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The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
"Proper 13"
The Rev. David Frazelle
Many people today have a hard time reading miracle stories like the one we just heard from Matthew’s gospel, about the spontaneous feeding of five thousand people. A fundamentalist reading would take each word literally and would not look beyond the literal meaning of the text. This would force one to account for the feeding by some process of nuclear fission by which the bread and fish molecules separate and multiply. On the other hand, a few of the secular scholars theorize that everyone in the crowd had a picnic basket, and that’s how they had enough food. The fundamentalist reading seems hard to swallow, and the secular scholarly reading seems so boring that it would not be worth recounting, even if it were true, which it cannot be given the other evidence of the text itself.
The truth is that we will never know in modern scientific terms exactly what happened on that grassy plain two thousand years ago when 5,000 men and their families ate and were filled. We will never know because Matthew the evangelist was not interested in modern scientific reporting. What we do know, and what Matthew is so eager to tell us, is that on that day, in the presence of Jesus, with a little food and a lot of people, all ate and were filled. And Matthew is inviting us, his listeners, into a world where all eat and are filled.
At the heart of this miraculous feeding story lies a simple, three-fold action which is also at the heart of the eucharist. First, at Jesus’ request, each person brings what little he has to Jesus and offers it to him. Secondly, Jesus gathers the offerings and blesses them, meaning that he both gives thanks for them and prays that God’s purposes will be accomplished through them. Thirdly and finally, Jesus breaks the bread and re-distributes it to every person as any has need. The result is that all eat and are filled. Because people obey Jesus’ request to offer their private stores of food to him for the nourishment of all, all eat and are filled. Because Jesus mediates God’s blessing and the crowd’s thanksgiving for that food, all eat and are filled. Because Jesus, with the help of his disciples, re-distributes the food to all who are hungry, all ate and were filled.
Matthew is clear, too, that this crowd was fed and filled on all levels of their being. Their physical hunger was satisfied with bread and fish. Their hunger for community was filled by the gathering around Jesus in prayer. Matthew goes to great pains to tell us that even their spiritual hunger for ultimate union with God was met and filled. The crowd, he writes, does not “sit down” as in our translation, but rather they lie down upon the green grass beside the waters of the lake. Do you see what Matthew is doing with these details? “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He revives my soul . . . Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” By referencing the 23rd psalm, Matthew is saying that this crowd was filled spiritually, as well as physically and emotionally. By the simple, three-fold action of the bringing, blessing and breaking of gifts, this crowd was filled physically, socially and spiritually with nothing less than the kingdom of God! That is the miracle in our story.
Today, God is inviting us into a miraculous world where all eat and are filled. Today, Jesus invites us to bring what little we have – our food, our money, our time, our knowledge, our lives – Jesus is inviting us to offer whatever we have to him. To the extent that we respond to Jesus’ invitation, Jesus will receive our offerings; Jesus will mediate our thanksgiving for and God’s blessing upon those gifts; and Jesus will break open and redistribute and multiply those gifts until all are fed. This is the mission of the Church. This is how we as members of the universal Church become more and more fully the living, physical body of Christ on earth. This is how we make the whole world a eucharist – giving, blessing, breaking and redistributing – this is how we participate, here and now, in God’s eternal kingdom, where all feast upon the bread of God and are filled.
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