Text: Matthew 14:13-21 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Feeding the Five Thousand
13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 As he went ashore he saw a great throng; and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick. 15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17 They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” 18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass; and taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
“Now when Jesus heard this…” One of the unfortunate results of chopping the Gospels into bite-sized pieces is that we have many passages that start like this one, which don’t give us the whole context in which they are placed. Here, the obvious question is: “When Jesus heard what?”
This chapter of Matthew’s Gospel begins with Herod, who, upon hearing of the things Jesus has been doing, tells his servants that Jesus is the reincarnation of John, “and that’s why miraculous powers are at work in him.” Then we read, in a sort of flashback, of the execution of John, ending with verse 12: “Then the disciples came, removed the corpse, and went and reported to Jesus.” (CSB)
That’s what Jesus heard. And, based on that, it’s not at all surprising that he should decide to withdraw to a lonely place apart. John, after all, was Jesus’ cousin – he was kin. We can easily imagine John and Jesus playing together as children, and there’s no reason to think that the two of them were not close.
So, Jesus decides to go someplace to pray and grieve by himself. But the crowds won’t have it. They walk around the lake, keeping his boat in sight the whole time, so they can meet him when he gets to the other shore.
It was a considerable walk – something like nine miles. It must have taken quite a while to get to the other side, considering that the crowd was made up of not just men and women, but their children; so it had to have been pretty slow going.
But they did it. And when Jesus sees their determination, he has compassion on them. We see here another example of the selflessness of Jesus and the grace of God he bestowed on everyone. The Sea of Galilee is a pretty sizable body of water, and it would have been easy enough for Jesus, when he looked over to the shore and saw all the people making for his probable landing spot, to just change course and sail somewhere farther away. But he didn’t do that. Even though he was probably bone-weary and heartsick about his cousin, he kept on course, landed where they expected him to, and then he began to heal the sick that the crowd had brought him.
Let’s pause a minute to reflect. To say Jesus was a complex man is probably the understatement of the millennium; he had a backbone – just read all the passages where he went toe-to-toe with the movers and shakers of his world and never backed down. He had a temper – recall his outrage at the moneychangers and vendors in the Temple, and how he knocked over their tables, opened the cages of the doves, and laid about him with that whip he made out of cords. He was definitely not “gentle Jesus meek and mild” on that day!
But more than anything, the human Jesus was a man of compassion who embodied in himself as God all the compassion and love of God. This is the Jesus I revere and to whom I have given my allegiance. And, I believe, that at the end of the day, this is the Jesus most of us in this wonderful thing we call the Church also love and follow. That great old hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” which we sang just a few weeks ago, states it very well:
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure and boundless love Thou art.
Above all, the hallmark of the Christian, more than any other thing, is compassion. Every single miracle Jesus performs is done out of compassion. Jesus heals ten lepers; he heals the daughter of Jairus; he brings Lazarus back from the dead – even though the Gospel writers say things like “this is done to show the glory of God,” or words to that effect, and even though that’s true, nonetheless the events themselves are at heart dramatic and powerful acts of compassion.
Feeding 5,000 tired, hungry people – not including the women and children present – definitely ranks up at the top of dramatic and powerful acts of compassion! And, as a miracle – it’s right up there, too!
We will never know exactly what happened on that day so long ago. But we know that something earth-shattering happened, because this is only one of two miracles recorded in all four of the Gospels. The other one is the Resurrection itself. As Prof. Karoline Lewis writes: “That fact alone should encourage pause and reflection when it comes to preaching this miracle that most certainly put Jesus on the map. Why this story? What is so important about it? What does it reveal about God, about Jesus, about who we are called to be in the world that each of the evangelists said, ‘Hey. Now that story is definitely worth remembering.’”[1] The people who were there that day wanted to make sure that the world knew what had happened. They told and retold this story for generations, until it was finally written down by Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, and preserved for us today.
Unfortunately, it’s at this point that so many people get wrapped around the axle with the question: “Could this really have happened exactly as reported in the Gospels? Could Jesus really have turned five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed 5,000+ people?” My short answer to this is: Of course! We’re dealing with God here, and nothing is impossible for God. Jesus could just as easily have fed 10,000 people with one fish and one loaf, or no fish and no loaf – because what we call “miracles” are commonplace for God. Given that, believing that Jesus worked this miracle exactly as reported is as legitimate a way to understand this parable as any other. It’s only our 21st-Century minds that have a hard time believing this – early Christians, as David Lose tells us, were simply not concerned with the whys and how-tos; after all, in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel we read that Jesus is “Emmanuel – God with us,” so for a God who created the universe out of nothing, multiplying a few loaves and fishes is no challenge at all.[2]
There are two other ways to look at this miracle. The first of these is that this was more of a sacramental meal, similar to our celebration of Holy Communion. In this view, the crowd was fed spiritually, not physically. There is some justification for this, because the wording in the lesson is reminiscent of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper: “[H]e looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.”
