Then he said, "Bring them here to me," and he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over– twelve wicker baskets full. Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children. (Matthew 14:13-21)
Jesus is the new Moses. How do we know? Yesterday’s Gospel was about the Transfiguration with Moses (and Elijah) being with Jesus. Today’s first reading is about Moses and manna (from heaven). It reads:
The children of Israel lamented, "Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna."
Manna was like coriander seed and had the color of resin. When they had gone about and gathered it up, the people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves, which tasted like cakes made with oil. At night, when the dew fell upon the camp, the manna also fell.
When Moses heard the people, family after family, crying at the entrance of their tents, so that the LORD became very angry, he was grieved. "Why do you treat your servant so badly?" Moses asked the LORD. "Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people? Was it I who conceived all this people? Or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers? Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me,
'Give us meat for our food.' I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress." (Numbers 11:4-15)
Five loaves and two fish certainly weren’t much for the five thousand men, not counting women and children. Wasn’t it? The Presbyterian Reverend Dr. Anne Epling provides her opinion I’ve excerpted below:
(begin) Barbara Brown Taylor says she wishes she was there to hear that, to see how they looked at each other when he said that. “What do you mean we should give them something to eat? All we have between us is five loaves of bread and two fish, which is hardly a snack for twelve men, never mind 5000. There are 5000 people out there, Jesus. No disrespect intended, but you are not making sense!” (The Seeds of Heaven, p.50). They were operating out of a sense of scarcity, Barbara says. They looked at the crowd, assessed the need and their own meager resources, and came to the very sensible conclusion: there is not enough. “We have nothing,” they said. We have nothing.
All these years of preaching this story, all those years of Sunday School and learning about this story, and I’d never really heard that turn of phrase, that feeling of inadequacy in the disciples’ reply. We have nothing. Nothing but a few loaves and some small fish.
How many of us here have uttered that same thought; felt that same thing. I have nothing. We have nothing. How many times do we look at the smallness of our offering, the insignificance of our abilities, the inadequacy of our treasure, and think we have nothing to offer?
You know we’ve all done it. We compare what we have to what other people have, whether it’s the size of our bank accounts or the size of our church, and think that in comparison, we have nothing to offer. We wish we had more, thinking that we’re too small, or our gifts and abilities are too inadequate or too insignificant to make any difference. But we forget that God uses everything we have, even five loaves and two fish, to transform the world! We forget that every parable about God’s kingdom, every teaching Jesus had about how God creates something glorious starts with something small…
…God invites us to look at the world, this beautiful world around us, and see richness and abundance. God takes what we have, no matter how little there is, and does great work, transformative work, healing work. We might see nothing, but God sees limitless possibilities, enough to feed 5000 people.
You know, just last week I read a quote from Walter Brueggemann that says, “When you are with Jesus you are inescapably in the bread business,” and I chuckled when I read that, because we are certainly in the bread business at FDP (Faith Des Peres Presbyterian Church). We pack backpacks for school children, go to Food Outreach and pack food for people living with HIV/AIDS and cancer; we grow food in our community garden; we pull a wagon on communion Sundays and give the food to Circle of Concern. We do a lot with food.
Are we going to cure world hunger? No. But there are people who will have food because of our efforts; people who may otherwise be hungry won’t be because of our offerings. What we do isn’t insignificant, or small or inadequate; it’s a lot – and I think it makes God look down and smile. In this story God challenges our assumptions and stretches our imaginations to learn that even when we do not think we have what is needed, what is needed is still at hand. And it is not nothing. It is enough. It is more than enough. (end)
This Presbyterian minister obviously doesn’t have our Catholic perspective of our Eucharist. But that doesn’t matter. Her words ring true.
Deacon David Pierce
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