August 3, 2014 Matthew 14:13-21 Pastor Rosanna McFadden Creekside COB Blessed, Broken, Shared Good morning! Slide 1 I bet many of you are familiar with the story from Matthew that Judy just read for us -- it s a story of Jesus that you might remember from Sunday School; I can still picture the children s book, The Boy Who Gave his Lunch Away where I learned this story. Some Bible headings call it The Feeding of the 5,000 or Jesus feeds the Multitudes. You know this one, right? Jesus is out in a deserted place -- so remote that there s not a McDonald s for miles in any direction -- and a crowd of 5,000 people gathers to listen to Jesus teach. It gets to be dinner time, and the disciples are worried about how these people are going to be fed; Jesus asks the disciples what food they ve got and they say, Not much -- but there s a kid here who has 5 loaves and two fish. So they sit down to share it, and everybody has plenty to eat and there are even 12 baskets of scraps left over. It s a miracle! Is that the way you remember the story? Me, too. The thing is, the story I just told you is not exactly the way it s told in Matthew -- or in Mark or in Luke or in John. This is clearly an important story, because it s one of the few stories of Jesus ministry that appears in every of the four gospels. Some parts of the narrative vary -- the little boy is only in John s version, the number of people varies, how they were seated changes -- but I m not as interested in the differences as I am in what stays the same between the four versions of the story, because I think it may give us some insight into what is most important -- for the gospel writers and for us.
First, let me unpack a few things about the culture in which Jesus lived. In 21 st century America, we have a growing problem of poverty and of food uncertainty -- people, particularly women with children, who aren t sure where their next meal is coming from. Especially on the weekends or during the summer months when kids don t get meal assistance at school, families might get by on just one or two meals a day. This will likely not be a healthy, home-cooked meal prepared with locally-raised organic vegetables; it ll probably be packaged, processed, or fast food. It s difficult for poor families to afford healthy food. In Jesus time, it was difficult for poor families to get any food at all. Food uncertainty was a way of life for the poor, and the poor made up almost all of the population. That number of 5,000 people that we get in Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- that s 5,000 men. Men were the only people who counted in Jesus culture, so they re the only ones who get counted in this story. Early Christians would have known that five thousand men plus women and children would have been more like 20,000 people. It was understood that women and children had to make do with whatever was left after the men had eaten. This would be like the Fellowship Team at Creekside planning a meal and saying, Let s see, there ll probably be about 20 men there. Note to Fellowship Team: I would not recommend this approach. If you ve ever been hungry, even just for a day or so, you know that having enough food is a big deal. But for people who are chronically hungry -- not just food uncertainty, but not enough food most of the time -- having enough food is the difference between working and not being able to work, and even between life and death. Forget theology and redemption and salvation: a messiah who can feed you will literally save your life. Note that Jesus is not just sharing the bread of life with those who confess their sins and believe in him; Jesus gives bread away to everyone equally: not only the men, the people who society says are important, but to the women and children, the poor and the overlooked. Keep that in mind -- I m going to come back to that. Second, reading through each of these stories for what they have in common, I was struck by something I missed in Sunday School. In every version, before anyone is fed, Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and shares it. I m sure the disciples saw this all the time -- it
had to be an everyday part of living with Jesus. But the gospels record this at some very significant points in Jesus ministry: at his last supper with his followers before his crucifixion, and after Jesus resurrection he walked with two of his followers on the road to Emmaus; they talked to him on the road for hours, but didn t recognize him until supper time when he blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to them. Oh! It s Jesus! We ve seen him do that a hundred times -- he really is alive! Slide 2 Blessing bread, breaking it and sharing it is a simple and nearly universal symbol of hospitality and friendship. It s so familiar that we use the phrase breaking bread to mean any kind of table fellowship. I believe that there are even deeper levels of meaning in these biblical stories. Bread is a symbol of the body of Christ, blessed broken, and shared with us. And even more miraculous, we, as friends and followers of Jesus Christ are the bread that is meant to be blessed, broken and shared to continue Jesus work