Text: Matthew 14:13-21
It was no picnic.
The 5000 men and who knows how many women and children had gathered not to have a good time. They had not come for a meal. They had come to be healed.
Often when we gather with others to eat it is a time of celebration. To remember anniversaries, to celebrate birthdays (as we will today after worship), to mark momentous beginnings like weddings or baptisms. Or we gather in fellowship, to share conversation and food, as we do every week here at coffee hour, or as you might when you meet for dinner with friends. At times like these, food provides the context and adds richness to our relationships with one another. It is not the point. It is not the reason.
But for many people and at many times food is the point. The people who came to Jesus came to be healed. It is why they were there, in this version of the story, and it is why Jesus was there, too. Even though he was upset at hearing about the death of his colleague and friend John the baptist. He wanted to have some time alone, to be by himself. But people were sick and needed him. So he had compassion for them, it says, and cured them.
It takes a long time, evidently, to cure 5000-plus people. It got late. People were hungry. Really hungry, not just something to eat while they were socializing. In the same way they were sick, they were hungry. They just needed food. They were creatures needing food to live.
When we have plenty to eat, it is hard to imagine what it is like to not have enough. I cannot pretend to imagine it. I never see people who are starving. Some of you do, I know. I do see people—such as some who come to Faith Kitchen—who are hungry.
It is obvious and therefore seems silly to say that food is basic. We are beings who cannot create our own energy and materials to exist. So we eat other living things and take the energy and materials that they have made. There is no other way for us to live. This is self-evident, but strangely we don’t always remember it when it comes to others. “Send them away,” say the disciples to Jesus, so that they may fend for themselves.
This is not a good time for eating for a lot of the people of the world. No matter what you think is the problem or the solution, you can see that many people are hungry. Poor people in developing countries spend 50 to 70 percent of their budgets, says one report, on food. To use the word “budgets” as this report does is to sanitize this amazing number. It means that people spend half to over two thirds of all they have or earn in order to eat. The rising price of food, the same report says, is falling most heavily on the bottom billion people. Bottom billion. That’s another amazing number.
There are five steps in this story.
First, Jesus points that something is not nothing. The disciples say “we have nothing here.” Then they say “we have five loaves and two fish.” Bring them here, says Jesus. We start with what we are given.
Second, Jesus looks up to heaven. The food we eat comes from God, not from ourselves. The fish are God’s creatures, the bread God’s grain. We are not self-sufficient.
Third, Jesus blesses the bread. Or asked for blessing. A blessing is a favor, or a favorable look, or a request for a favorable outcome. A blessing acknowledges that not only is God the source of all things, but also that God’s hand is in all that we do with those things. We ask God to help us have goodness.
Fourth, Jesus breaks the loaves. A meal is a common endeavor, served from a common pot. Home made meals are always family style. Wine comes from a cask, bread from bushels. We all eat the same food, divided among us.
And last but not least, Jesus gives the bread to the disciples, who in turn give it to the crowd. There is no miracle without this step. Jesus prepares the meal, but the disciples—and that always means us—distribute the food.
It is God who makes this miracle possible, but it is the people who make it happen. It is Jesus who blesses the gifts of God, but it is the disciples who serve them. God provides food for all of us, but it is we who must see that people are fed. The miracle of food on this planet is not that food is given us. There would never have been life without food. The miracle is that we as people work together to make sure that all people can eat.
We are in a food crisis. There are many people who are hungry and waiting to be served. The prices of basic foods like grain and oil are rising fast and high. In the last year or so the price of cooking oils and the price of rice have nearly tripled, and the price of grains like wheat has doubled. Relief agencies like the Boston Food Bank, which supplies Faith Kitchen with food, are getting less food and seeing much more demand.
A scholar named Heschel once said that the Bible is much less often a story of God’s miraculous work and much more often a story of God’s waiting for people to get to work. Jesus passes out the bread and, I imagine, waits to see what the disciples—us—will do.
Will they hoard it, keeping it for themselves? Will they sell at high prices? Will they burn it for fuel (though how could they do that: it is unconscionable to burn food for fuel)? Will they distribute it through places like food banks? Will they serve others through places like Faith Kitchen?
How we deal with food and hunger reveals much about our souls. In the passage just before this one in Matthew, King Herod has a huge banquet which is known for pride, arrogance, scheming, and murder And in the desert, Jesus prepares a huge meal which is known for healing, compassion, and sharing. And us in our time? For what will we be known?
Send them away. That’s what the disciples want to do. No, said Jesus, you give them something to eat.
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