“As the Claimer of Jesus’ Love” or “Jesus’ Miracle of the Loaves”

Matthew 14 Verses 13 through 21

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

This is the word of the Lord.

Who doesn’t like being invited to a birthday party? Who wouldn’t love an invitation to celebrate with friends? Could you imagine if you got an invite to Buckingham Palace to celebrate the queen’s birthday or to the White House to celebrate the President’s? I don’t think that there would be many who would refuse such an invitation, regardless of political leanings. No birthdays are special and tonight we are going to have one heck of a birthday celebration. The announcement in the bulletin promises decorations on every table, a huge potluck supper, and a trip down memory lane. There will be more than enough food to satisfy our hunger, but we will keep on eating. By the time the cake arrives I will probably be full, but that isn’t going to stop me from getting a piece of cake, maybe two if somebody makes the mistake of bringing German chocolate. Celebrating with food is about building community, sharing our lives with one another, and growing closer. There are parallels between the Miracle of the Loaves, what we will be doing as Christians sharing a potluck tonight, and what we are called to do in the world, as a community strengthened through food and fellowship. I will be getting back to that later, but now I want to go back to my original question. Who doesn’t like being invited to a birthday party?

Well, if the host is Herod Antipas, and it is his birthday, it is pretty safe to say that Jesus and John the Baptist would be among those who would rather send their regrets by postcard, hopefully with a foreign postmark. Today’s reading begins:

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.

What Jesus had heard, was that Herod had heard about the fame of Jesus, and that Herod had been told by his servants, that Jesus was John the Baptist returned from the dead. Considering that it was Herod, who at his birthday party had John the Baptist put to death, Jesus had good reason to get into a boat and go to a deserted place by himself. To say that Herod did not practice good table fellowship is an understatement. The execution by Herod Antipas of John the Baptist, a prophet of God, is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own fate. Jesus was rejected as a prophet by his neighbors in Nazareth immediately before hearing the news of John the Baptist’s rejection as a prophet by the ruler of Galilee. This foreshadowing is repeated in Matthew 21 when the Pharisees question Jesus in verses 23-32 about the authority of John the Baptist and whence it came. After refusing to answer them, Jesus gives them the answer and so much more in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. This parable told in Matthew 21 continues in verse 35 35"The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37Last of all, he sent his son to them. 'They will respect my son,' he said.

    38"But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' 39So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Even though the Parable of the Wicked Tenants comes 7 chapters later, I am sure that it was on that boat ride to a deserted place that Jesus began formulating it. It was with full knowledge of what was inevitable, and in search of a quite place and time to collect himself, that Jesus set off on his boat. Matthew verse 13 continues: But when the crowds had heard this they followed him on foot from the towns. The crowds were not responding to the news of John the Baptist’s death, they probably weren’t even aware of it, they were responding to the news that Jesus was on the move. The crowd that greeted Jesus at the shore was a ragged, sickly, mess of humanity. Needy and needing from him at a time when he had very little to give. But Jesus saw them and took pity on them.

The Gospel of Mark puts it this way:

Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

As you leave here today take a look at the painting that sits above the organ outside the sanctuary. It is of a shepherd, clinging with one hand to the side of the mountain while reaching for a lamb with the other hand. It is a beautiful painting and truly inspired. This is what Christ was experiencing right at that moment. Thoughts of his own safety, his very life in jeopardy, all of this becomes inconsequential in light of the needs of those who followed him, who were in need of something only he could give them. So he reached out to them, and healed them, and cared for them in their need. When it got around dinner time the disciples came up to him and said something like this: Ah, Jesus, you’ve done all you can for these people. The blind see, the deaf hear, the crippled are all dancing, why don’t you tell them to go on about their business now that they have gotten what they came for? They can head back to their towns and get something to eat and we can eat these five loaves and two fishes we brought for ourselves. But Jesus responded, “They have no need to go away. You give them something to eat.” You see, although the crowds had received all that they wanted from Christ, Christ had not given them all that he wanted to give. A shepherd’s job is not over when the lamb is rescued from immediate peril. The lamb must be returned to the flock so that they can graze together under the watchful eye of the shepherd.

The disciples reminded Jesus that they only had five loaves and two fishes. After all of the miracles that they had seen performed on that day, they still didn’t comprehend much of what Christ was about and so the Miracle of the Loaves was as much for the disciples as it was for the crowds that had followed Jesus.

Like I said earlier, celebrating with food is about building community and for Christ, who had completed much of his teaching, this celebration was about building a new community and sharing a foretaste of the coming Kingdom of Heaven. So Christ told them to bring what they had to him, and he told the crowd to recline upon the grass. People ate reclined in Jesus’ day so by telling them to recline he was telling them that a meal that was going to be served. Jesus took the bread, looked up to heaven, blessed it, and gave it to his disciples. And they gave it to the crowds and everybody ate and they were filled.

Our understanding of this is filtered through the symbolism of a developed Christianity. We easily see the correlation to the Eucharist and say, “Well it is obvious that Jesus is celebrating a Eucharistic meal with the people.” But in that time there was no Eucharist yet established, so we must look back in time in order to understand more fully what meaning this miracle has. In Deuteronomy 8:10 it says, “You shall eat and be full and you shall bless the Lord your God.”

In 2 Kings 4:42-44 Elisha says, “Give to the men that they may eat.” But the servant with only 20 loaves of barley responds, “How can this feed 100 men.” And Elisha responds, “Give them to the men that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” Seen through these texts we see that Jesus is doing what the prophets who came before him did, but he doing it on a much larger scale. Elisha fed 100 men with 20 loaves while Jesus is able to feed 5,000 men, not including the women and children who would have pushed the crowd to over 10,000, on only five loaves and two fishes. The message is clear; Jesus is like a prophet only much greater. The Kingdom of God as envisioned by early Christians and Jews was that of a heavenly banquet. Isaiah 25:6 says, “On this mountain the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast.”

So it is light of their understanding, through their paradigm, that we can more fully understand what Christ was intending to relate to them and to us.

So tonight when we gather, we are gathering for a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. To eat and be filled, not only with food, but with Christ’s love, in fellowship with one another, healed, strengthened, in unity. From the broken pieces of bread we are united. We are filled and our table fellowship overflows the confines of Norcross Presbyterian Church. It is in table fellowship at the Norcross Co-operative Ministries or the Open Door that we share in proclaiming the power of Christ’s table. It is a fellowship that will overflow these doors too and will flood the whole world with Christ’s love.