'Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.'
--Matthew 14: 13-21
So the question on many people’s minds when they hear this story is: did Jesus really feed 5000 people? I tend to respond to this kind of question with something the late spiritual author Rachel Held Evans once said, which is that I don’t know for certain if such a miracle DID happen, but I believe in a God through whom such a miracle COULD happen. Whether we believe that the feeding of the 5000 literally happened this way, or whether we believe it is some sort of allegory, the story has a lot to teach us, particularly those of us who have felt cut off from being fed by our rituals and our communities during this pandemic.
An Eastern icon of the feeding of the 5000
It’s helpful for us to put this miracle in its context—and yes, it is a miracle, and I will get into why a bit later. We don’t get the context in our selection this week, but this event takes place just after word has reached Jesus of the death of John the Baptist, his cousin and fellow proclaimer of the Good News that the kingdom of God had come near. Several of Jesus’ own disciples—and maybe even Jesus himself—were followers of John, and no doubt many believed that the two teachers and prophets would bring end the Roman occupation and restore the land to the people of Israel. The first indicator that this isn’t going to happen the way they think is John getting beheaded by King Herod. We can imagine how such an event would affect those who had put so much faith and hope in John.
The crowds who were following Jesus no doubt included such folks, whom it can be assumed likely wanted to leave and isolate themselves in their grief. Consider that for a moment: an event of such great distress and heartbreak, which no doubt caused fear and panic, has occurred, and it has left a large number of people feeling helpless and uncertain about what their future holds. All the while, these folks out in the middle of the wilderness are getting hungrier and hungrier. Doesn’t that sound a bit familiar?
We may not be able to point to one single event as the marker for the beginning of our suffering—such as the beheading of John was for these folks—but how many of us over the last 5 months have isolated ourselves in our grief? There are folks who have cut themselves off from online church worship or given up on maintaining connections through platforms like Zoom because these efforts are not only boring and exhausting, but they aren’t providing a whole lot of hope that things will be different.
This sums up our situation quite well.
This pandemic is an event of great distress and heartbreak, and it too has caused fear and panic, leaving so many of us feeling helpless and uncertain about our future. Every day the numbers go up, or at least that’s the case here in North Carolina, and every day we just get hungrier and hungrier as we stay out here in this dessert. We have more in common with that crowd today than we might have first realized.
It’s here that I want to say that I get it. I’m with you. All this time I have had to preach and hold church meetings virtually, and talking to a screen is really, really hard. I don’t know when the pandemic will end, when we can come back together to worship publicly, and like many I see the rhetoric spewed from our leaders and the cries for change to our broken systems, and I want to do something, but I don’t know what that it is, which leaves me feeling helpless, as well. It’s very easy during these times for me, for all of us I imagine, to just want to cut ourselves off from all of it, retreat into our self isolation, and let the grief and despair consume us. What is the answer?
For us it’s Jesus. And because, as the great mystic Teresa of Avila reminds us, Jesus has no hands or feet but ours, the answer is the Body of Christ, the beloved community that Jesus began; that is, each other. We lean on Jesus in our moments of distress, and we lean on each other, who are the very Body of Christ in the world. And in these moments, we find comfort, strength, and hope for our future.
This is what Jesus does in the story of the feeding of the 5000. Looking out upon the grieving and hungry multitude, Jesus told his apostles, ‘You give them something to eat!’ And when the loaves and fish were brought to him he took them, blessed them, broke them, and gave them out, enough to feed everyone. The distress and pain that had been felt after news of John’s death begins to fade, and to paraphrase Amy-Jill Levine in her Women’s Bible Commentary, the perverse image of John’s head on a platter is replaced by a banquet for the poor in spirit.
Caraggio's Beheading of John the Baptist
Out of what looked like scarcity, Jesus brought abundance. When the apostles distressed that they didn’t have enough and the people were so filled with grief, Jesus gathered them together and fed them. He provides sustenance when all anyone around him can see and feel is deprivation. That is a miracle, no matter which explanation we choose to believe.
It is possible, I believe, for such a miracle to still occur. If we were in a church building together, I would remind you that the actions of Jesus—taking, blessing, breaking, and giving—are reflections of the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, and that when we say that great prayer of the Church, using those same verbs in our remembrance of Jesus’ Last Supper as we share a morsel of bread and sip of wine, we are fed and made one with Jesus, and in that moment a miracle occurs.
Saying that right now rings pretty hollow begins we cannot share Eucharist together. Like that crowd, we are getting hungrier and hungrier the longer we are apart from each other and can’t share that meal.But here’s the miracle, brothers and sisters. I believe that such a feeding can still take place, though it may not look like what we are used to. If you remember another version of this story—the one in John’s Gospel—you’ll recall a young boy who gives the loaves and fish—all that he has—to help feed the people. In that version the boy’s offering, which passes through Jesus’ hands, feeds the people.
In the same way, each of us can feed one another whenever we bring whatever we have and let it pass through Jesus’ hands. When we who are the Body of Christ feed others—both in actual food and in spiritual nourishment—it is eucharistic. When we are able to support one another in our grief and distress and accept the call when Jesus says to us, as he said to his apostles, ‘You give them something to eat!’ then we can be healers and repairers of the breaches. Out here in this wilderness we’re all just trying to get fed. While we may not have the rituals to which we are accustomed, those that have nourished us for so long, we can still feed one another, and when we do, miracles happen.
Mary of Egypt, one of the dessert mothers, never received Communion until the last day of her life, and said that while she was wandering around in the dessert, she was nourished each day by the Word, by Scripture and the presence of Jesus, the Living Word. So how can we feed one another while we are out here in this wilderness?
Saint Zosima gives Saint Mary of Egypt Holy Eucharist on the last day of her life.
