Loaves and Fishes

The Other Six Days: Loaves and Fishes
A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 19, 2004
Exodus 16:9-20; Luke 9:10-17

Exodus 16 9 ¶ Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, “Draw near to the LORD, for he has heard your complaining.”” 10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud. 11 The LORD spoke to Moses and said, 12 “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.””
13 ¶ In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. 16 This is what the LORD has commanded: “Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.”” 17 The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. 19 And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” 20 But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul. And Moses was angry with them.

Luke 9 10 ¶ On their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.
12 ¶ The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish — unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 They did so and made them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

I. INTRODUCTION

I did a search for miracles on the internet. You’d be surprised how many references there are to miracles online. Perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised to discover how many of them seem fairly ordinary.

Among the things I discovered were the lyrics to the Barry Manilow song “It’s a Miracle” in which, apparently, the “true blue spectacle, the miracle” is “you.” Mike and the Mechanics have a song called “All I Need is a Miracle” with the refrain “All I need is a miracle, all I need is you.” So apparently Barry Manilow and Mike and the Mechanics agree that the miracle is “you", that is, a woman.

There are a lot of “miracle cures” out there—for baldness, weight problems, impotence, etc. One site I came across said that drinking water helped you lose weight: it’s a miracle! Hmmm. I thought that was physiology.

And there are a lot of people with stories of apparent wonder telling you how it was a miracle they found their lost cat, or that of all the people who were on that plane when it crashed, some “miraculously” survived. (Personally, I am always loath to attribute survival stories to miracles—it makes it sound like God intended the other people to die in those disasters).

It seems that inflation has caught up with miracles. They aren’t as valuable as they used to be.

II. SCRIPTURE LESSONS

Now, the things we read about in tonight’s scripture lessons: those are miracles! Food falling from the sky? Five loaves and two fish feeding thousands? You want miracles—I got your miracles right here. Think again about those stories… The Israelites have just escaped from the Egyptian armies. They have been lead by a pillar of fire away from captivity. They have seen the waters of the Red Sea yield before them and pharaoh’s army swallowed up. They get to the other side and they start grumbling. Murmuring. They start to complain that they are hungry and that it was better to have stayed in Egypt than to be led to the desert to starve to death. God responds by providing this stiff-necked people with manna and quails to eat. They were able to eat of the manna and the quails as much as each person needed. A miracle.

In the New Testament lesson we read of five thousand being fed by a mere five loaves and two fish. We might be able to use science to figure out what the manna was (it could have been a kind of honey that was left on rocks in the desert) or where the quails came from, but come on—feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish is hard to explain on any level other than a miracle.

We don’t see that kind of miracle every day. Perhaps that’s why so many of the modern references to miracles are so mundane: because we don’t ever really see the other kind.

III. IN NEED OF A MIRACLE: THE HUNGRY

It’s too bad. There are some people who could really use a miracle like those. There are a lot of hungry people out there who would love nothing more than to be able to find an unending supply of manna or quails. Or who would love to see meager food supplies able to feed hungry thousands.

I came across the following statistics about hunger: [1]

842 million people across the world are hungry (one out of every 8 human beings on the planet, 3-1/2 times the population of the US)
Most poor people who ballte hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies
Undernourishment negatively affects people's health, productivity, sense of hope, and overall well-being
The constant securing of food consumes valuable time and energy of poor people, allowing less time for work and earning income
Socially, the lack of food erodes relationships and feeds shame so that those most in need of support are often least able to call on it
Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause neraly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities, according to the World Health Organization

IV. JESUS’ CHARGE

Now the Israelites in the Exodus story had just seen God’s mighty works. They might have fewer reasons to doubt God’s caring and saving providence. Those who followed Jesus were hungry after having missed a meal. They weren’t a crowd of the starving poor. They were just a little peckish after missing a meal or two. What is it that distinguishes these multitudes from the hungry multitudes of our day? Are these groups somehow more deserving of God’s providence than those millions in developing countries around the world or in our own country?

As people of faith we are confused and concerned by God’s seeming silence. Why does God not act to bring food to the millions of people who are in need? If anything, the hungry today are in greater need than those in the lessons we read earlier. So, why doesn’t God do anything?

Perhaps the answer is back in the words from Luke that we read earlier:

The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.” But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.”

