The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Five Loaves and Two Fish: Not The Sensible Solution

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

This Gospel story, which we have heard many times, is central to the Good News of God in Christ. One reason we have heard it so much is that it appears in all four Gospels, even twice in Matthew’s Gospel with different numbers involved of loaves and people and baskets! Obviously Jesus’ early followers considered this extraordinary event of major importance in communicating and understanding the kingdom of God brought in by Jesus. It is a multi-layered story with much to teach us and inspire us.

Prior to today’s passage, Jesus has just learned that Herod had frivolously killed Jesus’ cousin and precursor, John the Baptist. Entranced at a banquet by the dancing of his stepdaughter, this self-indulgent king gave in to her demands for John’s head and served it to her on a platter. Deeply saddened, Jesus withdrew in a boat “to a lonely place apart” to grieve. Or at least he tried to. Thousands of people, hungry for his presence and his teaching, preceded him on foot and were waiting for him. Despite his grief, Jesus had compassion on them and began to heal the sick and to tell them more about God.

And then even more extraordinary things began to happen. As evening came, the disciples got anxious about how they would feed all these people – “about five thousand men” and presumably a like amount of women and children, ten thousand people or so in all. The disciples came up with the most sensible solution. “Send the crowds away, “ they urged Jesus, “to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Overruled! “They need not go away,” Jesus responded, “you give them something to eat.” Stunned, they did a quick inventory and came up with five loaves and two fish, but they could not see how these would help. “Bring them here to me,” Jesus told them. Then he took these meager gifts “and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples,” who gave them to the crowd. “And they all ate and were satisfied.” In fact twelve baskets were left over.

The meal, of course, is at the heart of the kingdom. A meal, that is, where everyone is welcome, from which no one is turned away, and where all eat and are satisfied. Notice that Jesus does not first weed out orthodox Jews or liberal Jews or Gentiles or immigrants or Roman sympathizers or those who interpreted scripture differently. Everyone counted; no litmus tests were required. “All ate and were satisfied.” What a contrast with Herod’s banquet, which was not only exclusive, but also rife with self-indulgence and political intrigue. Jesus, the real king, provides even in a lonely place apart, an experience of God’s kingdom in a common but extraordinary meal.

There is something about the very nature of sharing food together, food which nourishes by dying, so to speak, and becoming transformed into human beings, who also are dying in some way to being mere individuals and becoming part of a community larger than themselves, which embodies the reality of the kingdom of God. The Eucharist, of course, is the fullest expression of that in this life, and the evangelists quite intentionally use the same words in this Gospel passage as they do at the last supper, when Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my Body.” The profoundly spiritual nature of an “ordinary” shared meal is transformed even further when the food we share is the very body and blood of Jesus, given for us and broken for us. It points us to the ultimate fullness of the heavenly banquet, where, no longer separated by differences, real and imagined, all are made one with God and with one another, and all will eat and be eternally satisfied. This significant Gospel story then, expresses the universal, life-giving, unifying nature of God’s kingdom “on earth [and] as it is [and will be] in heaven.

But it also teaches us about the nature of discipleship. We are often faced with situations where there is not enough, where the demands of getting to what could be seem too great, where the most sensible solution seems to be to send everyone away. “We cannot feed all the hungry. Why should we even try?” “We do not have more furniture and clothes and apartments and jobs for all these refugees. Let them go somewhere else.” “We have already stretched the financial giving in this parish far enough. We cannot further expand our ministry or our annual budget, and we certainly cannot raise the money necessary for more effective buildings.” “We already have too little parking. Let us ease up a bit on making newcomers feel so welcome!” “There are so many people who need affordable housing. With all the work involved, is not our Habitat’s partnership’s building one or two houses a year just a drop in the bucket?” “It is wonderful to start another local Episcopal congregation, but how can we afford to send them people and money?” “We will never find theological agreement with so many African bishops, whose culture is so different from ours. Why should the Episcopal Church put any more energy into maintaining Anglican unity?”

When as human beings, we are imitating the first disciples and choosing the sensible solution, Jesus says two things to us. First, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat;” and then when we lament that we have so few resources, he tells us, “Bring them here to me.” “Bring them here to me.” If we are to be people of faith, we must joyfully heed Jesus’ encouraging invitation. If we would truly place our trust in God and not in ourselves, we must take the risk of rising to the challenges God calls us to and of asking God to bless our limited efforts. If we would help reveal God’s kingdom, we must bring whatever it is we have to Jesus and let him do something extraordinary with it.

For in so doing, we will be helping to unleash the power of God in lonely places of our world that so desperately need it. We will progress in becoming the disciples of Jesus that God calls us to be. We will be gathering around the banquet table of the Lord, where in the words of today’s Gospel hymn, “God’s cup with love doth overflow” and where all God’s children are “thither led” that they might God’s “sweet mercies know.”

Matthew 14:13-21