from fear and free from shame, free from being anything other than open, genuine people overflowing with a generosity of spirit that works true miracles. After all, we're not out to change the world... Through us God is out to change minds and hearts, which brings true change, healing and reconciliation to the world.

Amen.