Our meditation today is centered on one of the best know gospel stories, the feeding of the
five thousand. It is a fabulous tale, confounding human reason, and like the other "larger than life"
stories about Jesus, often making the more logic bound among us skeptical about the literal truth of such scriptural
accounts.
However, we are pretty quick by contrast to freely throw around the word miracle. "It's a miracle we met."
"It's a miracle we got here on time." "Its a miracle he lived." In truth, most events we call
miracles are really "undiscovered natural processes." Even for the well intentioned, this has been called
the theology of the "God of the gaps". We attribute all of those events that we don't understand, or
are ignorant of, or just find to be too wonderful for chance, to the miraculous hand of God.
The problem with that is simply that as our knowledge of circumstances grows the gaps God fills tend to shrink.
God, then, gets squeezed out of our lives. In truth a real miracle is "an event not producible by the natural
causes that are operative at the time and place that the event occurs." Thus real miracles are completely
outside the realm of physical reality--like God becoming a human or a finite amount of bread becoming more than
the sum of its parts. So, in the strictest sense of the word, it may not be a miracle that someone's cancer goes
into remission because we are still fairly ignorant of the way bodies work and heal themselves. Healing is well
within the realm of physical reality;…bread self replicating however is not.
In fact, "miracle" is not even a biblical word. None of the Gospel writers refer to Jesus' acts as "miracles."
The Synoptic gospels don't really "call" them anything; they simply report the story. John alone calls
them "signs", but isn't specific as to what they are signs of ... power? divinity? the kingdom? He leaves
that open for us to consider, as if we are meant to bring the meaning to that which we find difficult to explain.
A similar point is made in the new movie "Signs" which has some wonderful dialogue between its two main
characters, an Episcopalian priest who has lost his faith following the tragic death of his wife, and his younger
brother who is struggling to accept the fact that he will never be the baseball super hero he had hoped to become.
So what "meaning" as people of faith are we supposed to draw from these larger than life tales?
First, we can celebrate "the gift" that most miracles grow out of desperate situations. Not all of them,
of course, for many count as miracles each new dawn that greets them, and the thousand tiny blessings flowing our
way during each and everyday. But many other miracles have taken root and bloomed from situations that were far
beyond our control, and, in many cases, were quite frightening and discouraging.
As Matthew prepares us for the Miracle of the Feeding of the 5000, he begins by drawing our attention to Jesus'
sadness. Right away he tells us that when Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been killed, he withdrew to a solitary
place. This story takes place in Matthew immediately after Jesus hears about the death of John the Baptist - and
it's assumed that Jesus is either in fear, disillusionment, or grief. The need to "get away", when the
circumstances of life are either over or under-whelming is a common response to such desperation.
No doubt the same was true of the crowds who followed him. John the Baptist apparently attracted a large following,
and was something of a folk hero to the populous. They were probably in grief as well. One of their hero's had
just been taken from them. Others from the pagan decapolis had also come because they too were searching for a
new answer to old problems that had haunted them, and they were hearing marvelous if not unbelievable tales about
this man Jesus. So they were a mixed bag of people, with diverse motivations, just like any congregation of believers
today.
Jesus responded by having compassion on the grieving masses, healing them, and giving them what we might call today
a funeral reception. Perhaps it's our first lesson on a Biblical understanding of how we should deal with grief
and disappointment. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, the real healing, and the real miracle, takes place when
we come together in our brokeness, and share our meager resources with one another.
Just as miraculous is this "awareness of other's needs" that creeps into our individual pity parties
and begins to lift us out of our sadness. Too much self-focus is always debilitating. Miracles grow as compassion
is shared. Did you ever consider that? Miracles are far easier to perceive and appreciate as we open ourselves
to them and others. Compassion is a wonderful vehicle through which miracles travel.
Secondly, Jesus never showered a blessing on those who would not receive or participate in it. When the disciples
complain that evening has come and the crowds are hungry, Jesus replies,..."You give them something to eat."
In fact, this story of the miracle of the breaking of the loaves and fish was coming from him but through them.
We usually hear it referred to as the miracle of "Jesus feeding the five thousand" but, in fact, it is
the disciples who feed the crowd. Verse 19 says specifically Jesus "blessed and broke the loaves, and gave
them to the disciples," and then it was "the disciples who gave them to the crowds." This is a story
about the empowerment of Jesus' followers to do the work of meeting needs, not simply a story about Jesus doing
one more "magical" thing.
