Matthew 14:13-21
Now when Jesus heard this, he
withdrew from there 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. 
So, here we are: this is the summer.
Allegedly.
I don’t know whether it’s something to do with the street I
live in but this time of year seems to me to be characterised by the smell of
barbeques.
I must be deeply anti-social or I have some other personality
defect but I don’t find chasing paper plates around someone’s garden, while balancing
a cup of cheap beer and avoiding ketchup stains and salmonella, a recipe for
unbridled fun.
But that’s just me.
This time of year always puts me in mind of my Auntie Doreen
in Barnsley. Have I mentioned my Auntie Doreen in Barnsley before? No? Well,
you know the phrase “glass half full, glass half empty”? It makes no difference
to her, she’ll drink it anyway. So, I called round one day and she was in a bad
mood having bought two barbeque packs from B & Q.
“There” she said brandishing one in my face. “Look at the
picture.” The picture showed a barbeque, all set up, with succulent food
cooking nicely.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Well, look for yourself.” She said brandishing the open box
again. “It’s a bag of charcoal. There’s no food.”
I explained gently, not wishing to make her feel stupid that
it was just the cooking element of the barbeque she had bought and that no food
was included what with B & Q not generally selling food.
She took it well, I thought, and then turned on her heel and
headed for the kitchen. “I’d better get the other one out of the freezer,
then.”
Today’s Gospel, though not exactly describing a barbeque on
the Galilean hills, tells of Jesus meeting the needs of his hungry followers.
I don’t know whether you had realised that there is a second
miracle of feeding the multitudes. This comes a couple chapters later in
Matthew’s gospel – and in Mark’s Gospel too.
Jesus asked them, “When I broke the five loaves for the five
thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to
him “Twelve.”
“And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full
of pieces did you collect?” And they said to him “Seven.” Then he said to them
“Do you not yet understand?”
Jesus poses a very important question, “Do you not yet
understand?” and that question is for us today as much as it was for his
followers then. Do we understand?
How we understand the miracle stories of Jesus is real
problem to some people as if there was only one answer. This is one of the best
known of the miracle stories of Jesus: it’s in all four Gospels. Most of us
have heard it before and most of us have heard it countless times and because
of that most of us believe we understand it. That can make us lazy, “Oh, I know
this one. Nudge me when he’s finished.” But the question of what we understand
from this event remains important.
Christians have argued down the ages about the true meaning
of these feeding miracles. One approach is that everything is to be taken at
the plainest level of meaning and must have happened exactly as it is written.
The response to this miracle is to say “Well, it just goes to show that Jesus
is God, doesn’t it?” To some people, doubting that a miracle story happened
exactly as it was recorded in the Gospels is as good as doubting the divinity
of Christ. If God exists, then anything is possible surely? If Jesus is the Son
of God then we shouldn’t be surprised by such a miracle. That’s a perfectly
reasonable understanding of the story.
The problem with this way of looking at the story is that it
ignores any symbolism at the story’s heart.
The approach other Christians use is to strip away any of the
supernatural bits of the miracle accounts to reveal the morals behind the
stories. In this case those Christians have understood the moral to be that
when Jesus fed the five thousand he and the disciples shared out what they had
and their example encouraged others who had been holding back their own food to
share theirs too. The “real” miracle, then, was that everyone discovered the importance
of sharing with others and caring for them. This approach isn’t to deny the
power of God because, as we’ve said, if God exists then surely anything is
possible but in this way of looking at the story we see the power of God at
work in a much more subtle way: we don’t need great signs and wonders, possible
as those are, when God touches the hearts of people to care for each other.
That too is a perfectly reasonable way of looking at the
story.
But the problem with looking at the story in this way is that
it hardly sounds like good news and certainly not a tremendous demonstration of
God’s overflowing generosity to his people.
Does it matter?
Really does it matter?
If we can take something away with us from a Gospel passage
about the nature of God, does it really matter that you’ve taken one point and
you’ve taken another and that we haven’t agreed? We’re all at different stages
in our growth as Christians and the Holy Spirit guides each one of us
differently. How you understand a passage of the Bible today isn’t necessarily
how you’ll understand it in five or ten years’ time. Is it realistic to expect
that someone who has been a follower of Jesus for most of their adult life will
understand in the same way that someone who has just become a disciple does?
So I ask again, does it really matter providing that we each
feel that God has spoken to us in some way through that passage?
So, for what it’s worth here’s what I took from the story –
and this is where seeing this story of feeding the five thousand on its own
without the other one which comes later, feeding the four thousand, – doesn’t help
us to see the full importance of either story because they need to be
understood together.
The first miracle takes place in a Jewish area near the Sea
of Galilee while the second takes place in an area called the Decapolis, a
largely Gentile area, the Gentiles being anyone who isn’t Jewish: you and me.
Why is that important?
I think it’s important because these two stories taken
together reflect Jesus’ mission: they reinforce what Jesus was all about. He
came for ALL people.
In John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say to his Jewish audience, “And
I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they
will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” So the good
news Jesus brought wasn’t just for his own people, although they heard it
first.
St. Paul takes that thought further in his letter to the
Romans where he writes, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the
power of God for salvation to everyone
who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.”
These two feeding miracles are the mission of Jesus to all
people acted out, first to his own people, the Jews and then to the Gentiles,
everyone else.
So, take your pick: a story about the miraculous power of
Jesus revealing that he is God; a story where the example of Jesus shows people
the importance of caring for one another or a story which acts out Jesus’
mission to bring salvation to all people.
And, do you know what? I don’t much care which one you go
with. Are they not all valid understandings of this Gospel passage? The
question each of us needs to ask is, “What is the Holy Spirit teaching ME this
morning?” Not, “What’s the Holy Spirit teaching him … or him, but what’s the
message for me in this passage?”
The bottom line to all these approaches is found in John’s
Gospel where Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. I am the living bread that
came down from Heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
That’s what we’re moving on to here this morning in our
Communion service.
Amen.
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