If you were asked which was the most important miracle Jesus ever did what would you answer? Would you say raising people from the dead? That is really something, isn’t it? Healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, causing the deaf to hear or the mute to speak also are all wonderful miracles. Walking on water and telling the wind and rain to stop are very impressive miracles too. However, if we were to judge from the importance given it in Holy Scripture, this miracle that we heard about this today, the feeding of five thousand men along with the women and children is the most significant miracle in the ministry of Christ outside of Passion Week. Why this is so is because this miracle is the only miracle that is found in all four of the gospels. Lazarus being raised from the dead is found in only one gospel. Jairus’s daughter is found in three gospels. Peter walking on the water is found in only one. The curing of the man who was blind from birth is found in only one. And these are all really wonderful miracles I think we would all agree. But that this miracle of the feeding of the five thousand being found in all four should alert us to its importance and significance. It is important in at least three ways. First it demonstrates the power of God in an amazing way. Second, it unveils one of the aspects of Jesus’ Messianic roles, and thirdly it demonstrates the character of God through Jesus’ action.
This miracle demonstrates the power of God in an astounding way. Typically people gloss over this miracle because it is almost too difficult to visualize. Think of this church full of people. Look around and picture in your mind’s eye every pew filled and people in balcony and side chapels. Little children sitting on parents’ laps and if we do that, we have between 500 and 600 people in here. Then picture the little lunch with which Jesus was working. The five loaves were not exactly loaves of bread like we buy in the store. Nor were they the little loaves like one gets at Outback or some other restaurant. No, the loaves referred to in our reading were more like our pancakes. The Jewish women would roll out pieces of dough on hot rocks and cook their bread that way. Bible scholars figure they may have been up to 6 or 7 inches in diameter. The two fish were similar to our sardines though they were probably dried and not in a can. So Jesus has these five loaves, five pancakes, and two small fish from which to work. He tears the first pancake in half. He tears the second pancake in half. He tears the third and the fourth and the fifth. Well that is not going to go very far even if we are only trying to feed five or six people much less only five or six hundred people that would fill this church! But picture then that Jesus is feeding not only our church full of 500 people, but then double our size of our building and add another 500 people. And then add another 500 and another 500. If we do that we are still less than half of the men who were fed. Remember that there are wives who came along and not only the wives but of course there were children. There were the grandmothers and maiden aunts and unmarried daughters who also came. So all of the sudden it is not only five thousand being fed, many commentators think it may have been as many as twenty thousand people! Feeding 500 people here in our church with five pancakes would be an amazing miracle wouldn’t it? But then to multiply to twenty, or thirty or forty times is completely mind-boggling! This miracle demonstrated the power of God in an amazing way!
This miracle is also important because it unveils who Jesus is. This miracle parallels Moses feeding the people of Israel in the wilderness. In fact this was so obvious even to the people at that time they said to each other, “This is the prophet, that is, this is Moses come again.” Just like Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land, the people at this time wanted Jesus to lead them into freedom from the Romans. That is the reason they wanted to make him king by force if necessary. If anyone could take on the Romans and win, Moses could and here was Moses in the form of Jesus. But it is not only a picture and parallel of God feeding the Israelites in the wilderness with manna. It is a picture of our Eucharist. Jesus the next day tells the people that He, Jesus, is the true bread out of heaven. It wasn’t manna, it wasn’t barley bread that was the true bread from heaven; it was Jesus who was really the true bread. It is not manna or barley bread that brings eternal life; it is Jesus. And that is what we believe and say during our Eucharist when we say, “The body of Christ, the bread from heaven.” We are quoting Jesus. We feed on Jesus during the Eucharist because he is the one who feeds and sustains our spiritual lives!
Finally this miracle shows the character of the Father in Jesus. Jesus once said that he only does what he sees the Father doing and the Father causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust and the sun to rise on the good and the evil. Here Jesus feeds everyone who is hungry, those who love him and will follow him and he feeds those who will turn against him and hate as soon as the next day. Jesus shows love and compassion to all. Another aspect of the Heavenly Father this miracle demonstrates is the abundance of God. God the Father is a God of abundance and generosity. I remember an apple tree I had in my yard in northern Illinois. It produced every year the best tasting Jonathan apples ever and that little tree produced its heart out every year. We ate apples and had applesauce and made apple butter and had apple pies but then we always ended up giving bags and bags and bags of apples away. These were the big paper grocery bags too! Not the little plastic ones we typically use today. In this miracle Jesus has enough bread for everyone but not only enough for everyone, but there are twelve large baskets of bread pieces left over! Now that is an abundance of bread! And another characteristic of the Father that Jesus shows here is his willingness to use the lowly. Barley was the poor man’s flour. Israel at that time certainly did have wheat, but wheat was sold to the wealthy. Barley was used by the poor people. Yet Jesus did not scorn to use the lowly barley bread for his most important miracle. God loves to use the lowly. For the Incarnation, God used a young humble peasant woman named Mary. Much earlier he used a lowly shepherd like David to do mighty and wonderful things. We are told all throughout Scripture how God rejoices to raise up the lowly and bring down the proud.
So we can see this is really a significant miracle. But what is the point for us? What is the take-home? So that from now on we can say, “Oh, nice miracle!”? No, but we can certainly thank our Lord for showing us glimpses of his mighty power as he did here. And we can be aware of our needing to be sustained by the true bread from heaven, Jesus. But what I would like us particularly to take to heart are the three ways Jesus showed his Father’s character. Let us show love and compassion to all; even those who do not like us. Fr. Fred said it so well last week, “Let us be passionate about showing compassion. “ Secondly, let us be generous in our giving even as God is generous and gives to us freely and abundantly. And finally, let us humble ourselves before God like the little barley loaves knowing that God delights to use the humble and lowly in heart. So let us humble ourselves before our God.
May our Lord Jesus help us to truly learn from this miracle and apply it to our lives that we may love him more and serve him better. Amen
