THE WORD IN THE GOSPEL
Matthew 14:13-21
In this passage, Jesus has
just heard about the death of his friend and cousin, John, who we call “The
Baptist.”
When Jesus heard about
John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds
learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. When Jesus arrived and
saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick.
That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and
it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and
buy food for themselves.”
But Jesus said to them,
“There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”
They replied, “We have
nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”
He said, “Bring them here
to me.” He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves
of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the
loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to
the crowds. Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets
with the leftovers. About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.
THE MESSAGE “The Multiplication Factor”
You may not know this, but when
I was younger, I was very good at math. I took advanced math courses in High
School and I scored very high on the math section of the SAT. I was headed to a
career in mechanical engineering when life intervened and my plans changed.
Although I’m pretty rusty
now when it comes to things like calculus, I still love a good math problem. So
I started thinking about today’s gospel story about Jesus feeding 5,000 hungry
people.
If we look at this story in
terms of a math problem, it would look like this: (5+2) x = 5,000.
Or, (5 loaves + 2 fish) x = 5,000 lunches with leftovers.
The “x” here would be the
multiplication factor – the number of times that the loaves and bread were
multiplied to equal 5,000 meals.
But wait, that’s not right.
According to the story, the 5,000 people didn’t include the women and children
who were there. And, after everyone had eaten, there were a lot of leftovers.
So the correct way to write
it would be like this:
(5+2) x > 5,000.
Now, I’m sure there are
some math whizzes here that have already figured out the answer to this simple
algebra problem. But if you do know the answer . . . hold that thought
Sometimes, people look at
miracle stories like this and get too bogged down in trying to determine if it really
happened the way the gospels describe it: did Jesus actually take 5 loaves of
bread and 2 fish and turn them into a giant banquet? Was this really a miracle?
But getting bogged down in
the story like that is to miss the point. The point is not whether the story is
historical fact, because the Bible was never meant to be an encyclopedia of
historical facts. The Bible is one grand sweeping story of people’s faith and
their understanding of how God works in our world.
So when we look at stories
like this – Jesus feeding 5,000 people with nothing more than a happy meal –
these are questions we need to ask: What does the story mean? What does the
story say about God? What does it say about us? What does it say about the way
we live out our faith?
This story about Jesus
feeding a large crowd is found in all four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John. Each gospel has different details, but I like the way the gospel of John
tells the story.
In John, Jesus looks at the
crowd and asks Philip, “Where will we buy food to feed these people?”
Philip says, “More than a
half year’s salary worth of food wouldn’t be enough for each person to have
even a little bit.”
Then Andrew comes to Jesus
and says, “This boy here has five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is
that for a crowd like this?”
Jesus said, “Have the
people sit down.”
And then the people ate
until they were full.
It’s interesting that Philip’s
main concern isn’t the needs of the hungry people. No, Philip’s immediate
response isn’t about people at all; it’s about money, or more appropriately, a
lack of money. “But Jesus,” he says, “even six months’ worth of wages wouldn’t
be enough to buy enough bread for all these people!” Philip can’t see any
possible way that they can feed all these people, he can’t imagine any way to
make it happen.
But then a ray of hope
enters the story. A young boy offers a new possibility: five barley loaves and
two fish. Now we have to give Andrew some credit, because he takes this small
bit of food to Jesus. But then Andrew lets his hard-nosed adult rationality get
in the way: even as he offers the loaves and fish to Jesus, he dismisses their
potential value by saying, “But what are they among so many people?”
Jesus looks at this meager
amount of food and sees opportunity. He takes the boy's gracious gift and uses
it to feed all those people. And even after all of them have had their fill,
there are 12 baskets of food left over!
Where the disciples saw
only impossibility, Jesus demonstrated the kind of thing that is possible when
we allow power and compassion of God to work through us and in our world.
Where the disciples saw
only puniness and inadequacy, Jesus saw an answer to the problem of meeting
people’s needs.
The disciples learned a
valuable lesson, a lesson about what it means to live as followers of Jesus and
people of God’s kingdom. When confronted with a chance to carry out God’s work
of caring for people and meeting their needs, the disciples should have been
looking for ways to succeed instead of looking for excuses to fail. They should
have been looking at the problem not with eyes of reason or practicality, but
with the eyes of faith.
As John Belushi said in the
movie Animal House, “Nothing is impossible for the person who will not listen
to reason.”
I think some people feel
challenged or even become stalled in their faith journey when they look at
things from the disciples’ point of view – when they focus too much on what
they lack or what they don’t have or on what little faith or time or energy
they do have to offer.
I’ll admit that it’s very
easy to look at the enormous amount of need right here in our own little village
– to look at all the people who don’t have enough food or work or adequate
medical or dental care or friends or support or encouragement or hope. It’s easy
to see all that and think, “what difference can I possibly make?” Where will
the money, the resources, the energy come from to meet even the most urgent of
all those needs?
But those are the wrong
questions.
In this morning’s story, we
see a strong contrast between the boy, who offers the little bit that he has
with innocent generosity, and the disciples, who are only concerned about
practical issues.
But notice that what Jesus
takes and transforms and puts to use is NOT the disciples’ financial cautiousness
or their concern for the impracticality of feeding all those people. What Jesus
takes and transforms is that generous, genuine offer of just a little bit. And
this is the point of the story: God can take whatever little bits we have to
offer and transform them into an abundance.
And this is precisely where
we are called to have faith: faith in the power of God to take our “little
bits” and transform them into “more than enough.”
To transform our
practicality into generosity.
To transform our feelings
of inadequacy into hope and expectancy for what we can accomplish with God’s
help.
The answer to that math
question, then, is this:
(5 loaves + 2 fish) x [the power of God] > 5,000 lunches
plus leftovers.
The “x” represents the
power of God, which is an amount we can’t name or contain or even imagine.
We can imagine that
equation like this:
(Whatever “little bit” we
have to offer) x The Power of God = more than enough
I’d like to invite you to
think about those times in your life when God took some little bit that you
offered – some little bit of money, or time, or energy, or faith – and
multiplied it and turned it into “more than enough.”
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