Jesus says to them, “You give them something to eat.”

V. THE CONSEQUENCES OF GRACE

Jesus says to us, “You give them something to eat.”

I looked it up--there is a special phrasing in the Greek. Normally, as in English, when you make a command, you just leave the personal pronoun off: 'Get up' 'Go away' 'Give them something to eat.' But in the Greek of the NT, the pronoun is there, adding that extra emphasis, the same way it does in English: You give them something to eat.

Jesus is not telling us that God is going to bail us out every time we get into trouble. What he is telling us is that we are supposed to bail each other out. What he tells us is that if we have been wise enough to notice that people are in need of something to eat, then we ought to be the ones to satisfy that need.

A. Wesleyan Theology

We might say: why is it our responsibility? God is much better at meeting people's needs and more capable. God can make quails and manna appear out of nowhere. God can make it so that five loaves and two fish can feed 5,000 with 12 baskets of pieces left over. Why should we have to do something?

We always get a little bit sidetracked there. We assume that when God does these amazing works for other people, that we assume that they are the sole beneficiaries of grace, that we are somehow different. We forget what God has already done for us. Those of us who have gathered Sunday after Sunday for the past 2,000 years, who celebrate our lives as Christains, affirm that God did something special in Jesus Christ for us. God demonstrated that death was not the final word. God demonstrated that the brokenness of the world, the hurt, the pain, the injustice, and suffering, would not have the final say. What had the final say was love, and life, and grace.

We gather here because we're supposed to respond to that. The way we've come to understand it throughout the years is that we become God's hands in the world for one another. Those of us in the Methodist tradition talk about this all the time. Our founder John Wesley believed that grace was known in many ways: there was a prevenient grace (grace that 'comes before') that invites us to the table. There is that form of grace that is justifying, that reconciles us with God. And there is that form of grace that is sanctifying, that makes us holy. It makes us the kind of person we wished we could have been before we came to the conclusion that we are utterly dependent on God.

One of the things that that requires is a commitment to social justice. A commitment to charity and compassion. A commitment to one another. A commitment to reflect in some small and imperfect way the love and light that has been shed upon us already. That's what Jesus means when he says, "You give them something to eat." We who have already been feed by grace, we have to give something to eat to those who are in need.

B. Meeting the Need

Our "The Other Six Days" program that we have talked about is just a small way in which we can respond. We're trying to connect what it is we come here on Sundays and talk about with what it is we do with the rest of the week. We're trying to walk that walk of Christian faith, not just talk the talk.

So, during our “Feed the City” event, we're going to get together and make sandwiches to be distributed to the hungry in the city.

C. Challenging the Structures

Now, I wish ultimately the fix to the problem were that simple. I wish that there were a finite number of sandwiches that could be made that could solve the problem of hunger in our day. But it's not that easy. So our Christian faith requires something else of us, too. It requires us to challenge the very structures that promote poverty, the very systems that keep people hungry, the structures that keep people in a permanent state of trying to catch up.

Christians are supposed to be a little subversive. We don't talk about that much. We used to get in a lot of trouble back in the old days, in the first, second, and third centuries, when we resisted Roman authority and idolatry. We dared to challenge the way things worked. We opposed their militarism, their worshiping of the strong and the oppression of the weak. When we became the state religion of the Empire, we forgot that subversive side. We forgot that the Gospel is a radical thing. It's supposed to make us a little uncomfortable--to remind us that the way things are is not the way things are supposed to be.

Many of you here are studying the very kind of thing that I am talking about: politics and international relations. You are studying the way the whole system works. You have a singular opportunity as Christians to try to rethink how these things work, to rethink whether we as a society are living in a way that responds to Christ's call "You give them something to eat." Are we living in a way that is truly reflective of the love we have been given.

This is the essence of discipleship--claiming that sacred responsibility. Not being content to come and be Christians, we have to do Christianity.

VI. CONCLUSION

It makes me think, that if even if only a small percentage of the Christians reflected that kind of grace back into the world--that if we took it upon ourselves to change things, to reach out, to live a life of love and discipleship--it makes me think that we might see some miracles after all.