The second of the two views depends on assuming that at least some of those people would not just have set off on a nine-mile hike through the countryside without bringing a bag lunch. In this scenario, the people in the crowd, upon seeing Jesus taking the meager provisions he had and distributing them to those around him, were inspired to share what they had with those around them, and the miracle, a miracle of transformation, occurred: And all were fed.
But getting caught up in such discussions as these misses the point, as far as I am concerned. And the point, again, is this: That Jesus saw people in need, and showed love and compassion to them. Remember that the mission statement of Jesus’ ministry is “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.” How much more directly could the nearness of the kingdom be shown than by such a monumental act of grace? Tearing down the Temple and rebuilding it in an instant would have been dramatic and certainly proof of the power of God – but it wouldn’t have had the effect on (literally) a gut level that this miracle did, because it showed beyond the shadow of a doubt that what Jesus had been saying all along – that God was their loving Father, not just their righteous Judge – was absolutely, categorically true.
It’s also very significant that this miracle has to do with food. Most of the people Jesus dealt with were either barely at or even below the level of subsistence – so even a scrap of bread might have been the most that many of the people in that crowd would see on any given day. It’s no accident that the Lord’s Prayer asks God to “give us this day our daily bread”; for many people in that day and age, daily bread truly would have been a welcome gift of God. For all but those on the very top rungs of the social ladder, scarcity was the order of the day. So when Matthew reports that “they all ate and were satisfied,” we really understand why this story was considered so important, so miraculous, that it is found in all four Gospels – people almost never were able to eat their fill. Jesus, our compassionate God, provided enough, and more than enough, to those starving people on that blessed day – and we have not forgotten it to this very day. That is the power of compassion.
There is another set of actors in this drama – the disciples. We usually forget them when we talk about this story – we concentrate mostly on the miracle itself, on Jesus, and the crowds. But the disciples are not a bunch of cardboard cutouts – in fact, they play a key role. Note that Jesus does not give the loaves and the fishes directly to the crowd – he gives them to the disciples, and they distribute them to the people. They must have been as amazed as the people in the crowd when they found that, no matter how much they distributed, there was still as much and more left in their baskets. These men, who just a short time before had been complaining to Jesus that there was just no way that they could possibly feed all these people, were now enthusiastically working their way through the throng, joyfully giving out the now inexhaustible supply of bread and fish.
William Barclay reminds us of an eternal truth that has a profound impact on each and every one of us: “This miracle informs us very clearly of the place of the disciple in the work of Christ…Jesus worked through the hands of disciples that day, and he still does.
“Again and again, we come face to face with this truth which is at the heart of the Church. It is true that the disciples are helpless without their Lord, but it is also true that the Lord is helpless without his disciples. If Jesus wants something done, if he wants a child taught or a person helped, he has to get someone to do it. He needs people through whom he can act and through whom he can speak.”[3]
In other words, he needs us, Sisters and Brothers!
Like the original disciples, when faced with the enormity of the task at hand, we might feel paralyzed, totally unequipped to do anything worthwhile, much less something that makes a difference.
But Jesus called us to himself, called us by name to become members of his Body, the Church, for a reason. He knows us – our fears, our weaknesses, our quirks – but here we are. He calls us anyway. And he doesn’t ask us to do anything without first giving us the ability to do it! As St. Augustine put it: “Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.”
I’ll close with a quote from Pastor Alan Brehm which I think really sums it up for us:
“[W]hen we let go [of] our fears and concerns about our own well being—at least when the situation calls for it—and open our hearts to the people we encounter with a giving spirit, we become channels of the divine compassion that can have a truly miraculous effect.
“Our compassion, our loving kindness may be small and faltering, but if we will just give what we have, perhaps in the giving it will be multiplied to meet the needs. When we give compassion freely, it ripples out far beyond our ability to explain or even imagine. When we open ourselves to be channels of compassion, those streams of kindness and mercy that flow through us have an effect that only God knows.”[4]
Every one of you is a compassionate person! Let your compassion flow like a never-ending stream!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Lewis, Karoline, “When a Miracle is More Than a Miracle,” Working Preacher, July 27th, 2014, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3293
[2] Lose, David, “Pentecost 8A: The Real Miracles of the Story,” “…in the Meantime,” July 28, 2014, http://www.davidlose.net/2014/07/pentecost-8a-the-real-miracles/
[3] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume Two, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Ky, Westminster John Knox Press, © 1975, 2001, The William Barclay Estate, p. 118, emphasis added
[4] Brehm, Alan, “Channels of Compassion,” Wednesday, August 10, 2011, “The Waking Dreamer,” http://thewakingdreamer.blogspot.com/2011/08/channels-of-compassion-mt.html