"Feeding of the 5000"

In the late 1970's I was part of a church group that sponsored a family of Vietnamese refugees: a family of nine; mother, father, and 7 children from ages of 2 to 20. Whatever we needed to set up a house for them appeared; all that we needed and more. The automatic washer we had set up for them originally, died within the first month. What would we do? Laundry facilities were a must for a family of that size. Within a day of letting the congregation know of our need, we had not one, but two, working washing machines For me, this was a clear case of the story of the loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:13-21) being experienced in our time.

And so I have seen this passage for quite some time as saying that when people share what they have of material things there is more than enough. But now it also speaks to me about the intangibles too.

Yeast, a mustard seed, and I would now add the feeding of the 5000, are all parables about something small becoming huge and taking on a life of its own. In fact when reading the NRSV I noticed for the first time that it says '5000 men, besides women and children', not including women and children, which probably adds another 20,000 or so bodies to the story making it even more 'amazing'.

Yeast and mustard seeds are examples everyone would have been familiar with in first century Galilee. They would have nodded their heads and agreed that yes, they can quickly take over. This story moves it up a notch to the listener's actions by saying 'see if you give what you have, however small and useless it may seem to be, it too will become what is needed and more besides'. But you then need to take the excess and use, not waste it. (The writer of Matthew then took the example to the next level with Jesus' death being the ultimate action of giving, an action that changed lives) And so we go back to what I experienced with the refugee family 4 decades ago.

Giving of our material surplus, however, is easy compared with the giving of ourselves. How many times have you heard someone say, "What difference can I, as one person make in addressing the issue of world poverty, or war and genocide, or even the capitalism of our own society?" And we all nod our heads, sorrowfully, and agree. We can do nothing! And yet, I have come to see that may be exactly what Jesus is asking his followers to do in this story. Is he asking them, and by extension us, not to worry about the possible success of our attempts but to do whatever we can, no matter how small and insignificant it might seem to us? In this society we often focus more on the results than on the process to the detriment of that process. It challenges us to think of an abundance that comes from the insignificant, from the overlooked, from the stuff of our very lives.

When have we met this challenge in our lives, or in fact, have we?

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