When the apostles returned, they explained to him what they had done. He took them and withdrew in private to a town called Bethsaida. The crowds meanwhile learned of this and followed Jesus. He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God and he healed those who needed to be cured. 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. Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of fifty.” They did so and made them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets. (Luke 9.10-17)
Today the Latin Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, a feast day with a very long history. Purportedly first suggested to Pope Urban IV in 1264 by the learned theologian Thomas Aquinas, the Pope agreed and established it as a solemnity to be observed by the Roman Catholic Church. For years, the feast was celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and was considered a holy day of obligation, but in these times it is observed on the Sunday after the Feast of the Holy Trinity.
In addition to the celebration of the Eucharist, other traditions associated with the Eucharist also became attached to the feast, such as a procession with the Blessed Sacrament, typically displayed in a monstrance, the community all participating in the procession as it circles around the church or along another designated route. The Holy Father traditionally holds such a procession in Rome on the day, beginning at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran and moving to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, about one mile in distance.
When Thomas Aquinas suggested the special day for the celebration, he proposed that it focus on the joy that the faithful should find in the real presence of the Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Three hundred years later with the rise of the Protestant Reformation, the Reformed Churches in Christianity suppressed the celebration, based on their theological stance that the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist was a spiritual one, not a corporeal one. For the Roman Catholic Church, the feast has remained a solid part of the liturgical calendar through the centuries.
Interestingly, the gospel selected for the celebration varies, depending on the year. In Year A, the gospel is taken from Jesus’ “I am the bread of life” discourse as recorded by the evangelist John. In Year B, the gospel is taken from Mark’s account of the Last Supper. And in Year C, the text is taken from Luke’s telling of the feeding of the crowd of five thousand men, a miracle story that appears in all four gospels. It is the latter that we have today before us.
The selection of different texts for the feast day simply shows that there are any number of ways to understand the special day. Given that latitude, shown by the simple fact that the readings do not constrain us to a single approach, I want to look more closely at Luke’s text of the feeding of the multitude because I think it offers us a message that is often overlooked, probably because of its familiarity to us.
To gain that deeper understanding, I have included two more verses at the start than the lectionary offers because they are essential to this discussion. As we have seen on many occasions before, cutting and splicing gospel texts to make them fit into a Sunday schedule often does harm to the intent of the evangelist. It is the same with this text when the prior two verses are not included.
The first thing to be said is that the story of the feeding of the multitude follows on the heels of the sending out of the Twelve by the Lord Jesus, empowering them to cure diseases, to heal the sick, and to proclaim the kingdom of God. He includes in his instructions to the disciples that they are not to take anything for the journey, “neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money and no second tunic.”
He also tells them that they are to stay in “whatever house they enter,” assuming the door is opened for them, and should it not be, he instructs them, “And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” That earlier story is important for our understanding of the feeding of the multitude because of the word welcome that appears in both stories.
When the disciples return from their mission, Jesus takes them to Bethsaida, apparently for a bit of rest. However, the crowds learn of his whereabouts and follow him. And it is at this point in the story that we find the second use of the word welcome, Luke telling us that “Jesus welcomed the crowd and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured.”
We do not want to overlook the repetition of this word welcome, perhaps thinking it has no special significance. In fact, it frames the story of the feeding of the multitude, putting before us one of Luke’s key messages in his gospel, that of hospitality. Throughout his text, he wants to emphasize the hospitality of Jesus who welcomes sinners, the poor, and the outcast. The welcoming of the forgotten, the foreigner, and the forlorn is meant to show the wide embrace of the Lord God who loves all his children, especially these little ones.
Of course, the example that Jesus puts before his disciples is meant to serve as a call to them to do the same, to show hospitality to all others in the same way that he has, welcoming the despised, the destitute, and the desperate. It is an essential virtue for the follower of Jesus, one that cannot be abdicated without loss of our calling as disciples.
It is not happenchance that Luke inserts any number of stories of hospitality into his gospel, stories that we do not find in the other gospels, including the story of Mary and Martha who offer a meal to Jesus, or the story of Zacchaeus who comes down from his perch in the tree so that Jesus can sit at table with him, or the story of the Pharisee who invited Jesus into his home for a meal, but who fails to show the same courtesy to the sinful woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her own tears.
