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Plenty and to Spare

Sat, 08/09/2008 - 12:22pm — pshupe
Presented On: 
August 2, 2008
Written by: 
Paul Shupe
Related Scripture Reading: 

Matthew 14:13-21

In this passage Jesus retreats to a lonely place upon hearing of the death of John the Baptist. Huge crowds follow him, and are fed, even though there was a perceived scarcity of food.

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd: and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” The replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking up the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled: and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

“Plenty and to Spare”

Some stories about Jesus changed in meaning after his resurrection. This morning’s gospel reading is a classic case in point.
As our story opens, Jesus received jarring news: John the Baptist has been executed while in prison. When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from where he had been and the crowds around him, making his escape by boat. Matthew does not tell us why he did this, but we can readily think of reasons why he might have:
• The death of John filled him with grief, and we wanted to be alone in his sorrow
• The death of John may have provoked worry in Jesus; it was not a good time to be a prophet in Israel
• The death of John may have made his own mission all that much more imperative; everything may have become more urgent.
In any event, it seems to have been something of a pivotal moment for Jesus, a time when things changed. And so he went off by himself, as indeed he often did, to pray, to ponder, to wonder.
But Jesus was not the only affected by John’s death. The nameless crowds around him obviously felt unnerved, too. They followed him on foot, Matthew says, and so they were waiting for him in a deserted place, even before he disembarked. We would understand if Jesus had been irritated, frustrated or even angry: there was, it seems, no place that he could go to escape, to find the solitude he seemed to crave.
We would understand if he had been irritated, but are pleasantly surprised to find him instead to be filled with compassion for them. Compassion is a word that means literally to “suffer with.” Jesus saw their hurt, their confusion, their worry, and, undaunted by it, he plunged into it with them, moving among them, healing when he could, sharing their angst and their worry.
It must have taken some time for him to move through the crowd, and as the hours past, the disciples, many of them very practical people, began to worry about food. What would the multitude eat? “Send them away,” they urged Jesus, “tell them to go feed themselves in the villages nearby.” But Jesus is buying none of it. “You feed them,” he said. The most practical among them were surely maddened yet again: How could they follow such an order? They had not even enough for themselves, five loaves, a couple of fish. Yet there Jesus went again, ordering the impossible. “Bring me what you have,” Jesus said, and before anyone knew what had happened, or how, or why, the multitudes were all eating bread, eating their fill, and the leftovers filled 12 baskets.
Now before the death and resurrection of Jesus, this was almost certainly a story about a miracle of feeding. A few loaves, a couple of fish and more than 5,000 satisfied diners. Such a wonder!
But after the events of Good Friday and Easter, the story took on a different tone, and began to be told in a different way. Seen through the lenses of Good Friday and of Easter, the disciples remembered that at the seashore, he’d done what he did at the table at the last supper, taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and sharing it. Seen through the lenses of Good Friday and Easter, the disciples remembered not just a pile of leftovers, but now specifically 12 baskets, one for each of them, one for each of the 12 tribes of Israel, filled not with crumbs, but with broken pieces. Seen through the lenses of Good Friday and Easter, the church sees now not a story about the miracle feeding of 5,000+, but rather the greater miracle of the feast of God, the body of Christ blessed and broken and given, bringing new life to all, given precisely because of the compassion of Christ, because of his willingness to suffer with us, and in so doing, to transform us all.
Now feeding a multitude with a few loaves and a couple of fish is amazing, and I don’t begin to have an explanation for how it could be so.
But Christ having compassion for us, and giving up life so that we might live, well, that’s even more amazing, despite which we can begin to understand it.
There are two kinds of things in the world, you see. On the one hand there are things like wealth and material objects that, if you give them away, you no longer have them. If I have ten dollars and I give them to you, I no longer have ten dollars. Your gain is my loss. Time is like that. If I have a free hour and I use it to do something, I no longer have it. Some things can only be experienced by keeping them.
But there are other things that actually can only be had by giving them away. Take love, for example. If I say that I love someone, but keep it to myself, never acting on that love, then not only does the other person not receive my love, but I can’t even experience the love I claim to have. Love can only be experienced if I give it away. Compassion is another of these things. If I attempt to keep to myself concern for others, and never act on these feelings, then not only does the other person never know of my compassion, but truly, I never really had it in the first place. Just as love becomes love only by actually loving, Compassion becomes compassion only when it is given away to another. There are things that you can get only by giving them away. And when you give them, you discover that you have more of them than you started with.
So which, then, is the greater wonder: the mysterious multiplication of bread and fish? Or the astounding wonder of compassion and love: given away by Jesus, multiplied in the giving, resulting in more compassion and more love precisely because it has been so freely given away?
Today as we gather at the communion table, as we dare to take into our own hands the bread of life and celebrate the presence of Christ, we put on our Good Friday and Easter lenses. We see this story as the multiplication not of bread and fish, but of compassion and love. And more important even than how we read this Bible story, we see our lives, not preoccupied with the material things that are lost when given away. Rather we see our lives as gifts to us from God, gifts to be used for the sharing of compassion, of sharing the suffering of others, and as gifts to be poured out in love for others. And we see that in the sharing of these things, we have received them again and again, we have more to share tomorrow because of all we have shared today. Let us gather at the table then, to take up the bread and the cup, in anticipation that love we experience here will be multiplied again and again as we give ourselves for the sake of others. Amen.