Notes

[1] See, Hunger Basics, Bread for the World Institute (internal citations omitted)

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*The Other Six Days: Loaves and Fishes* A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series Rev. Mark Schaefer Kay Spiritual Life Center September 19, 2004 Exodus 16:9-20; Luke 9:10-17 Exodus 16 9 ¶ Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, “Draw near to the LORD, for he has heard your complaining.”” 10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud. 11 The LORD spoke to Moses and said, 12 “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.”” 13 ¶ In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. 16 This is what the LORD has commanded: “Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.”” 17 The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. 19 And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” 20 But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul. And Moses was angry with them. Luke 9 10 ¶ On their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured. 12 ¶ The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish — unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 They did so and made them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces. I. INTRODUCTION I did a search for miracles on the internet. You’d be surprised how many references there are to miracles online. Perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised to discover how many of them seem fairly ordinary. Among the things I discovered were the lyrics to the Barry Manilow song “It’s a Miracle” in which, apparently, the “true blue spectacle, the miracle” is “you.” Mike and the Mechanics have a song called “All I Need is a Miracle” with the refrain “All I need is a miracle, all I need is you.” So apparently Barry Manilow and Mike and the Mechanics agree that the miracle is “you", that is, a woman. There are a lot of “miracle cures” out there—for baldness, weight problems, impotence, etc. One site I came across said that drinking water helped you lose weight: it’s a miracle! Hmmm. I thought that was physiology. And there are a lot of people with stories of apparent wonder telling you how it was a miracle they found their lost cat, or that of all the people who were on that plane when it crashed, some “miraculously” survived. (Personally, I am always loath to attribute survival stories to miracles—it makes it sound like God intended the other people to die in those disasters). It seems that inflation has caught up with miracles. They aren’t as valuable as they used to be. II. SCRIPTURE LESSONS Now, the things we read about in tonight’s scripture lessons: those are miracles! Food falling from the sky? Five loaves and two fish feeding thousands? You want miracles—I got your miracles right here. Think again about those stories… The Israelites have just escaped from the Egyptian armies. They have been lead by a pillar of fire away from captivity. They have seen the waters of the Red Sea yield before them and pharaoh’s army swallowed up. They get to the other side and they start grumbling. Murmuring. They start to complain that they are hungry and that it was better to have stayed in Egypt than to be led to the desert to starve to death. God responds by providing this stiff-necked people with manna and quails to eat. They were able to eat of the manna and the quails as much as each person needed. A miracle. In the New Testament lesson we read of five thousand being fed by a mere five loaves and two fish. We might be able to use science to figure out what the manna was (it could have been a kind of honey that was left on rocks in the desert) or where the quails came from, but come on—feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish is hard to explain on any level other than a miracle. We don’t see that kind of miracle every day. Perhaps that’s why so many of the modern references to miracles are so mundane: because we don’t ever really see the other kind. III. IN NEED OF A MIRACLE: THE HUNGRY It’s too bad. There are some people who could really use a miracle like those. There are a lot of hungry people out there who would love nothing more than to be able to find an unending supply of manna or quails. Or who would love to see meager food supplies able to feed hungry thousands. I came across the following statistics about hunger: [1] 842 million people across the world are hungry (one out of every 8 human beings on the planet, 3-1/2 times the population of the US) Most poor people who ballte hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies Undernourishment negatively affects people's health, productivity, sense of hope, and overall well-being The constant securing of food consumes valuable time and energy of poor people, allowing less time for work and earning income Socially, the lack of food erodes relationships and feeds shame so that those most in need of support are often least able to call on it Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause neraly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities, according to the World Health Organization IV. JESUS’ CHARGE Now the Israelites in the Exodus story had just seen God’s mighty works. They might have fewer reasons to doubt God’s caring and saving providence. Those who followed Jesus were hungry after having missed a meal. They weren’t a crowd of the starving poor. They were just a little peckish after missing a meal or two. What is it that distinguishes these multitudes from the hungry multitudes of our day? Are these groups somehow more deserving of God’s providence than those millions in developing countries around the world or in our own country? As people of faith we are confused and concerned by God’s seeming silence. Why does God not act to bring food to the millions of people who are in need? If anything, the hungry today are in greater need than those