Scriptures: 2 Kings 4:42-44 Psalm 145:10-18
Ephesians
3:14-21 John 6:1-21
The Hunger Games trilogy depicts the fictional country of
Panem – named for the Latin word for bread, and set in a post-apocalyptic North
America – in which the wealthy Capitol is surrounded by twelve impoverished
districts. Every year, each district
sends two children, a boy and a girl, to fight to the death; the winning
district is given food, supplies and riches.
While of course the trilogy is
futuristic fiction, it provides a commentary on our current situation in which
a wealthy few live fantastically privileged lives, while many live with
diminished expectations and blighted hopes for their future and that of their
children.
For this morning and the month of August, the lectionary
takes a detour from Mark’s gospel into the 6th chapter of John’s
Gospel, which begins with the account of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand,
and extends into a meditation on the theme of Jesus as the bread of life. And so
we’ll be reading the 6th chapter of John’s gospel today and through
all of August. We might say that the message of the feeding of the five
thousand is the exact opposite of that of the Hunger Games – a message of
abundance coming in the midst of apparent scarcity. It is striking that the feeding of the five
thousand is found in all four gospels, a rare occurrence – while many miracles
show up in more than one gospel, few show up in all four. In three of the gospels – all but Luke’s
gospel – the feeding of the five thousand is followed by Jesus walking on the
water. Also, in three of the gospels –
all but John’s gospel – the feeding of the five thousand is preceded by the
banquet of Herod at which orders were given for the beheading of John the
Baptist, who was a mentor to Jesus – and we’ll say more about that other banquet
later. So the feeding of the five
thousand was seen by all four Gospel writers as crucial to understanding who
Jesus is – and in three of the gospels, this feeding was preceded by Herod’s
banquet and followed by Jesus walking on the water – again, three of the gospel
writers thought that Herod’s banquet helped us understand Jesus’ banquet, and
that Jesus walking on water was crucial to understanding who Jesus is.
Our reading begins with Jesus being followed by a large
crowd. Jesus led his disciples up a
mountain and sat down with them there.
But as Jesus sat down, the crowd found him, and so….don’t look now, but
here come all the people. Jesus asked
Philip a question, to see how he would respond:
“Where are we going to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip gave a very practical response – six
months’ wages would hardly buy enough bread to give each of them a bite. Andrew tries to be helpful: “Well, I found a boy who brought five barley
loaves and two fish – but they’re not going to be much help feeding this
crowd.” Jesus told the disciples to have the people
sit down – and John’s gospel tells us, as Mark’s does as well, that there was a
lot of green grass there, so the people sat down on the grass. Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and
distributed them to the crowd, as he also did the fish. When everyone had eaten, Jesus asked the
disciples to gather up the leftover fragments, which filled twelve
baskets. And we’re told that there were
5,000 there, the size of a Roman legion.
So Jesus had taken a boy’s lunch
and distributed enough food to feed an army.
I think the question we always want to ask about any of the
miracles in the Bible, such as this one, is “How did this happen? How did Jesus do this?” And we’re not given any answers, and so the
question of “how” remains a mystery.
Perhaps a more helpful question to ask is “Why?” And, of course, the obvious answer is
“because the people were hungry”, and that’s certainly true. But in John’s gospel, this along with other
wondrous acts, such as his healings, are called, not miracles, but signs. And a sign, of course, is something that
points to something beyond itself. We
may see road signs on the way to a tourist attraction, but we’re probably not
going to stop and take pictures of the sign itself, unless there’s something
unique about it – we just follow the sign, arrive at our destination, and
probably don’t give the sign another thought.
And Jesus’ miracles, such as the feeding of the five thousand, are like
that. Of course, for the hungry folks
who were there, it had great significance, because for once in their lives there
was more than enough food for all of them.
But the miracle also pointed beyond itself to say something about who
Jesus was.
The feeding of the five thousand was a sign that pointed
backwards, to God’s saving acts in the history of Israel. We might think of God providing manna and
quails to the children of Israel during their 40 years in the wilderness, and
indeed, later in this chapter of John’s gospel, the people in the crowd
themselves make this association. When
they say, “this is the prophet that has come into the world,” they are
referring to a small section of Deuteronomy 18 :15-18, in which God promises to
raise up from among the people a prophet like Moses. And so when they saw Jesus teaching and feeding
the crowds, they made that association.
Later in the chapter they explicitly mention the manna Moses provided in
the wilderness, and ask Jesus to do the same, to provide them food every
day. There were other Scriptures in
which men of God fed large crowds with small amounts of food, such as in our
Old Testament reading today, in which the prophet Elisha fed 100 people with 20
barley loaves and fresh ears of grain, and, as the reading said, they ate, and
had some left. This feeding may also
remind us of Isaiah’s vision of the restoration of Israel, when he wrote in
Isaiah 55:1, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who
have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without
cost. Why spend money on what is not
bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat
what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. “ The feeding of the five thousand connects
Jesus to all of these moments in Israel’s history.
