Welcome to the Knox Talks blog. Here you can find recent and past sermons relating scripture to a wide variety of topics. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.
The Core Miracle
Scriptures: Isaiah 55:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21
I was fascinated to discover that the miracle of the loaves and the fishes is the only miracle of Jesus included in all four gospels. Obviously, the resurrection of Jesus is included in each gospel, but that is a miracle attributed to God. NO ONE claims that Jesus raised himself.
So the miracle of the loaves and fishes is important enough that it is core to the story of Jesus in a way that no other sign or portent is.
We have four gospels because each of the writers had a particular perspective they wanted to bring, a message they were determined to share, possibly with a particular audience.
Mark’s is the oldest, and it is written in clumsy Greek. It bubbles with urgency and enthusiasm: the phrase kai euqus “and immediately” is very common. Mark seems to be in a hurry to tell his readers about another way to live as revealed by Jesus.
Matthew and Luke both had copies of Mark’s gospel and they both had copies of a collection of the sayings of Jesus. Maybe they felt that Mark had missed something important. We know they had different audiences: Matthew was writing in Syria for Jewish Christians and wanted to address the question of Jesus’ relationship with the law of Moses; Luke was writing in Egypt for Gentile Christians. He was prepared to talk about Jesus in terms they could accept, such as the virgin birth and Jesus being the Son of God in literal rather than symbolic terms, something blasphemous to Jews, but accepted by Pagans.
John’s gospel came last. He was writing theology: trying to give people a way to understand Jesus that painted him in very divine terms. John doesn’t talk about miracles at all, he talks about seven signs. The sign of the loaves and fishes is #4, dead centre. He also gives Jesus seven “I AM” monologues. Biblically, seven is a divine number and “I AM” is the closest translation we can manage to the name of God as revealed at the burning bush.
So in the midst of these four different agendas and perspectives, it is remarkable that this miracle is so important that all four evangelists give it a prominent place in their narrative.
At its core, this miracle is about impossible generosity: “You feed them” says Jesus with five loaves and two fish for over 5000 people. Note the divine number of seven again: 5+2. Jesus breaks up the bread and shares it around and the broken pieces at the end fill 12 baskets. Note: 12 is another symbolic number – the number of the tribes of Israel and the number of disciples. It represents the totality of the people of God and it suggests the message that, when we get together God provides more than what we need.
One favourite interpretation of this event is that the people of the crowd, seeing the example of Jesus and the disciples sharing the small amount of food they had, decided to share whatever they had brought. It became a miracle of the changing of hearts: instead of people expecting to be served, they start to share and serve each other, with generous and unexpected results.
One of the persistent messages of Jesus is that we can trust God to care for our needs and this incident gives us a sense that it works when the whole church pulls together and shares instead of hoarding or thinking selfishly.
God works through the people of God, through sharing and helping, and the results are nothing short of miraculous. Clearly, each of the evangelists understood that this idea of shared resources, of getting together and helping each other, was at the core of Christianity.
They understood that a major part of Jesus’ teaching was aimed at changing people’s hearts; to stop looking out for “number one” and start helping out the community with a generous spirit.
In fact, it’s not just about giving; it is about accepting help as well, having the grace to receive as well as give. Sometimes our pride gets in the way; we don’t want to be seen taking charity.
But what Jesus shows us is that we are called to create community and sharing back and forth isn’t “charity”. Actually, our culture has corrupted the word “charity” which comes from the Greek word xaritas which is a kind of generous love. We’ve associated it with a corrupt version of giving to the poor, where someone wealthy or powerful demonstrates their moral superiority, or their value in society, by giving to the “less fortunate”. They may end up feeling good about themselves, but too often the recipient feels put down, even worthless.
What Jesus was demonstrating was sharing, with everyone being equal in the community and God’s good gifts becoming available to all, no social inequality. Rather, with the first becoming last and the last, first, all should end up in the same space, sharing freely.
Unequal sharing was so shocking that when one church started treating communion as a kind of selfish potluck where you ate what you brought, the rich were getting overfed and drunk and others were going hungry, Paul reamed them out in one of his letters and condemned this as receiving communion “in an unworthy manner”. This phrase has worried people who care about rules ever since: “am I worthy?” But the example we see of unworthy behaviour is all about selfishness.
The earliest church took this sharing model quite literally. The Jerusalem church gathered people together to live in common. They sold what they had and shared everything until Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE.
The ancient church developed another model of this that still exists today: the monastic community where no one has private property and all work for the common good.
We associate this with same-gender communities of entirely monks or nuns but early Celtic monasteries had mixed groups with monks and nuns often married to each other. Some young Christians today are experimenting with what they call “intentional communities” sharing a place to live, cooking, eating & studying together.
It’s not what our society has trained us to expect. The sharing community we know best is the family and in the 20th century we were encouraged to narrow that down to the nuclear family instead of the multi-generational arrangements we had known for centuries.
Jesus imagined something much bigger, more inclusive, connected not by blood but by shared values, where people can gather in a community that works and shares together so that no one has to go without. The Mennonites started living this way 500 years ago and practise various forms in their own communities.
This vision of community and sharing is so foundational to Christianity that all four gospels, despite their differences, saw fit to give this miracle a prime place in their narratives.
As we live through turbulent economic times we would do well to remember this vision and imagine how we could make it work today.
This vision is core to Jesus’ teachings. As we try to find inspiration for our future at Knox and for the wider church, rediscovering this vision may inspire in us a new and creative way forward.
Amen.
Knox United Church Nepean 