in the lessons we read earlier. So, why doesn’t God do anything? Perhaps the answer is back in the words from Luke that we read earlier: The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.” But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” Jesus says to them, “You give them something to eat.” V. THE CONSEQUENCES OF GRACE Jesus says to us, “You give them something to eat.” I looked it up--there is a special phrasing in the Greek. Normally, as in English, when you make a command, you just leave the personal pronoun off: 'Get up' 'Go away' 'Give them something to eat.' But in the Greek of the NT, the pronoun is there, adding that extra emphasis, the same way it does in English: You give them something to eat. Jesus is not telling us that God is going to bail us out every time we get into trouble. What he is telling us is that we are supposed to bail each other out. What he tells us is that if we have been wise enough to notice that people are in need of something to eat, then we ought to be the ones to satisfy that need. A. Wesleyan Theology We might say: why is it our responsibility? God is much better at meeting people's needs and more capable. God can make quails and manna appear out of nowhere. God can make it so that five loaves and two fish can feed 5,000 with 12 baskets of pieces left over. Why should we have to do something? We always get a little bit sidetracked there. We assume that when God does these amazing works for other people, that we assume that they are the sole beneficiaries of grace, that we are somehow different. We forget what God has already done for us. Those of us who have gathered Sunday after Sunday for the past 2,000 years, who celebrate our lives as Christains, affirm that God did something special in Jesus Christ for us. God demonstrated that death was not the final word. God demonstrated that the brokenness of the world, the hurt, the pain, the injustice, and suffering, would not have the final say. What had the final say was love, and life, and grace. We gather here because we're supposed to respond to that. The way we've come to understand it throughout the years is that we become God's hands in the world for one another. Those of us in the Methodist tradition talk about this all the time. Our founder John Wesley believed that grace was known in many ways: there was a prevenient grace (grace that 'comes before') that invites us to the table. There is that form of grace that is justifying, that reconciles us with God. And there is that form of grace that is sanctifying, that makes us holy. It makes us the kind of person we wished we could have been before we came to the conclusion that we are utterly dependent on God. One of the things that that requires is a commitment to social justice. A commitment to charity and compassion. A commitment to one another. A commitment to reflect in some small and imperfect way the love and light that has been shed upon us already. That's what Jesus means when he says, "You give them something to eat." We who have already been feed by grace, we have to give something to eat to those who are in need. B. Meeting the Need Our "The Other Six Days" program that we have talked about is just a small way in which we can respond. We're trying to connect what it is we come here on Sundays and talk about with what it is we do with the rest of the week. We're trying to walk that walk of Christian faith, not just talk the talk. So, during our “Feed the City” event, we're going to get together and make sandwiches to be distributed to the hungry in the city. C. Challenging the Structures Now, I wish ultimately the fix to the problem were that simple. I wish that there were a finite number of sandwiches that could be made that could solve the problem of hunger in our day. But it's not that easy. So our Christian faith requires something else of us, too. It requires us to challenge the very structures that promote poverty, the very systems that keep people hungry, the structures that keep people in a permanent state of trying to catch up. Christians are supposed to be a little subversive. We don't talk about that much. We used to get in a lot of trouble back in the old days, in the first, second, and third centuries, when we resisted Roman authority and idolatry. We dared to challenge the way things worked. We opposed their militarism, their worshiping of the strong and the oppression of the weak. When we became the state religion of the Empire, we forgot that subversive side. We forgot that the Gospel is a radical thing. It's supposed to make us a little uncomfortable--to remind us that the way things are is not the way things are supposed to be. Many of you here are studying the very kind of thing that I am talking about: politics and international relations. You are studying the way the whole system works. You have a singular opportunity as Christians to try to rethink how these things work, to rethink whether we as a society are living in a way that responds to Christ's call "You give them something to eat." Are we living in a way that is truly reflective of the love we have been given. This is the essence of discipleship--claiming that sacred responsibility. Not being content to come and be Christians, we have to do Christianity. VI. CONCLUSION It makes me think, that if even if only a small percentage of the Christians reflected that kind of grace back into the world--that if we took it upon ourselves to change things, to reach out, to live a life of love and discipleship--it makes me think that we might see some miracles after all. Notes [1] See, Hunger Basics, Bread for the World Institute (internal citations omitted) Back to Sermons page Back to AU UMC Home Copyright © 2004. Mark A. Schaefer No part of this text may be reproduced or otherwise disseminated without the express written consent of the author.

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