Text: John 6:1-21
Feeding the Five Thousand
6 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tibe′ri-as. 2 And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii[a] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. 11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. 14 When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Jesus Walks on the Water
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Caper′na-um. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea rose because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles,[b] they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat. They were frightened, 20 but he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
The feeding of the multitude is the only miracle story told in all four Gospels. That’s how significant the early church considered this story to be.
And it is a very dramatic story. As I read it, my mind kept circling back to one question: What is a miracle, anyway?
One definition I found defines a miracle like this – “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.”[1] That’s a good start, I guess, but I would also add that a miracle is something we see that we can’t personally explain. Things happen around us all the time that might fit that category – we can’t explain them, but maybe someone with greater scientific knowledge can. And even for people with more knowledge of the natural universe than we have, there are things that appear miraculous to them, too.
It may be that we can just say that we might not be able to easily define what a miracle is, but we can recognize one when we see it. I have heard it said that what we call miracles are commonplace, everyday occurrences to God.
And they do happen. I believe that miracles happen all the time. Here are just a few real life miracles that happened in just the last few years:
- In March 2015, Utah rescuers heard an adult yelling “Help me!” from inside a car that had crashed into the icy Spanish Fork River. When they raced to answer the call, they found 18-month-old Lily suspended above the freezing water in her car seat. Lilly’s mother had died in the crash, so there was no way she could have been the one calling for help, and Lilly was too young to talk. Lilly had been hanging upside down for more than 14 hours, and would not have survived much longer if it hadn’t been for the mysterious voice;
- Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro died of complications during her C-section in September 2014. Doctors tried to revive her, but 45 minutes after they last detected a pulse, they called her family in to say goodbye. Suddenly, her heart began beating on its own. She experienced no brain damage and soon went home with her healthy baby. Let me emphasize this: Her brain had been starved of oxygen for 45 minutes, yet there was no brain damage!!
- A demolition derby accident crushed Grayson Kirby’s lungs and caused strokes and hemorrhaging in his brain. Family and community members rallied to pray. When Kirby woke up 10 days later, he credited prayer and faith for his healing;
- Doctors tried everything to treat 4-year-old Luke Burgie’s gastrointestinal problems, but the boy was wasting away. After nuns kept a nine-day vigil, praying a novena, Luke was completely healed. Luke’s recovery was even declared a miracle by the Vatican in 2016.
- Thieves held Donnie Register at gunpoint in his store, and he put his hands over his face when they fired a shot. The bullet bounced off his wedding ring, leaving him unharmed. His wife gives credit to God for saving her husband.
“I think it’s a good lesson for men out there to learn that it’s a good idea to wear that ring,” Darlene Register told ABC News. “It could come in handy someday.”
- When little Braedyn Gilliam was in a ATV wreck, he experienced serious head injuries, internal bleeding, and broken bones. His parents fell to their knees, afraid he was about to die. After being flown to a hospital, the doctor treating him returned in shock and reported the boy didn’t have any broken bones, his internal bleeding had stopped, and his head injury had healed. He was badly bruised, but a full recovery was expected.[2]
- As a 22 year old flight stewardess who had boarded the wrong flight because of a scheduling mishap, Vesna Vulović must have cursed her luck when a bomb exploded in the small aircraft where she was working. What followed was a 33,000 ft. drop that resulted in the deaths of 27 out of 28 people in the plane at the time. Vesna was pulled from the debris by Bruno Henke, a former medic during World War II who treated her extensive trauma. She awoke from a coma after 27 days (an ironic number if you see above) with a new lease on life and the claim to the highest fall survived in history. Vesna has since taken advantage of the notoriety granted her to become politically active in former Yugoslavia and Serbia.[3]
And these are miraculous occurrences in this modern, scientifically astute world. So you can imagine how Jesus’ miracles amazed the people who witnessed them.
The trick about miracles is to recognize them. Albert Einstein once said, “There are two ways to live your life. You can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
But there are other things that happen to us that I think qualify as miracles.
Every child is a little miracle. I don’t think it’s possible to witness the birth of a child and not believe in miracles.
Then there’s the miracle of family. Our families can sometimes drive us crazy, but where would we be – what would we be – without them?
Friendship is a miracle. It’s been said that “friends are the family we choose for ourselves.” Just ask someone who has no friends about how important friendship is.
Love is a miracle. We can’t create it; it just happens. God’s love for us – that’s definitely a miracle.
This church is a miracle. For over a century and a half, this stalwart little band of Believers has been doing remarkable things in Jesus’ name.
“Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish …”
We will never know exactly what happened on that day so long ago. But we know that something dramatic and earth-shattering happened, because, as I mentioned before, this story is mentioned in all four Gospels. There’s only one other story that is recorded in all four, and that is the Resurrection itself. So 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.
There are at least three ways to look at this miracle. The first is to take it literally – Jesus took five loaves and two fishes and fed 5,000 hungry men (not to mention the wives and children who were likely also there, which increases the crowd to well over 15,000 people). Thinking of this miracle in those terms is perfectly legitimate, and you would not be wrong in doing so. I hold to this view, because, once again, nothing is impossible for God.
One other way to look at it is as a sacramental meal. The language John uses here is exactly the same language he uses at the Last Supper. So maybe these people were filled and nourished spiritually, instead of physically. The morsel of bread and fish that each person received, blessed by the hand of this Jesus-who-is-God, satisfied and strengthened these weary people to their very souls.
A third way is to view this as a miracle of transformation. If you stop to think about this incident, it becomes certainly plausible that people who are about to go off on a nine-mile hike through the countryside would not just take off without making any kinds of preparations. They possibly would have brought their version of a “brown bag lunch” with them to share with their families and friends, but no one else. Yet, when they saw Jesus take the five tiny loaves and two small fish from the little boy, saw him bless them, and then saw him distribute them as far as they would go – something stirred within them; and, one by one, everyone began giving what he had to those around him, and it became a movement. In the end, there was enough, and more than enough, for everyone.
Yes, that certainly qualifies as a miracle! But, at the end of the day, it’s really not ultimately about the miracles themselves, but about what you might call “the miracles that happened after the miracles.” The miracle here is not what happened to a couple loaves and fishes, but about what happened to the men and women who were there that day. Their view of the world was changed. Their hearts were changed. Their lives were changed – completely transformed beyond anything they ever would have expected.
That’s the promise Jesus offers us, today and every day: The promise of transformed lives, lives that are richer, and fuller, and more deeply meaningful than we could ever imagine. We bring here the broken pieces of our lives to be blessed and made whole again. We come, hungering and thirsting, and leave satisfied.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=definition+of+%22miracle%22&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004
[2] “6 Examples of Real Life Miracles,” Pureflix.com Insiders, https://insider.pureflix.com/lifestyle/6-examples-of-real-life-miracles
[3] “Top Ten Real World Miracles,” https://www.smashinglists.com/top-ten-real-world-miracles/2/