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FINDINGS II
Proper 13 - A - July 31, 2011
Matthew 14: 13-21
 | | Harry T. Cook |
Matthew 14: 13-21 At the time Jesus heard about John [the Baptizer's] death, he went away in a boat to an isolated location by himself. When the crowds learned of that, they walked from the cities in pursuit of him. When he stepped on shore he saw a huge crowd and felt compassion for them and healed their sick. As evening advanced, the disciples came to him and said, "This place is far from anywhere and it's getting late. Why don't you send the crowd away so that they can find a village with some place open to buy food?" Jesus replied, "They don't need to go anywhere [because] you will give them something to eat." They said, "Well, we have only five loaves of bread and two [cured] fish." And Jesus said, "Bring them here to me." He told the crowd to be seated on the grass, and looking upward he gave a blessing and broke the bread into pieces, gave them to the disciples and the disciples distributed them among the crowd. Everybody had their fill, and still they put the remainder of the broken pieces into twelve baskets. It is said that the number of people who ate amounted to 5,000 people, not counting women and children. (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.) RUBRIC Sometimes what precedes or follows a biblical passage is important to the passage itself. What precedes the so-called feeding of the 5,000 in Mark and Matthew is Herod's birthday banquet -- in Mark the scene is one recalled from the past. It is impossible to overlook the contrast between the goings on in Herod's house and the pastoral scene "on the grass" as hungry people were fed under the care of the one who, as Mark puts it in his version, had compassion on them because they were shepherd-less (see Mark 9:36). Depending on how the reader or homilist interprets this story, one could say that in contrast to Herod's predictably dissolute banquet, the shared supper of the multitude foretold a different dispensation altogether. HOMILETIC WORKSHOP The literal interpretation of the story is that five pieces of bread (think "pita") and two fish (think smoked herring) sufficed as food for 5,000 adult men (over 13 years of age) -- not 4,999 nor yet 5,001 but 5,000, not to mention women and children. The rational humanist's interpretation is that Jesus, whom the crowds are depicted as following as they would a guru, were not all of them improvident. Those who had brought some food along willingly shared it in common. The theological explanation is that whatever it was in actual terms, the event turned out to be highly symbolic with much of its telling affecting the development of the church's early eucharist life, much as did Luke's Emmaus road story (see Luke 24: 13-25). Of course, such phenomena were what got Herod's attention (see Mark 6:14, Matthew 14: 1 and Luke 9:7). They are why the crowds followed Jesus - not because they were hungry in the usual sense but because they had heard what Herod had heard. It may be that we are expected to understand that in the evangelists' imaginations the crowds had impulsively followed Jesus with little or no thought as to how far they would end up going and for how long. As Willa Cather's archbishop says to his aid, Blanchet who had insisted that their missionary journey had led them "far enough," thank you very much, "Who knows how far?"/1 The feeding is depicted as beginning as an incidental housekeeping detail -- the hour is late, these people are hungry, send them away to buy food -- but ends as the central point of the narrative. So important did the story become in the era of the gospels' formation that it ended up appearing in all four gospels -- twice in both Matthew and Mark. Several precedents and antecedents for this story quickly come to mind: the gift of manna (mah-nu, "what's this?") in Exodus, Elijah's meal with the widow of Zarephath in I Kings 17, Psalm 23 ("thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies") and the reprise of the manna of Exodus in Psalm 78: 24: "And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven." Whatever may have transpired on a given day or days in the public career of Jesus that had to do with his seeing to it that hungry people were fed by whatever means at his disposal would fit the prototype of a god or god-like leader who looks after his own. The centrality of the Eucharistic meal in Christian practice testifies to the importance of the connection of the idea of a benevolent deity and the fulfilling of human need as well as the image of the egalitarian table. Not to be missed is the verbal sally between Jesus and the disciples, which all three of the synoptics depict. In one way or another, the disciples are shown to have genuine concern for the people who had come out to see and hear Jesus, but could only see so far as to suggest that they be sent away as it was getting on toward suppertime. Being aware of the problem, the disciples saw it as the crowd's concern, not their own. The text at hand depicts Jesus as saying the problem of food and hunger was his disciples' problem -- and opportunity. No miracle is necessary, no setting aside of natural law, no magic is needed. It is the work of those who embrace or who have been embraced by the ethical wisdom of Jesus to marshal and to see to the equitable distribution of adequate resources to those who need them. The result is the 12 baskets remaining. It is a theology of abundance rather than a theology of scarcity. _____________ /1 Death Comes for the Archbishop, New York, 1927, Random House, p. 41
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