“Feeding a Crowd”

Matthew 14:13-21

This story is one of the most familiar in the New Testament. We read it, but don’t—assuming we already know all there is to know about it. I invite us to look anew at it. There are some important lessons here for us right now, right here, as we reimagine being church.

JESUS HAD COMPASSION

Jesus needed to get away. John the Baptist had been executed. Jesus’ own town rejected him. His ministry was being challenged—hard and violently. He needed a respite. He went to the wilderness.

But the crowd followed.

Despite there being ample reason for Jesus to meet the thronging crowd with irritation, he doesn’t. He has compassion. He is able to continue to see the people before him. He is able to set himself aside to care for them. 

For me, this ability is the key to understanding Jesus’ divinity. He is able to embody God’s compassion in every circumstance and every moment. Here, he is tired. I would imagine he is world-weary. The Baptist has become a victim of the state. His followers must be beginning to grow fearful. The real cost of being the Messiah is manifesting. Yet, he is able to remain focused on who he is and why he is here—the complete embodiment of God’s compassion. Understandably, any disciple might quail in the face of such power. Who can meet this standard? If we are honest, we know such love is beyond us.

Yet, the essential truth of this text is that Jesus has no intention of undermining our faith. God takes no pleasure in flummoxing us. God wants only our peace. So, in this case, Jesus’ stance is not meant as a call to follow his model, but to take comfort in the knowledge that with such love, God is with us. This moment is not a directive for our future action, but a boost in confidence based on understanding more deeply just how great God’s love for us actually is. 

God always sees us as we are.

Now, that might be cause for concern, but it actually is the ground of hope. God accepts us as we are. Accepting us, God then tempers God’s presence to meet our needs. Meeting our needs, God fulfills the promise of daily bread, if you will. Understanding us, God knows where our weaknesses are. God knows where we need help. God readies that help to heal and assist us. That is a sure and certain promise.

Rob Bell, noted writer on biblical reinterpretation (e.g., Love Wins), points out that a consistent theme in the Old Testament (Jesus’ Bible) is God’s constant move to restoration of God’s people from their distress, noted as “the pit,” “the abyss,” Sheol, etc. God abandons no one in their time of need. God forever remains on hand to help us.

It is that frame of mind that Jesus enters this story, despite all else happening around him. He has compassion.

That explains much of what comes next.

HE EXPECTS THE SAME FROM US

After caring for all within the crowd for the whole day, evening comes for Jesus. The disciples, ever pragmatic, sense it is time to dismiss the crowds so they can find food and rest in town. They certainly see no way to feed them. Pragmatism is good Presbyterianism. It is realism. It is a ready acknowledgment of our limits. It is a willingness to settle for what is efficient. 

Jesus, though, surprises them. As the disciples announce their plan, Jesus dismisses not the crowd, but his pragmatic disciples and their limited thinking. “Feed them.” It is one of the simplest directives in scripture. Two words. 

But those two words carry the weight of a thousand word essay. Jesus DOES expect the disciples to see the crowd as he does. 

We argue that this contradicts the hope we just discussed. But, no, it does not. It asks us to embody it. If God is with us, then we can feed a crowd. On our own, we are limited, finite, and only so strong. But we are not on our own. God is with us. With that presence, wondrous things can happen.

But, first, we, too, need to see the people before us. We need to see them as they are. We do not need to run from the need presented, but embrace it. We need to hear what is being sought, then seek to meet that need. We cannot declare something too big to solve, then turn aside, feeling we did all we could. I am sure that is exactly why the homeless remain untended on the street. The problem is too big to solve. We all know that, so we all turn away, feeling what is, is. The problem remains. Jesus calls us to see it. Jesus calls us to embrace it. Jesus calls us to enter it. We need to see these people as people.

Jesus is with the disciples. His call is not a total hand-off to them, but rather a call to look again, embracing that Jesus stands with them. If they are able to do that, then the crowd will eat. 

We are not to retreat from the problems of the world. We are to enter them, knowing God is with us. Then we can transform the world before us.

See what happens next…

THE MIRACLE OF GENEROSITY

What happens next is so utterly simple as to be mundane—the crowd eats. 

No big deal.

Yet, what makes it a big deal is the meagerness of its beginning—five loaves and two fish—a couple trout and five pita loaves. That’s hardly dinner for two, much less a crowd, but everyone eats.

Now, here is where a good many of us stop simply to bask in the glow of a miracle. Wow! What power God has. Instantaneously, momentously, making abundance out of nothing. Did the fish keep popping afresh into the baskets passed around? Did the bread multiply right in people’s hands? 

I think that a distraction.

The miracle is that a meager meal fed thousands.

The miracle is not on the literal multiplication of the victuals, but on the generosity that kept them coming. God’s generous love creates an abundance, even where there is only scarcity. Perhaps God’s generosity bred the crowd’s generosity. Perhaps as the people saw the willingness of the disciples to feed them, they realized that they had within them the ability to feed one another. With Jesus before them, compassion ruled them. They fed one another. They fed one another well. There were leftovers.

That’s how it is with grace and compassion.

They multiply.

They invite a response in kind.

It is so easy to meet grace with grace. It feels good. It makes us whole. It makes us complete. It is easy to share.

And that is the whole point of the story. Jesus is compassionate. He asks us to share what we receive from him. Then, the whole world shifts into something better. There can be peace. There can be hope. There can be good news.

That will feed a hungry crowd.