These past few weeks I’ve had to deal with insurance companies on getting my medication sent to me. It’s incredibly frustrating, irritating, and stressful. In the Gospel today, we see that people had heard that Jesus was out in the wilderness, curing people, and that they rushed after him to find him, so that they could be healed. Now, these people were poor, very likely could not afford their insurance premiums or the doctor’s visit copays. I can tell you, there were moments where I was so frustrated that if I had heard about someone running around in the desert healing people, I would have dropped everything and run off to find this stranger so that I could be cured. Just like these people in the Gospel who were following Jesus everywhere he went.
The interesting thing about today’s passage is that we know that Jesus knows why these people are running after him and his disciples – they want healing. But what does Jesus do? He turns to his disciples and says, “How are we going to pay for all these people to eat?”
Wait? What? Jesus knows they are coming to him for healing from their illnesses, and instead of preparing the disciples to act as medical assistants and get people ordered into a queue for healing, he turns to them and asks how they were going to feed these people. The people come for healing, and Jesus wants to feed them. A curious thing, and one we’ll come back to later.
But first, the Gospel tells us that Jesus already knows what he is going to do, and he asks his disciples how to pay to feed all these people in order to test the disciples.
To test them.
These responses by the disciples are really examples of how we all often react.
The first response is by Philip, who looks at the size of the people in the crowd, does a mental calculation, and says, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” Now, it’s true, Jesus might have set him up with the question on how they were going to pay for it all, but Philip takes that question, and runs with the idea that he and the other disciples need to make it happen. That the onus to feed these people is all on them and their resources. And for Philip, it’s about money.
Now, what’s interesting to note about this passage, is that it has often been used by those who preach the Prosperity Gospel. This message states that God wants all of us to be blessed financially, and that those who sacrifice to God like the young boy in the story that gave up his barley bread and fish lunch for others will receive that blessing. That is, God will multiply what you give, and you will reap the earthly reward of extreme financial blessing.
That’s a tempting teaching to follow, isn’t it? If I just give five bucks to the church, God will multiply it, and I will be financially blessed.
But notice the mindset. The recipient of the blessing is always me, the one who gives, and gives sacrificially. More to the point, if I am giving to the church in order to receive, then I have to admit that I am using God as a strategy, a means to manipulate God into blessing me with abundance.
Now, I know we might look at ourselves and say, thankfully, we don’t believe that sort of thing. But how often do we tell ourselves that blessings will come upon us if we just read our bible more? Or go to church more? Or pray more? We may not be thinking of financial blessing, but only of spiritual blessing. But these are all part of the same coin, which is that we think that God’s abundance is somehow dependent upon what we do, rather than on God’s compassion and love for us. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that God makes his sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain to the just and the unjust alike. That is to say, God defines our path, and our state in life is not related to our level of righteousness. In fact, God’s grace and mercy always shine a light on what Jesus did on the cross more than on what we try to do for God.
And also, here’s the thing: the one who makes the sacrifices in this story is the boy. He gave of his barley bread and his fish, and yet the people who benefit are all the assembled people. Not just this boy. Everyone benefited. God took what was sacrificed, and multiplied it – for the benefit of all the people.
Now, the second response we get is from Andrew, Peter’s brother. His response to Jesus’ question has nothing to do with money, but has to do with available resources. He’s the one who makes Jesus aware that they do have resources available, but then he immediately admits defeat, and asks, “But what are they among so many?”
Andrew’s response is coming from a mindset of scarcity. It proclaims defeat before even beginning. It’s almost as if Andrew is saying, “Well, we do not have enough, so let’s not do anything at all.”
Another way that people have tried to rationalize or explain this miracle of feeding the five thousand is this: this boy was willing to make a sacrifice and share his food, and by Jesus drawing attention to that sacrificial giving, everyone in the crowd was driven to share their own food. Food that they apparently had stashed away and were trying to hide from others. In other words, what happened was less a miracle of multiplication, and more of an impromptu potluck.
The trouble with this interpretation is that it reduces this miracle to nothing more than a moral platitude, a reminder that everything we ever needed to know we learned in kindergarten. It makes the assumption that people are inherently greedy and unwilling to share. It makes the assumption that none of these people were poor, or even going hungry, but rather that they just didn’t want to share any of their own resources. These people were not secretly hiding a stash of food, trying to avoid sharing with others. It was a miracle, and God multiplied what was given to him.