and presence in the world today. What if the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes didn t end with the thousands of people on those deserted hills, but is supposed to continue in the way we live as Christians? I ve heard it said -- by one of my seminary professors, among other folks--that the miracle of this story is not that there was a supernatural transformation of the loaves and fishes so that they fed thousands of people; the miracle was that when one person was willing to come forward and share what he had, everyone else dug into the bread they had hidden away for themselves, and once everyone started sharing what they had, there was more than enough: there was food left over. I believe it is a both/and instead of an either/or. However we understand these stories, we are blessed by a miraculous power of God through Jesus, and we are blessed by examples of generosity around us. Either way, or both ways, we are blessed. Even the most cursory self-examination of our lives will confirm two truths: we are blessed, and we are broken. We are blessed because we have been made in the image of God, and we are broken because we are human. We are blessed by the gift of God s wonderful creation and we are broken because we have exploited and abused it. We are blessed when we have abundant bread for
ourselves, and we are broken when children in our communities experience food uncertainty. A sense of the abundance of bread that Jesus shares is a final thing which all these stories have in common. In every story there are five loaves and two fishes -- in Jewish thought the number 7 had special significance -- and in every story there a 12 baskets of scraps gathered up when everyone has eaten their fill. Twelve baskets! Twelve was a number that signified fullness and completion: a number of balance and of wholeness. Twelve baskets of bread is a lot! Certainly it is miraculous to think of five loaves stretching far enough to feed 20,000 people. Not just feed them, but leave them satisfied. In order for hungry people to leave leftovers, there had to be more than enough for everybody -- an abundance of bread. And maybe the abundance overflowed into their attitude, as well. Twelve baskets of leftover bread suggests that no one was hiding the extra bread to save for later. If everyone, or even just a few folks, had started to keep more than they needed, those baskets would have been empty: nothing kills abundance faster than an attitude of scarcity, and a determination to hold on to a little more than I need, even if someone else has a little less. Slide 2 down Blessed, broken, shared. I don t think we can dodge our identity as both blessed and broken. But the challenge of the gospel is this: is there enough to share? Do we have enough to share? Are we enough to share? I want to give you some scenarios -- I don t mean to suggest that they have simple and obvious answers; I know that they do not. We probably won t all agree, but I d invite you to consider these questions through the lens of this gospel story and how it might continue in us today: Your daughter brings two friends home from school who unexpectedly hang around until dinner time. You hadn t planned on extra people. Is there enough to share? Your church puts out a call for school kits to be sent to children around the world who have no school supplies. You know there are
children in your own neighborhood who don t have all the things they need for school. Is there enough to share? A congregation in the area needs a place to worship and asks to use the Creekside facility. Is there enough to share? There are refugee children from Central America asking for admittance to the United States. Is there enough to share? The Church of the Brethren in Nigeria is pleading for fasting and prayer for their kidnapped girls and other victims of religious extremism. Is there enough to share? Rob Bell, creator of the Nooma videos and author of the book Love Wins says, be careful about asking God to feed the hungry if you have more bread than you need. A prescription for sharing should come with a warning label -- there might be side effects: we could get taken advantage of; we might have less for ourselves, we could find out things about ourselves and what is really important to us that we d rather not know. I know that sharing means taking risks, but I believe that miracles are more likely to happen when we are outside of our comfort zones. Maybe the miracle that Jesus has for us is that we will look at what we have and realize that there s been enough to share all along. Maybe we will be able to be honest with one another about our brokenness and still remember that we are blessed. Maybe we will share God s concern for the poor -- a realization that every person is of value in the eyes of God. Maybe we will become the bread of life for someone who didn t even realize they were starving. As a blessed and a broken people, I pray that we will continue to find ways to share in the example of Jesus: offering the simple loaves and fishes that we have, modeling generosity, experiencing abundance, and sharing in the life of love and service that is Jesus gift to the world. Amen.