Their first response of course was much like ours would probably be: "I only have....." We behave this
way a lot. We only have so much to give.... time, money, energy, talents and often patience. Most of the people
in this story felt they had nothing. One person only had a little. Actually, it was more than enough, because they
were all forgetting they also had Jesus. While they "looked around," he looked up and it made all the
difference!
I cleaned out my refrigerator the other day. Part of that oft repeated process was pulling out leftovers that had
found their way into the back crevices of the refrigerator. I found lots of what had once been delectable morsels
much too tasty to toss out. Clearly at one time they could have been combined into something quite wonderful. But
now…they were, well, disgusting. I won't be anymore graphic than that. I'm sure you've experienced the same.
That process repeats itself throughout our lives with all that we possess. There is an important time period, a
kairos or God's time period, when it is good enough to share. Do we share it,…or do we put it away for another
time only to find it changed into something no longer fit for anything?
Henri Nowen writes in "Can You Drink The Cup" about ourselves being what is "Chosen, Blessed, Broken,
and Given." We are that same possession in the hands of God. It's something we have to struggle with if we
are to grow in the life of faith.
In a sermon preached at the Princeton University chapel, Dr. Robert J. Owens Jr., Professor of Old Testament at
General Theological Seminary, commented:
It is not wrong to wrestle, to struggle. God works in our own capacities, rarely despite them. You may get maimed.
You may limp. You may have scars. Only fools and pagans think that life is won without crucifixions. But what does
a limp matter, when you see God more clearly in the process? What are a few scars, what is a cross even, if you
find thereby an enlarged capacity to depend on God? How great it is to limp when that marks you as one who met
the living God and whose spirit has been transformed by God. How insignificant the disturbance, if it proves an
opportunity for being remade. (Owens, Robert J., Jr., Wrestling with God,)
Perhaps, like Jacob, we are haunted by the past. By a sin, something we did that we can not forget. Something so
great in our own perception of it that it seems as though it will always hold us back. And so we wrestle with it
into the long, dark nght.
Perhaps, we wrestle with theology, with our own understanding of God and Scripture. Perhaps the faith we grew up
on is no longer sufficient in some way. There are clues of this in the story of Jacob, who we first met as a young
boy, but who is now approaching mid-life with a large family and a lot of second thoughts.
His view of the God of Peniel, seems like a very different viewpoint from that of Bethel some twenty-one years
earlier.
Or perhaps we are haunted by a present, a threat of some kind from a real or imagined enemy, perhaps with names
like midlife or grief or aging. Or with an ongoing broken relationship,…an Esau in our own lives.
In all of these wrestlings, the point is to hang on until the day dawns and the blessing comes. To be engaged,
to not drop out simply because we want instant, no pain results. If it's going to take a long time or if it might
wound us…why bother?At Passover, the holiday most observed by Jewish families, questioning is actually mandated.
On Passover one is commanded to question. "Four questions" traditionally recited by children are written
into the Passover Haggadah. But, according to the Talmud, even more important are the spontaneous questions that
emerge from real curiosity, rather than mere rote., e.g. "Why in the world are we doing this?"
The Talmud itself - the corpus of law and learning at the center of Judaism as defined in the centuries following
the destruction of the Second Temple - is about challenging and questioning. It is a book of questions and arguments,
not answers, which can only be studied through a process of questioning. This sort of interactive study of Talmud
- or the Torah, or other sacred texts - is, to some thinkers, the central religious act in Judaism.
The very word "Israel" means one of two things. The first and most common interpretation is "one
who wrestles with God." The second, which may have more to do with Jacob's "limping" refers to being
bound by one's own limitations. For those who have suffered severe joint pain, in an arm or hip, you know what
it's like to find that one spot where if you can just hold that limb in place it won't hurt as much. Such restriction
is obvious, and very unnatural, but it makes life bearable.
The choice to be "bound to God" is awkward. It is not natural. It breaks the human spirit…but it releases
the Spirit of the Holy. That Spirit will always prove that there is "more than enough, more than we ever imagined,
in fact there will be ample leftovers for another day.
Gandhi said, "The world has enough to satisfy every one's need, but not enough to satisfy every one's greed."
All of these recent and terrible revelations about corporate greed run amok infuriate most of us I'm sure. We want
all those cheating executives to pay for the greed that has cost so many a big chunk of their savings. But, even
as we castigate them for their greediness, we must also realize how closely we too have "played our cards"
and recognize our own unwillingness to share more of God's blessings to us with and for others. Are you willing
to break that habit?
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