“Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
There are only two miracle stories that are told in all four gospels: we hear one of them today, the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. And while Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all add different nuances to the story, its importance is underscored by the fact that all four of them felt the need to share it with us.
Matthew's recounting of the story takes us with Jesus to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He's retreating from the crowds who have pressed in upon him. His reputation has preceded him: people have come knowing that in the sea of hopelessness Jesus is their hope for restoration to health and to community.
And we're told that Jesus had compassion for them. This is particularly important because we know from the verses preceding today’s gospel that Jesus and his disciples have just learned that John the Baptist, who is family, friend and prophet to them, has been killed on the whim of a scorned mistress of Herod. If there was anyone who needed compassion surely it was the disciples and Jesus himself, grief stricken at this sudden, brutal loss. In spite of their own grief, their attention was on this crowd of thousands of people, people no doubt marveling over the healings that had just taken place among them, their bodies being made whole again.
But now it's getting late. They've been following Jesus a long way for a long time. They have to be tired. They have to be hungry. We can just hear the disciples: “let them go now so they can go back to the villages and get some food.” And Jesus tells the disciples something extraordinary: “they don’t need to leave, you feed them.” There's the pivot point, there’s where the lesson begins and where about many years of controversy about it begins. “You feed them,” Jesus tells them and tells all of his followers through the ages.
And the disciples who at that moment are thinking practically and pragmatically – and probably out of their own exhaustion and despair - respond to Jesus, “but all we have are these five loaves and two fish. That's all we've got.” They’ve left God out of the process. God incarnate is standing among them, but they’ve left God’s goodness and power out of the mix.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus asks the crowd to sit down. This is no small thing. It’s not just an invitation to get comfortable, it’s an invitation to get ready. When a rabbi, a teacher, asked you to sit with him, something extraordinary was about to happen. You were about to experience the gifts that the teacher had to offer, life-changing and extraordinary. It’s like you just got an acceptance letter to a PhD program at Stanford with an expert in your field of interest. And what the crowd saw and heard was Jesus “taking the five loaves and the two fish, looking up to heaven” and calling for God’s blessing.
Why is this a pivot point? Because here the theological world divides itself into two camps in trying to explain the miracle, trying to determine what’s the real miracle happening here? No one doubts that a miracle occurred, they just interpret it differently.
Some will tell you that the miracle was the softening of people’s hearts, their compassion for their companions in the crowd that day, that they actually did have food with them in pockets and bags, meager amounts of their own bread. And when the disciples started to distribute the little they had, people in the crowd began to share with their neighbors. The miracle, then, according to this point of view, is that thousands of people moved from a mindset of scarcity to plenty, overcame fear of going hungry and turned their pockets inside out for another without worrying what’s in it for themselves.
There’s beauty in this interpretation, this softening, this sharing – and the opportunity to ask ourselves if we are happy to throw in with God and participate in bringing about miraculous events. Or if we aren’t happy enough to let God save the world, do it all and look to God to help those who cannot help themselves while we tend to our own needs. Do we make the mistake of focusing on God’s part and neglecting our own?
When my New Testament professor in seminary propounded this interpretation of this gospel story, one of the students pushed back and pushed back hard. “No,” she said vehemently, “Jesus literally made more bread. You’re watering down the unique spiritual superiority of God through Jesus Christ.” In this view, to explain the feeding of so many as an organized social sharing event, is to deny that Jesus has the same creative power as God in Genesis, and to deny that Jesus has authority over all of nature, all of heaven and earth.
To have faith is to believe in the power of Jesus, looking to heaven and creating a miracle of abundance through his blessing. It strips away the supernatural identity of Christ and ignores explicit scriptural details – or lack of them. None of the four accounts says that “then people reached in their pockets and offered their neighbors a bit of bread.” The power of God to break into the most unlikely places accomplishing the most amazing tasks is something we cannot deny.
No one knows the mechanics of how it happened, of how it was that so many were fed. Your interpretation is as good as mine. Either way, what Jesus says to his followers next is as valid today as it was then: “they need not go away. You give them something to eat.” In other words, you take care of them.”
Perhaps the reason that our four gospel writers all share this miracle with us is because of the way that it speaks to us in all of the stages and phases of our lives. At some point in our lives, I think all of us have the opportunity to be the giver of a gift, something in our possession. We might think it's insignificant or unequal to the need.
No matter the size of the gift with which God has entrusted us, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, no matter how small its value on the open market might be, God can do mighty things with even the smallest gift in our hands. To follow Jesus is to express our faith in concrete acts of love, justice and compassion for others; to do the loving thing. It’s no accident that Matthew tells us we will meet Jesus in reaching out to our sisters and brothers who are suffering.
At some point in our lives, we are these disciples. We have been watching Jesus heal and watching Jesus do all kinds of things miracle after miracle we've seen him perform. And despite the fact that we've seen this and despite the fact that he's empowered us to go out and be God's hands and heart in the world, we have that moment of doubt. We see the small gift in front of us and we question whether God can do anything at all with that. We might beat ourselves up for not having more to give. How can this serve God's purpose? What can God do with this and how can God even call us to be instruments of love and grace to take to share to bring God to our sisters and brothers around us?
At some point in our lives, we're one of this crowd, one of the 5,000+ on the shore, sick in body, mind and spirit. We’ve come a long way. We are fatigued and tired. We need healing. We are hungering to be restored to community. We're hungering for the nourishment that can only come from God.
If Jesus telling us “they need not go away, you feed them” strikes fear in our hearts we only need to remember what he says next: bring them (the loaves and fishes) here to me. The promise of the story of the feeding of the 5,000, is that if we join together in unity and faithfulness God will be with us. It’s not a promise that we will not experience pain, that we will not struggle. Afterall, even Jesus had to walk the way of the cross. The promise is that God’s intention for love, peace and justice in the world will ultimately prevail.
So we follow and we listen and we seek and we sit and we learn. And when we experience that joyful moment of healing when God invites us to sit down, tired at the end of the day, we are reminded that something extraordinary is on the way, that in the words of the old time religion call and response, “God is good all the time and all of the time God is good.” It's one miracle - just one miracle - but its truth becomes a lens through which we see the entire spectrum of our lives, and the ways that God's people experience the fullness and the grace and the love of God. Amen.