Of course, there also is the cautionary tale that Jesus tells in this gospel of the rich man who shows no hospitality to the poor man Lazarus who sits starving at his doorstep. So, it comes as no surprise that hospitality should also appear in this story of the feeding of the multitude, our attention keyed in on the notion by the fact that the story begins with the phrase “Jesus welcomed them.” Our antennae are alerted by the word, telling us to expect to find another story of hospitality, which we certainly do.
Given this emphasis, it is significant that the disciples, unlike Jesus, fail to show hospitality to the crowd, instead asking Jesus “to dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions.” We have in their call to dismiss the crowd the opposite of welcoming them, the juxtaposition of the words dismiss and welcome critical to the context of the story.
And how does Jesus respond to their call to dismiss the crowd? He answers them, “Give them some food yourselves,” his command summoning them back to the hospitality that is critical to the identity of his followers. How quickly they have forgotten to show the same hospitality to others that they had hoped to find on their missionary journey, instead becoming like “those who did not welcome them,” in effect deserving the same indictment that Jesus said of such inhospitable people, that of shaking the dust from one’s feet in testimony against them.
Jesus then shows them again the way of hospitality, instructing them to have the people sit down, taking the five loaves and two fish, and after blessing them and breaking them, he “gave them to the disciples to put before the crowd.” It is important that we see that he commissions the disciples to serve the people who are seated before them, elevating service to others above being served. It is part and parcel of the hospitality that is the hallmark of the true disciple.
It is the same message that he will give them at the Last Supper, reminding them that typically it is “the one seated at table who is considered the greater,” but in his kingdom, it is the opposite, the one who serves becoming the greater, offering them his personal example, telling them, “I am among you as the one who serves.” His point is clear. If we wish to follow him, then our lives have to be spent in serving others, meaning we welcome them, we feed them, and we care for their needs.
If we are to appropriate and appreciate fully this message that is at the heart of the story of the feeding of the thousands, then it also has to carry over into our understanding of the Eucharistic celebration, an example of the continued hospitality of the Risen Lord who welcomes all to his table where we can be fed and nourished, healed and renewed.
But, of course, it is but the first step in a two step process of discipleship. Having found a place at Jesus’ table and being fed by him, we are expected to show the same welcome and hospitality to others when we step away from the Eucharistic table, walking into the world where we find before us the outcast, the foreigner, and the shunned who hunger for food, for acceptance, and for recognition. They number even higher than the crowd of five thousand that sat before Jesus, this crowd also with empty stomachs and without resources to meet their needs.
A failure on our parts to welcome the crowds before us is a failure of the greatest magnitude. If we do not welcome the poor, the ostracized, or the immigrant among us, then we have not imitated the example of the Lord Jesus, instead choosing to say the same thing that the disciples said of the hungry crowd, “dismiss them,” the words proving us to be failures and frauds instead of faithful followers of the One who has welcomed us to his table and who has fed us with his food and drink.
Some decades ago when Mike McIntrye decided to test the “kindness of strangers” by hitchhiking across the United States without a dime in his pocket, he learned a great deal about others who welcome the stranger among them. People offered him money, food, hotel rooms, even a tent. He also learned that those who had the least to give were often the ones who gave the most.
On this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Eucharist, we are called to see that we are the ones who have been given the most, which means we also are challenged to be the ones who extend that same generosity to others who wait for us outside the church doors. As Jesus broke bread and gave it to the disciples to feed the crowd, so he has broken bread and put it into our hands, asking us to do the same for the crowds, serving them as he instructed his disciples to do.
The choice is before us every single day as we look into the faces of the hungry, the desperate, and the stranger. We can either welcome them or we can dismiss them. But only one response will define us as a disciple. The other will define us as a wannabee at best and a faker at worst. Which one it is will be found in their faces as they walk away from us, either having found someone who has welcomed them, or having found someone who has dismissed them.
–Jeremy Myers
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