St. Peter's By The Sea
The Episcopal Church in Narragansett, RI
August 3, 2008 - Feeding the 5,000
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Charles Swindol tells a funny story about a nine-year-old named Danny who came bursting out of Sunday school like a wild stallion. His eyes were darting in every direction as he tried to locate either mom or dad. Finally, after a quick search, he grabbed his Daddy by the leg and yelled, “Man, that story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!” His father looked down, smiled, and asked the boy to tell him about it.
“Well, the Israelites got out of Egypt, but Pharaoh and his army chased after them. So the Jews ran as fast as they could until they got to the Red Sea. The Egyptian Army was gettin’ closer and closer. So Moses got on his walkie-talkie and told the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians. While that was happening, the Israeli Navy built a pontoon bridge so the people could cross over. They made it!”
By now dad was shocked. “Is THAT they was they taught you the story?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Danny admitted, “but if I told you the way they told it to us, you’d never believe it, Dad.”
With a childlike innocence the little guy put his finger on the pulse of our sophisticated adult world where cool skepticism reigns supreme. It’s more popular to operate in the black-and-white world of facts … and, of course, to leave no space for the miraculous.1
I can only remember one lesson from my time in Sunday School at St. Michael’s & All Angels … and that lesson was on the Feeding of the 5,000. I was in 3rd or 4th grade and I can still see Mr. Tillinghast explaining to us how the miracle took place. He told us that the people were so moved by the generosity of the little boy with the loaves and fishes and by Jesus’ generosity that they brought forth the food they had hidden under their clothes and in their travelling pouches. In this way everyone was satisfied.
I could see that our teacher was very pleased by this explanation, but even now I can remember the feeling I had of being cheated. His attempt to explain the event in rational terms had robbed it of its mystery, his explanation had robbed us of the miracle. And it is a very great loss, when we lose our sense of wonder in the face of mystery, and when we lose sight of the miraculous.
In the ancient world people perceived things differently than we do. They had two different ways of thinking and speaking, which scholars call myth and logos.
Mythic thinking was primary, and it was concerned with what was eternal and universal, rather than what was practical and every day. It explained everyday occurrences in terms of the sacred forces moving behind them. Mythic thinking was what gave meaning to life.
The second kind of thinking was logos and this was the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enable men and women to function in the world.
By the 18th century in Europe and America the success of science and technology had led people to think that logos was the only means to truth. For the most part we have lost our sense of myth today, so much so that the word myth has come to mean something that is false or fanciful.
What my Sunday School teacher had tried to do for us was to make sense of the story of the feeding of the 5,000 in rational and pragmatic terms, because he, like most of modern society, had lost the ability to think in mythic terms.
What I believe we need is not to demythologize our lives, and to recognize that there is a place for the mysterious, and the miraculous … there is a place for the sacred, there is a place for God in our lives. Without room for symbol and myth and miracle, we are an impoverished people and our hunger can never be filled.
The question that faces us in the story of the feeding of the 5,000 is not “Did it really happen?” or even “How did it happen?” The real question is simply this: What is the meaning of this event … what does it tell us about God, about our world, and about ourselves?
The story begins just after Jesus has received word about the beheading of his cousin John the Baptist. When he heard this he left in a boat and went to a lonely place in the wilderness. However, when the crowds heard this they followed him on foot from the towns and when he came ashore there was a great crowd of people waiting for him. Now, our text says that there were not 5,000 people, but 5,000 men, plus women and children. So I would imagine the crowd that followed Jesus into the wilderness was probably more like 15 to 20,000 people. And when he saw them he had compassion on them, and he healed their sick.
Several points stand out about the initial setting of the story, of the miracle. First, obviously, is the fact that Jesus has led a vast crowd of people into the wilderness. Any Jew of Jesus’ time hearing this account would immediately recognize the parallel with the experience of Moses leading the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to their sojourn in the desert. This is part of Israel’s mythic history and it means that in Jesus God is again leading his children from bondage to freedom. And it says to us that our journey with God is a journey from bondage, from whatever it is that imprisons us, to the freedom of one of God’s children.
The second point that strikes me is the hunger of the people who are willing to walk out into the wilderness to follow Jesus. They certainly didn’t go there to get a free meal – no, in their hunger they went, forgetting their need for food. They had a deeper need of nourishment … a need for freedom, a need for healing, a need for acceptance, a need for love, a need for justice … and above all a need for the experience of the Presence of God.
They walked out to a lonely place, to a place apart, with their worries, and their fears, their pains and their sicknesses … seeking that which could nourish all their deepest needs and desires. And when Jesus looked upon this vast crowd of people he had compassion on them and he spent the day healing the sick. Then it was evening and the disciples, who were practical people, came to Jesus and told him that they have only 5 loaves and two fish so he should tell the crowd to go away.
The other day as I was thinking about this scene and it was close to dinner time and I heard my 3 year-old daughter Ava pleading with her mother for some candy. Of course my wife Carol told Ava that it was almost time for dinner and she couldn’t have any. Well, you know sometimes you get really hungry or you get a craving and you can’t take no for an answer. It was that way with Ava and I heard her crying and pleading with her mother and saying, “The only thing that will make me happy is sugar.”
And you know, we’re not all that different from a three-year-old – we all get caught up in our hunger and our cravings and our needs that we think will make us happy. Ava also reminded me of the early Israelites in the desert. We are told in the book of Exodus that after all the congregation of the people of Israel had gone into the wilderness that the people murmured against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16:3)
This was the mythic background, that is the context in sacred history, for what is to take place. In the Exodus story after the complaining of the Israelites God provides them with quail in the evening and then manna from heaven in the morning. And now in the wilderness again Jesus says to his disciples not to send the people away but to feed them. And the disciples bring him the 5 loaves and the 2 fish and he offers them up to God and he blesses them and gives them to the disciples to feed the crowd. And all 15,000 or 20,000 ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of leftovers.
Again there are echoes of Israel’s time in the desert, for Jesus first offers the food to God, and now it has become the food that comes down from heaven. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John “Truly, truly I say to you it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” … And then he tells them, “I am the Bread of Life.” (John 6:32-35)
And now we come to what I think is the key point, the central meaning of the miracle of the feeding of the 20,000. Jesus came to us proclaiming a new reality, the reality of the Kingdom of God, the reality of God’s presence within us and among us. The reality of the amazing abundance of God’s love for us.
As I’ve noted before, over and over he tells us, “Do not be afraid”; “Do not worry”; “Do not be anxious” – That is our ordinary reality. And we are, being people of the world, afraid, worried, anxious. And Jesus calls each of us by name like he did Martha when he said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about so many things, but only one thing is needful.”
Jesus tells us don’t be anxious about our lives, about what we shall eat, or drink, or about what we shall wear. He doesn’t deny our needs … he didn’t say to the vast crowd “forget about being hungry.” He tells us God knows all our fears and anxieties, God knows our needs … But seek first the Kingdom of God and all those things shall be ours as well.
Seek first the abundance of God’s overwhelming love and presence … and God will provide abundantly. That is what the feeding of the 5,000 means. The crowd sought first the Kingdom of God and they found God’s overwhelming love, and compassion and nourishment.
Do not be afraid, do not worry, do not be anxious … you are loved by God and it is his great pleasure to give you the Kingdom.
In His Name. Amen.
1 Brett Blair
Posted on: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 12:51 pm
Category: Sermons