For us as Christians, this feeding also points forward to the
Last Supper, and to the Eucharist. It’s
notable that, even though John’s gospel devotes several chapters to Jesus’ last
supper with his disciples, he doesn’t mention eating bread and drinking wine in
his memory, for John, Jesus’ most memorable act at the Last Supper was his
washing the disciples’ feet. But that
language about breaking bread is here, at the feeding of the five
thousand: we’re told, “Then Jesus took
the loaves, and when he had give thanks, he distributed them to those who were
seated.” Wine is not a part of this
story….but still, for John, this feeding of the five thousand points ahead
toward Eucharist.
The feeding of the five thousand is a sign of the reign of
God breaking into our world, and turning the ways of the world upside
down. The society of Jesus’ day was
similar in some ways to that of the Hunger Games, with a few fabulously wealthy
people – the Roman emperor and his officers and courtiers, and the various
overlords they installed in the colonies they controlled – surrounded by a vast
sea of grinding, desperate poverty, with impoverished peasants competing with
one another for the scraps that fell from Rome’s table of plenty. Herod’s banquet, which precedes Jesus’
miracle in three of the gospels, makes explicit the contrast between the
world’s ways and the ways of the kingdom.
At Herod’s banquet, only his favored few were invited. Those favored few ate well, while multitudes
outside their banquet hall starved.
There was an unsavory element, when Herod had his daughter dance for his
guests, basically throwing a young teen or pre-teen girl in front of a banquet
hall of half-drunk, leering men – hashtag #hertoo. And then, of course, came the request from Herod’s
wife, relayed by his daughter, for the head of John the Baptist on a
platter. At Herod’s banquet, gluttony,
decadence and debauchery among reigned among a favored few, while multitudes
outside the banquet hall starved and the blood of a righteous prophet was
spilled on the whim of Herod and his wife.
By contrast, at Jesus’ banquet, the invitation was open to
all, regardless of their position in society, regardless of whether they were
seen as worthy or unworthy. There may
well have been thieves and bandits among the crowd, but none were barred from
the table And there was plenty enough
for everyone and to spare. Good food,
good fellowship – this was Jesus’ vision of the reign of God. And table fellowship – eating and drinking
together – was a distinctive feature of worship in the early church. Our monthly dinner church, to which all are
welcome and at which there’s food left over to take home, may give us a faint,
fleeting glimpse of what Jesus had in mind.
We live in a country and in a world that increasingly
resemble the Hunger Games, in which a few are wealthy beyond imagining while
millions in this country and billions around the globe go to bed hungry. Three men – Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates
of Microsoft, and investor Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway – hold more
wealth than the poorest 50% of our country combined, more wealth than our
country’s poorest 160 million people or 63 million households.[1] Globally, the 42 wealthiest people in the
world have more wealth than the poorest 50% of the world’s population combined,
more wealth than the world’s poorest 3 or 4 billion – that’s billion
with a “b” - people.[2]
And this didn’t just happen; it’s a
result of deliberate policies of business and government. It’s not just a
shame; it’s a sin, an abomination before God Almighty. Meanwhile, here at Emanuel Church, we’ve had
parishioners bringing jugs to church to take home their water for the week,
have parishioners living in shelters or on the street. Poverty is no stranger to our congregation…..but
likewise, love and sharing and caring are no strangers to this congregation
either, as we do what we can to feed hungry bellies as well as hungry spirits.
Neither poverty nor extreme wealth are part of God’s
will. Jesus’ feeding the 5000 reminds us
that, though we see a world of scarcity, a zero-sum world in which one person’s
abundance means the poverty of many others, God sees a world of abundance. There is enough – God has provided enough - to
satisfy everyone’s need, though not enough to satisfy everyone’s greed.
There’s also a message, a very hopeful message, for each of
us as individuals and for us as a congregation – not only do we have enough, we
are enough. We are enough. We may feel like that boy’s lunch of five
loaves and two fish, like we have little to offer God and the world. We may feel like we’re a dime a dozen, that
our lives are of little value, that our lives are too small to be noticed by
God or to make a difference to those around us.
We may feel that as a congregation,
we’re too small to have any impact in our community. But when our lives are put in God’s hands,
blessed by Jesus, and broken open for the world, our lives are abundant and
life-giving and powerful beyond imagining.
Even in our brokenness and even with our human limitations, placed in
God’s hands, we are enough, as individuals and as the gathered community of
Emanuel Church – we are enough.
A young boy entrusted Jesus with his lunch of five loaves
and two fish, and multitudes were fed.
May we entrust our lives to Jesus, put our lives into the hands of
Jesus, to be lifted up, blessed, and broken open to meet the needs of the
world. May we see in ourselves and in
our sister and brother Christians what we see at the communion table – the Body
of Christ, broken and distributed for the world’s salvation. Amen.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/#33faa193cf86
[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5295743/Worlds-42-richest-worth-poorest-50-combined.html
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