I had the opportunity to speak on the Feeding of the Five Thousand this Wednesday at the Focus service. I’d certainly do some delivery things different, but I enjoyed the process. Below is my manuscript.
Introduction
Mankind is a hungry being. We come into the world hungry. I wake up almost every morning hungry. In the middle of the afternoon, if I haven’t eaten anything, I’m hungry. Satiating our hunger is one of the most basic, and I would say holy, experiences in God’s creation. Depending on how hungry we are, we can sometimes go to interesting lengths to curb it. I’m reminded of some of the things I’ve seen on the show Man vs. Wild – things like eating live bugs – not for a dare or for money, but to simply stay alive on the journey. When my hunger gets bad, really bad, I do my own version of Man vs. Wild and walk into the cafeteria. Sometimes I wish I had a survival host to point out the good from the bad in there. In all seriousness though, our cafeteria, in an odd way, has the potential to be a holy place where holy meals are shared. If satiating our hunger is one of the most holy experiences in creation, then starving to death has to be one of the most glaring disfigurements of God’s created order. The early church father Basil describes this marring of God’s intent when he talks about the effects of a famine happening in his area. He says:
“The pain of starvation, from which the hungry die, is a horrible suffering. Of all human calamities, famine is the principle one, and the most miserable of deaths is no doubt that by starvation. In other kinds of death, either the sword puts a quick end to life, or the roaring fire burns out the sap of life in some instances, or the teeth of beasts, mangling the vital limbs, would not prolong the torture. Hunger, however, is a slow torture which prolongs the pain; it is an infirmity well established and hidden in its place, a death always present and never coming to an end. It dries up the natural liquids, diminishes the body heat, contracts the size, and little by little drains off the strength. The flesh clings to the bones like a cobweb. The skin has no color…
Now, what punishment should not be inflicted upon the one who passes by such a body? What cruelty can surpass that? How can we not count him among the fiercest of fierce beasts and consider him as a sacrilegious person and a murder? The person who can cure such an infirmity and because of avarice (greed toward self) refuses his medicine, can with reason be condemned as a murderer.”
Hunger is real, and deadly hunger is alive and well today. So where is God in all this? Why make us with this holy need and then leave the world to slowly fall apart through empty stomachs? Does he care? Should he care? We’re not the first people to ask these questions, the Scriptures are filled with God’s activity toward toward hunger.
I’d like to look at several “feeding” stories from scripture in our time tonight and through our journey I hope we’ll see that: Our God is a God who feeds and nourishes His creation back to life, and His church should do the same.
The Meal at the Garden
The first stop comes in Genesis. On the sixth day, at the end of creation narrative after God creates humanity in His image and gives them the charge to increase in number and care for creation, God then says: “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”
Even before the fall, we’re hungry. Continual sustenance in the form of food is part of the way we were made. And it’s not just that we need food, it’s that God provides it for us. In the beginning God created hunger to be satisfied through His provision for us. We didn’t make the seed-bearing plants and the fruit trees, He did – and they were given to us – God did not hoard and ration them from us, as some other ancient gods were known to do. This is a God with an open hand, a hand full of food to keep His creation full of life.
The Meal in the Dessert
Fast forward to our next stop – the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. God has miraculously rescued His people from slavery in Egypt and they find themselves in the dessert without food. The exodus is a big step in God’s plan for restoring the world after we wrecked it, and food again plays a major role. Israel was legitimately hungry and was in real need of food – they needed a lot of food and a continual supply of food. We often think of Israel as kind of whiney in the dessert – that they acted like spoiled children who couldn’t appreciate what they had (a rescue from slavery), but some commentators see the request for food, the “grumbling” in the book of Exodus as a legitimate expression of need and fulfillment, not the placation of sassy kids who need a piece of candy to shut up for the rest of the ride home. In a big way, God demonstrates his love and care for his children through feeding them when they needed it most. There’s a lot to be said about the manna, but let’s move on to our next stop.
The Meals at Gilgal
Our next miraculous meal is kind of an obscure one, but interesting in light of it’s obscurity. It comes from 1 Kings chapter 4 and is composed of two meal situations, let’s listen to the text:
38Elisha returned to Gilgal and there was a famine in that region. While the company of the prophets was meeting with him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot and cook some stew for this company.”
39One of them went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine. He gathered some of its gourds and filled the fold of his cloak. When he returned, he cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were. 40The stew was poured out for the men, but as they began to eat it, they cried out, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it.
41Elisha said, “Get some flour.” He put it into the pot and said, “Serve it to the people to eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.”
A few things from the Pot ‘O Death story: 1) people had a real hunger for food – it’s a famine, 2) they had instructions from God’s servant on how to satisfy that hunger with a stew, 3) they found something more enticing with this “strange vine” and decided they knew better 4) the potential for death comes as a result, and 5) God’s servant Elisha steps in and removes the death through the use of good food. This is a quick and beautiful microcosm of our garden experience and the work of Christ to come.
Continuing on to the next part:
42A man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing the man of God twenty loaves of barley bread baked from the first ripe grain, along with some heads of new grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” Elisha said.
43“How can I set this before a hundred men?” his servant asked.
But Elisha answered, “Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the LORD says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’ ” 44Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.
A few things from the second story: 1) There are a lot of hungry people (100) and not enough food, 2) God provides for his people even when they themselves are skeptical, 3) it’s more than enough for their hunger.
