After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”
When Jesus realized that they were
about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the
mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got
into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus
had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was
blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking
on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to
them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat,
and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
I don’t know
whether it is something to do with the street I live in but this time of year
seems to me to be characterised by the smell of barbeques.
I must be
deeply anti-social or I have some other personality defect but I don’t find
chasing paper plates around someone’s garden in the teeth of a gale, while balancing a cup of
indifferent wine and avoiding ketchup stains and salmonella, a recipe for
unbridled fun.
Today’s Gospel,
though not exactly describing a barbeque on the Galilean hills, tells of Jesus
meeting the needs of his hungry followers. When I was thinking about how best
to approach this reading I had a look at a book by the theologian Canon Dr.
Jeffrey John called “The Meaning in the Miracles.” He wittily relates how as a
schoolboy two of his teachers had approached the miracles in contrasting ways
and this really resonated with me because I had a similar experience when I
first started teaching. One of my colleagues, Mr. Forest, a Biology teacher
embodied the literalist or fundamentalist approach to scripture where
everything was to be taken at the plainest level of meaning and must have
happened exactly as it said. His response to this miracle would be to say “Well,
it just goes to show that Jesus is God, doesn’t it?” Doubting that a miracle
story happened exactly as it was recorded was tantamount to doubting the
divinity of Christ.
Mrs. King,
my first R.S. Head of Department, on the other hand, took the reductionist
approach, wanting to “demythologise” the miracle accounts to reveal the morals
within the stories. In this case the moral to her was that when Jesus fed the
five thousand, he and the disciples shared out what they had and their example
encouraged others who had been holding back their own food to share theirs too.
The “real” miracle was when everyone discovered the joy of caring and sharing
with others.
She referred
to him as a snake-handling Baptist and he referred to her as a wet, liberal
Anglican.
I didn’t sit
with them in the staffroom.
Life’s too
short.
While their
approaches seem diametrically opposed, they were in fact quite similar in the
sense that they both treated the miracles as straightforward descriptions of
events: they concentrated simply on what did or did not happen. Dr. John, on
the other hand, concludes that the real nature and purpose of the Gospel
miracles is found in the depths and dimensions of meaning found in the account
and these passed both the teachers by completely.
The problem
with Mr. Forrest’s approach where miracles simply exist to prove the divinity
of Jesus is that it can say very little else about the event because it either
rejects or simply doesn’t understand any symbolism at the heart of the stories.
The problem with Mrs. King’s approach as a call to greater charity is that it
hardly sounds like good news and certainly not a tremendous demonstration of
God’s free, miraculously overflowing generosity to his people.
What I
discovered, before I gave up on them and went and sat with the Maths
Department, was there was no middle ground between them. For where two or three
are gathered together in my name….there will inevitably be an argument. (To
paraphrase Matthew 18).
But I
digress.
This was the
day Jesus was trying to get away from the crowd. Jesus crossed the sea and
climbed a mountain just to get away and get some time for prayer. He often took
some time out, insisted on getting some quiet time; some prayer time. Jesus
modelled for us that no matter what you're involved in, you¹ve got to make time
for God, time for reflection and time to listen to God – a good learning point
for us all.
Well, on
this particular day, Jesus had crossed the Sea of Galilee and climbed up a
mountain; he’d sat down to catch his breath, looked up, and can you believe it?
Here they come. The crowd had somehow found their way to Jesus: here they came
scrambling up the mountain to be with Jesus.
So, let’s
look again at the story and, two thousand years down the line we don’t
instantly recognise the subtext as the original listeners and readers would
have, and that diminishes our understanding of the Gospel. There are so many
layers to the miracle stories.
Now in this
passage notice that John tells us the crowd “saw the signs.” This would have
had Mr. Forrest and Mrs. King arguing straight away, so let’s be clear. In
John’s gospel, miracles are signs that point beyond themselves – to God. Every
time Jesus performs a miracle he is saying something about God and about
himself in relation to God. The miracles are not important merely because this
or that person is healed or because Jesus changes water to wine or whatever.
The miracles are signs that point to the reality of who Jesus is. Yes the crowd
gathered for healing, but they kept following him because of the signs, even if
they didn’t yet fully understand the implications.
Perhaps the
most obvious theological emphasis of this feeding miracle is to tell us that
Jesus is the new Moses. Even with a sketchy knowledge of the Old Testament most
people are likely to remember that Moses had done something similar with the
manna in the desert. Like Moses Jesus crosses the water into the desert, sits
the people down and feeds them with miraculous bread in such abundance that
there are basketfuls left over. Much less obviously, because this Old Testament
story is perhaps less well known, Jesus’ actions also recall Elisha. Some of
the details of the feeding stories reflect an incident in 2 Kings when Elisha
takes an army into the desert and feeds them miraculously with a few loaves.
Taking Moses
and Elisha together, the story seems to be hinting that in repeating what Moses
did, Jesus is fulfilling the Law and, in repeating what Elisha did, Jesus is
fulfilling the Prophets. Whatever else this feeding miracle is intended to
teach us, it also reaches us that Jesus is truly the one whom the Law and the
Prophets foretold.
Some
commentators go further: the words and actions of Jesus over the bread are
exactly the same as at the Last Supper. The association with Moses and the
Exodus here, in what we are told was the Passover season, points to the new
Christian Passover, the Eucharist.
These are
the signposts which point to Jesus’ divinity and to the readers and listeners
of the day they must have been akin to flashing neon lights which spelt out the
truths, hopes, patterns and meanings and modern relevance of the Old Testament
scriptures those elements represented.
“All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy). Only all too often
we have lost the key and therefore miss many of the nuances.
What should
this mean for us today? When we read the miracle of the feeding of the
multitude, how should we react? Well, perhaps the best response is the one
provided by scripture itself, the discourse of Jesus on the Bread of Life in
John’s Gospel. In John, it's Jesus himself who will become the real food:
“I am the
bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
This is the bread that comes down from Heaven so that one may eat of it and not
die. I am the living bread that came down from Heaven. Whoever eats this bread
will live forever.” Jesus understood all too well that if he let people claim
him as their physical provider, they would miss the reason for his coming. His
intent was to point them beyond their physical needs to their spiritual ones.
He wanted them to look not merely to bread, the most meagre sustenance of the
poor. “The bread you will eat”, John tells us Jesus said, “is my flesh.” In a
profound spiritual sense, Jesus wants his followers to understand that their
communion with him, their participation in his very life, will lead to new
levels of maturity and understanding.
What would
Mr. Forrest and Mrs. King have made of it all, I wonder?
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