As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, “Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.” He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.” (Luke 9.12-13)
Priest, preacher, and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor once urged her readers to “follow the bread” in the gospels. She pointed out that bread made a regular appearance in Jesus’ teachings and showed up in any number of gospel stories that happened around supper tables. She concluded, “Add those stories to the list, and the trail of bread crumbs starts to look more like a lighted path.”
Of course, there is good cause for Rabbi Jesus to speak so often about bread and to sit down at table where bread is served. As scholars such as Taylor are quick to point out, bread in Jesus’ day was central to people’s lives. And, more often than not, it divided people into two classes–those who had enough bread and those who did not. “In those days,” as Taylor explains, “give us this day our daily bread” was not a sentiment printed on a flour-sack calendar in the kitchen. It was a prayer you prayed for your children’s lives.”
Given that reality, it is no surprise that bread shows up with regularity in the gospels. Taylor offers her own conclusion. “Follow those teachings through the Gospels, and it is hard to believe Jesus was only interested in the health of people’s eternal souls. Follow the bread and it is hard not to believe that he was just as dedicated to the health of people’s God-made bodies on earth.”
One of the most memorable stories of bread in the gospels is told to us today by the evangelist Luke, although all four gospel writers tell the same story, the only instance of a miracle story showing up in all four texts. Called the feeding of the multitude, the story centers on Rabbi Jesus’ multiplication of five loaves of bread and two fish so that five thousand hungry mouths might have something to eat.
For Luke, the story is tucked between two identity stories. The first is Herod’s asking, “Who is this, about whom I hear such things?” and the second is Jesus’ asking his disciples “Who do you say I am?”, with Peter answering, “The Christ of God.” So, it is safe to assume Luke wants the feeding of the multitude also to help answer the question of the identity of Rabbi Jesus.
The story has clear antecedents in the Hebrew scriptures. Like Moses the prophet who fed the people wandering in the desert with bread from heaven and like Elisha the prophet who fed a hundred men during a famine with twenty barley loaves and “had some left over,” now the prophet Jesus also will provide food for those who hunger and who thirst, in this way identifying him as one sent by God to do God’s work.
Details tightly packed into the story, the feeding of the multitude presents a dire situation for Rabbi Jesus and his close band of brothers. The first phrase of the story already should put them on edge. Luke writes, “The day was drawing to a close.” More aptly translated, “The day began to wear away,” we sense both weariness and urgency.
The crowds have followed Rabbi Jesus all the day long and now the day begins to wear away, their bodies weary and their stomachs empty. The Twelve, sizing up the crowd and seeing no food in sight, decide emergency measures have to be taken. Speaking to Rabbi Jesus, they urged him to “dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions.”
Luke adds the detail that they were “in a deserted place,” heightening the crisis unfolding before the disciples’ eyes. Finding themselves without resources and fearing a mob of hungry mouths, the disciples want the Teacher to send the multitudes away, the problem resolved by everybody fending for themselves, every man for himself the go-to answer in every age.
As is so often the case in the gospels, those disciples are perfect stand-ins or stunt men for us, saying the words we say, pedaling the protests we offer when we are asked to give some food to the hungry, the tired tropes we have trained ourselves to pronounce, such as “What can we do?” “We have little to offer.” “Let them take care of themselves.”
But Rabbi Jesus, who knows well the plight of the poor, understands that the disciples’ answer is no solution, the poor without the means to buy bread, their bodies already worn out, unable to go off in search of handouts in the dead of night. And in perhaps the central point of the story, Rabbi Jesus offers this instruction, “You give them something to eat.” It is an emphatic command.
Cowed by the command, but with empty hands and empty pockets, the disciples can only answer, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish.” It didn’t take a mathematician or a restaurateur for them to know this was a drop in the bucket. Their stance is a familiar one, their words repeated by us in similar situations when we feel we have too little to offer for problems too big to resolve, giving ourselves a free pass with the justification that there is nothing we can do.
Rabbi Jesus, refusing to believe nothing can be done, convinced that an effort has to be made even in the face of daunting odds, takes the five loaves and the two fish and “looking up to the sky, he blessed them, and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude.” Again, we do not want to overlook the point that first he looked up to the sky, an indication that he knew that the Most High God can beat the odds, his faith in his Father founded on the foundation of heaven having done it many times before.
With no explanation other than divine intervention, the evangelist bypasses the details of the picnic and simply states, “They ate, and were all filled and they gathered up twelve baskets of broken pieces that were left over.” The word “filled” should be understood as satisfied. Simply stated, the multitudes are no longer hungry. Their hunger has been satisfied and, as God always does, he gives extra helpings.
What are we to make of the story? The list is long. But if we were to extract the fragrance of the flower into a single drop of oil, then it is found in the command, “Give them some food yourselves.” We find it to be a constant teaching and practice of Rabbi Jesus, praising those who share, castigating those who won’t give anything. As he knows well, the world is a place of haves and have nots. And it is the duty of those who have to give to those who have not.
Soon enough, Luke will tell us the story of Lazarus, the hungry man who sits at the door of the rich man, begging for crumbs from his table, but receiving nothing from the man who feasts daily on a table full of food, but who turns a blind eye to the beggar who has nothing to eat. In that story, there is a great reversal in the world that awaits us, with the rich man now poor, without even a drop of water, and the poor man now rich, seated at table with Abraham.
And, should we need reminding, at the end of Matthew’s gospel in the story of the final judgment, what separates the sheep from the goats? One group gave food to the hungry and the other group gave nothing, each group’s fate decided on their ability or inability to follow the command, “Give them some food yourselves.”
For the one who wants to follow the miracle man who fed the multitude, there is no option except to do as he did, that is, to feed the hungry, without hesitation, without calculation, without equivocation. His ministry was to the hungry of the world, those whose bodies were hungry and those whose spirits were starving. If we are his, then his ministry is ours. As his identity was found in his feeding the hungry, both in body and in spirit, so our identity as his disciples will be found in our doing the same.
In Taiwan, the everyday greeting in native Taiwanese is not, “How are you?” or “What’s going on?” Instead, a person greets the other with the words, “Have you eaten?” The story of the feeding of the multitude is a good reminder to disciples of Rabbi Jesus that we are most like him when we greet another with the words, “Have you eaten?”
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 