The Meal for the 5,000
Our next stop is our text for tonight, the feeding of the 5,000. John’s gospel provides excellent Christological reflection on the feeding, so I won’t spend a lot of time on that, because we’ve been hearing and will hear all of that strait from John throughout the service. What I do want to point out is that along with teaching and healing, this feeding is a pivotal example of God’s restoration of the world through Christ. Luke tells us that Jesus began his ministry to this large group of people by talking about the kingdom and healing those who needed healing. Mark says he began by teaching many things. Matthew said he began by healing their sick. These two activities were important because they look forward to the reversal of the Fall – teaching is the declarative act of telling us how the world should be and how we engage with God, and healing is the tangible deposit that points toward the restoration of our bodies from death. And now, added to that restorative preview is the way that God keeps us restored – through this life sustaining food that we’ve needed, we needed it even before the Fall in the garden. The tree of life is always on the menu, even after the resurrection in the new heaven and new earth. The teaching and healing were not the final act of Jesus ministry here, Jesus’ fullness in restorative ministry comes through this miraculous feeding.
The other thing I’d like to draw our attention to is the shear abundance of the whole thing. Food for upwards of 20,000 people is hard to wrap your mind around. I got a small taste of that last month on my week of E3 trip. Each year I take 6 students to a Benedictine Monastery in Chicago for a few days of prayer, silence, and retreat. Each year we spend one afternoon at the Greater Chicago Food Depository sorting food that gets distributed to hungry people throughout the city. This year our group worked on sorting and packing a little over 5,000 lbs of lettuce. That’s enough lettuce to maybe use as a sandwich topper for 20,000 people, but nowhere near enough for a salad a piece. What I’m trying to say is that Christ was incredibly abundant and open-handed in this feeding. There were plenty of leftovers, everyone’s hunger was satiated. He’s not like those other gods or authorities who make you beg for food and then ration it out, He’s abundant and open-handed.
The Meal at Emmaus
One last meal to look at and then we’ll eat. Jesus’ meal with two disciples at Emmaus. It’s a short meal, Jesus doesn’t stay long, so we won’t either. What I want us to notice in this meal story is that, again, the encounter with Jesus is wrapped up in the breaking of the bread. Jesus taught them a lot on the way to Emmaus, Luke tells us he explained the whole Old Testament – how about that for an intensive week class? But even though they were taught by the master teacher, they didn’t recognize Jesus until he broke the bread with them, then it all made sense to them. The text says “their eyes were opened.” We’ve heard that phrase before all the way back in Genesis when Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened when they ate the wrong thing, but now, the disciples eyes are opened when they eat the right thing given by the right person.
Hear me clearly: teaching is an absolute necessity in the church, but we sell ourselves short when we do not experience and recognize Jesus in the breaking of bread that he offers to us and to the world.
The Meal of the Church
So what do we do with all this? God demonstrated through all these feeding stories that He’s taking care of us and does that in the fullest way through Christ himself, but we’re not God – what are we supposed to do with a world that needs God to feed them – and I mean feed them in every sense of the word? When Paul talks about the Lord’s Supper in the middle of Chapter 10 in 1 Corinthians, he asks the rhetorical question: “Is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” We, the church – Christ’s body - participate in God’s provision for the world. We share bread because it is part of our newly transformed nature in Christ. We participate with Christ as he brings life to the world – and feeding people, healing people and teaching people is all a part of that. The gospel is bigger than an idea, it’s bigger than teaching – it’s our participation, through the power of the Spirit, in Christ’s work of recreating and sustaining the world. That’s what this bread and this cup do when we have eyes to see, ears to hear, noses to smell, tongues to taste, and fingers to feel. We eat the bread and drink the cup and we are sustained by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and then we partner with Christ in his recreation of the world through life in the Spirit.
The early church had a beautiful custom at the end of their Lord’s Supper celebrations, which typically happened during or after a meal – they would always gather food or resources and distribute them to the poor. I would hope I don’t need to point you to all the scriptures that call us to care for the poor, the hungry, the orphan, and the widow among us. What I want us to recognize is that caring for them is so much more than a command, it’s who God is.
Conclusion
Our God is a God who feeds and nourishes His creation back to life, and His church should do the same.
We are the body of Christ in the world. How are we the life of the world? Who are we feeding? What opportunities are we passing up that let us join God in feeding the world? Where have we withheld manna or barley bread, refused to contribute flour to a “pot of death” to bring it life? Where have we missed opportunities to see who God is when we share meals and share at His Table? How many times have we failed to recognize the sustaining power of Christ in our holy eating and then left the world to die of hunger? Maybe it’s time to start showing the world Jesus at the breaking of the bread – bread that does what teaching or healing alone cannot do – bread that meets every hunger we have and restores us and the world into God’s beautiful rest.
I opened with Basil’s description of death by hunger, I’d like to close the way he does. Remember, he preached in hard economic times of famine when there was a big disparity between the rich and the poor. He says this:
“Are you poor? There are others poorer than you are. Have you two days’ provisions? They have only one. Be good and gracious, and share what you have with the needy. Do not hesitate to give away the little that you have; do not put your personal interest above the common danger. Even if your food is reduced to one loaf if there is a beggar at the door, take this loaf out of your cupboard, hold it up to heaven in your hands and say these sad but generous words:
‘Lord the loaf which you see is my last and danger is imminent; but I am remembering your command and am giving of the little that I have to my brother who is hungry. You give also to your servant who is in peril. I know your goodness, and I trust in your power. Do not delay your goodness for long, but if it seems good to you, bestow on us your gifts.’
If you speak and act like this, this bread which you have given in your need will be the seed of a harvest, it will produce abundant fruit and will be the pledge of your food, having been the ambassador of mercy.”