What Will You Do? The Feeding of the Five Thousand

In this sermon on the feeding of the five thousand, Daniel McInnes reads St Matthew's account alongside the fuller detail of St John's Gospel, where Christ tests the disciples with the question, "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" Daniel draws out how God chooses to work through people who bring the little they have, how the miracle foreshadows the Eucharist, and how the same question — "What will you do?" — meets us in the needs we encounter every day.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we heard the Gospel reading about the feeding of the five thousand. I think even people who have nothing to do with the Church know that story. If they don't know any other stories, they probably know that one. It's one of the really big miracles that we see in the Gospel readings.

Today we heard the reading from St Matthew, and St Matthew doesn't really give a lot of detail in terms of who is saying what. He kind of says the disciples say this, Jesus says this. So I would just like to read the same account, but from the Gospel of John, because in John's Gospel we get a little bit more detail.

It says: "Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, and a great crowd of people followed him because they had seen the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover festival was near. When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, 'Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?' He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, 'It would take more than half a year's wages to buy enough bread for each one to have even a bite.' Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up, 'Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?'" And then the story follows from there exactly the same as it is in Matthew.

So we get a slightly different picture here. In the Gospel according to Matthew, the disciples say, "Send all the people away, because they need to eat. Send them to the villages so they have time to go and eat." But in the Gospel according to St John, we get a little bit more detail: it is actually resolved into a test. Jesus is testing them. He asks Philip, "Where are we going to get enough food for all these people?"

It's interesting that we're seeing here the dynamic between Jesus and his disciples. He's saying to them, "What are you going to do? What will you do?" On the face of it, the situation is impossible from a human point of view. There's no way they would have enough food among all those people to feed anybody. As they said, it would cost so much money, and even then each one would only get a small bite. So it is humanly impossible. But what Jesus is saying to them is, "What can you do? What are you going to do?"

We see the result of this when Andrew comes with the small boy and says, "This boy has some bread and some fish." It doesn't seem like much. They even say, "I don't know how that can go among so many people." So they're very realistic. They're fishermen and workers — very realistic people. They're looking at it and saying, "These people have to go somewhere else to eat. We've only got this small amount of food; it's not going to go very far." Very practical, very down-to-earth people.

But Jesus is about to show them what happens when he is involved. It doesn't matter that it's only a small amount of food. What matters is the bringing of whatever it is — whatever small amount they have, whatever tiny token — the bringing of it and the giving of it. That's what's important. Jesus can do the rest, and he shows them this. Five thousand people, plus women and children, get fed that day, and there is food left over. It is an astounding thing, but it starts in response to a test, where Jesus says, "Where are you going to get the food?" And they say, "Well, what could we do?" And then someone comes with some bread and some fish and says, "Here, we've got something." And Jesus says, "Yes, that's enough. There's something. Let's work with that."

So we've got a situation where Jesus has compassion on the people, but he himself is saying, "Not just because I have compassion can I do anything." Jesus is God. He could have just made food for everybody right there at that moment. There would be no problem for him in doing that — not magically, but by the power of God, food just appearing right in front of everybody, and they could have eaten their fill, no problem. But that's not generally how God works. Generally speaking, he likes to work through people — through people bringing whatever they have and giving whatever they've got.

We see that in this story. We see the compassion of God, but the compassion of God working through human beings — through human beings who give what they have. And then, through the giving of what they have, however small, amazing things happen, because God is able to take whatever small amount we've got and use it for his own glory and for the good of people, because he is compassionate toward them.

We also see in this story a foretaste of the Eucharist, because here we have Jesus feeding a large number of people, and we can see the eucharistic imagery. He takes the bread, he blesses it, he breaks it, and then gives the food to all the people. We see that same eucharistic imagery, and it reminds us that when we come here to the Liturgy, we are participating in a similar kind of thing. We come and we bring what we have.

What do we have? There are people here who bake the bread — the prosphora — so that we can have the communion. For the Liturgy, we all come together. You have to have people who respond, because a priest cannot just do the Liturgy by himself; he's not allowed to. You have to have someone to give the response. We've got servers, we've got the choir, we've got people doing the sound — all kinds of people who are offering something. Even the people who are just sitting in the congregation are giving their attention, giving their response. All those things, however small they are, are part of the giving that goes into this eucharistic service of thanksgiving. And when we give what we have, Jesus gives us back life. He gives us life through his own Body and Blood. But it takes us being here. It takes us participating. It takes us giving something for that to happen.

So as we go forward this week, we should be looking — because when Jesus had compassion on the people, his question really was, "What are you going to do?" Every single day, that same question comes up for us, because we are surrounded with all kinds of needs all the time — little ones, big ones, all kinds of things. We come across them constantly, and the question is always going to be, "What do you have to give? What are you going to do?" Christ will fill in. He'll make up the rest. But we have to give something.

Every day, all of us come across situations where we can see, "I could do something. Maybe I can't do everything, but I can do something." And we can trust God to do the rest. So as we go forward this week, let's look for those opportunities to give of ourselves — not giving of ourselves and thinking that in my own strength something will happen, but giving of myself knowing that whatever little I have to give, God can make up the rest and do something far more amazing, far more wonderful, than I ever could by myself.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.