Now, it’s true. We can all share, and sometimes we do all need to be reminded to share our own blessings with others. After all, that’s why the church takes donations. It is through our sacrificial giving that the church is able to help those who are struggling, both within our church and out in the community.
One commentator put it this way:
“Jesus needs what we bring him. It may not be much but he needs it. It may well be that the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph because we will not bring to Jesus what we have and what we are … little is always much in the hands of Christ.” (Barclay, John, V. 1, p. 205)
But notice again the thread of the above comment. Jesus takes what we give him, and multiplies what little we bring into an abundance. Not to accomplish our goals, but to accomplish God’s goals. Not to bless us only, but to bless all the people of God through miracles and triumphs across the world. It’s just that The People of God includes us as well, so when God takes what we give to accomplish God’s purposes, we benefit as well, along with others; the entire community of believers benefits.
Now, the third response to Jesus’ question is his own. We were already told that he knew what he was going to do when he tested his disciples with this question about money. But the interesting thing is the turn that Jesus takes in his response. We know that these people had been running through the countryside to find Jesus so that he could heal their physical ailments, to be cured of their sicknesses, to be relieved of the stress and irritation their illnesses might be causing them.
And what does Jesus do? Rather than line them up for healing, instead, he feeds them. He has them all sit down, and he feeds them food. They came for a miracle of healing, and what they got was a belly full of food. What is going on here? What exactly is Jesus doing with these people?
One clue is found in the statement at the very beginning of the passage: “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” This entire story is set in the context of the Feast of the Passover. And if we remember, the Passover celebrates the Israelites freedom from slavery in Egypt. On the road to the Promised Land, God provided for them with manna from heaven. All of this would have been in the mind of John’s readers and listeners, and a connection would be made between God’s miraculous provision, and the promises of God for God’s people, the people of Israel.
In the ancient world, one of the easiest ways for kings to manipulate their followers was to control the flow of bread. Or, in other words, to feed the people. It is how they showed mercy, and how they showed power. And so, we have this multitude of people coming for healing, and Jesus feeds them instead. They eat so much that they are exceedingly full, and there is food left over. Jesus took what little was offered, and he multiplied it into an abundance – without trying to control them. Being fed, being provided for, would have made these people compare Jesus to a king, and not just any king, one who was compassionate as well. And it is for this reason that the crowd of people came to try and make him king by force. The listeners of John’s gospel would have recognized this, and would have expected the crowd to behave in this very way. They would have seen that Jesus was being compared to God, the same God who provided for the people through miraculous food as God led them out of slavery in Egypt into freedom.
And so they understand when people come by force to make Jesus their king, because that is what they would expect people to do.
But what does Jesus do?
He flees into the mountains to get away from the people, because he does not wish to be their king. At least not in the earthly sense.
These people had seen the miracle, and had only thought about what Jesus could do for them. They were focused on what they could get from God. They wanted Jesus for what he did for them. They too were hoping to manipulate Jesus into future provision by making him their earthly ruler.
This is why Jesus ran away.
Because Jesus had other plans.
The stark contrast between behaving like an earthly king and providing for people, coupled with Jesus running away when they tried to make him their king would have made the listener’s of John’s Gospel question what was coming next.
You see, they would have made the connection between Passover, and Jesus miraculously providing for the people as being a precursor to a new type of freedom. That freedom could have meant any number of things to those who were there, or any number of things to those listening to John’s Gospel.
And they would have been wondering what that freedom could possibly be.
The last few weeks, the lectionary has been providing us readings from the Gospel of Mark, but today we switched over to John. This passage from John is the first in a series of readings from John’s Gospel in the lectionary, and it comes just before something called the Bread of Life discourse. This Bread of Life discourse culminates in Jesus’ declaration that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:54).
Those listening to John’s Gospel were in for a real treat. They were about to see the shift in God’s purpose for humanity from earthly provision of their needs to one of eternal significance. This feeding of the five thousand anxious souls who wanted only to be healed, and instead were miraculously filled beyond fullness with earthly food, helps to foreshadow the Spiritual Food that is Christ Jesus. They were about to see Jesus laying out the path to a new type of freedom, and a path to abundant life for all people.
Those listening would soon understand what Paul meant in his letter to the Ephesians, when he wrote:
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:18-19
That fullness is for all people.
Because even spiritually, God takes what we give and multiplies it abundantly so that all might live in the Abundant Grace of God.
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on July 28, 2024.]
