I have a tendency to get caught up in miracles stories and miss their points. Were there really 5000 people there? Does that include or exclude women and children? Did this happen in the country, in a city, or in the Transjordan (as various gospels purport)? Are we to understand this as the loaves and fishes literally being expansive? Are we to assume that one person’s generosity enabled others to share as well? Or, is this really another way of explaining communion, and we are to attend to the ways that small piece of the bread of life can feed our souls?

(I think for John, this is the communion story. He doesn’t have communion on Jesus’ last night because he has footwashing. And the verbs fit. John has Jesus take the bread, give thanks, distribute them … and also the fish, which seems a solid variation on the cup.)

My questions are ones I’m interested in, BUT they’re distractions. However, as much as I want to make sense of the story by assessing the veracity of the details, the Bible doesn’t work that way! The Bible simply isn’t obsessed with factuality the way that moderns are. The Bible thinks that it is OK have 4 or 5 totally different versions of the same stories (like this one), and doesn’t mind the differences between them. That would seem to indicate that the details aren’t the point!! The Bible speaks in METAPHOR, because it speaks of things that are bigger than facts.

That being said, I think one of the easiest ways to figure out what metaphors and truths the Bible is trying to get to is to pay attention to the ways that stories are adapted as they are retold. One of the most common ways that the Gospels make sense of Jesus is by using references to Hebrew Bible leaders. For instance, the Gospel of Matthew spends a lot of energy constructing Jesus as the “new Moses” including having him come back in to the Promised Land from Egypt. Matthew and Luke each find a way to speak of Jesus as the “new David” by making sure to place his birth in Bethlehem. All of the Gospels also compare Jesus to the greatest prophets of the Hebrew Tradition, Elijah and Elisha, and this story is one of those examples.

Elijah came first. His story of miraculous feeding found in 1 Kings 17:8-16. That story tells of the prophet, who was on the run, being instructed to go to a poor widow’s house so that the widow would feed him. He was hungry and in need of food because of a drought, a drought that he had predicted would come, a drought that the Bible presents as an expression of God’s displeasure at royal behavior. Elijah wasn’t the only one who was hungry because of the drought. The widow he was sent to was also a mother, and she had only a small bit of meal and a tiny bit of oil left to her name. When the prophet asked for some bread, she responded, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” (NRSV, v. 12) The prophet asked for some of the tiny bit she had left, and she gave it to him. Somehow, the widow, her child, and the prophet had enough to eat for many days, and survived.

The Bible is affirming in this story that God is with Elijah. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be quite useful and abundant when given to God.

When Elijah died, his mentee Elisha was given his mantle and sent to continue his work as a prophet. At that point, the Bible spends some time showing that the miracles God worked for Elijah, God also worked for Elisha, proving that the mantle had been passed metaphorically and not just physically. A mantle is a long, sleeveless cloak. In this case it represented the power of the prophet to function as God’s witness in the world.

So, in our Hebrew Bible reading today, Elisha is able to provide food for hungry people when there clearly isn’t enough. It is a very different story, yet the miraculous part where too little food is somehow still enough, is still there. This one starts with a man bringing his tithe to the prophet. The Torah has very specific instructions about how to live well in community, and one piece of that is that the first fruits of a harvest be given away. Sometimes they’re given to the priests so that the priests who are landless in service to God have food. Sometimes they’re blessed to be used for a feast or festival where all the members of the community get to eat together. That method also ensures that those who are food insecure have access to food.

Probably most people were not bringing their first fruits to to Elisha, because his role was as a prophet and not as a priest. But this man sees holiness in Elisha, and brings his offering out of faithfulness to God, to Elisha to be used. Now, Elisha has surrounded himself with a large number of followers. That was very different from how his mentor Elijah worked. Mentor Elijah was a loner, who on good days allowed mentee Elisha to follow him. Elisha was better at working in community. However, both were really unpopular with the leadership of the day, and had trouble accessing sufficient resources on their own, without Divine help.

Elisha uses the gift from the man’s first fruits to feed those who surrounded him in HIS community. It shouldn’t have been enough to feed the people, and yet it was more than enough. The Bible is indicating that God is with Elisha. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be useful and abundant when given to God.

God was with Elijah, God was with Elisha, and God was with Jesus. This story, this miraculous feeding a large crowd that sounds a lot like Elisha feeding, is the ONLY miracle found in all 4 Gospels. Clearly the early Christian community thought this story was central to understanding Jesus.

In the second story, Elisha’s servant names that what was given to Elisha wasn’t enough to feed the large crowd. In John, the disciples who are expected to understand what God and Jesus are up to, articulate similar concerns. The crowd is BIG, and they’re all hungry, and they don’t have the resources to feed them.

But one person, in this case one small boy, offers his meager resources. 5 barley loaves and 2 dried fish, the traveling food of the poor in that day, were likely all he had with them. He offered them to God and to God’s holy one, a lot like the man who had offered his first fruits to God’s prophet Elisha. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough.

But the Bible is indicating that God is with Jesus. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be quite useful and abundant when given to God.

There is another unique detail in John. The story opens telling us that Jesus “went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee which is also called the Sea of Tiberias.” (NRSV, v. 1). It isn’t called that. The Sea of Galilee just isn’t called the Sea of Tiberias. BUT, it is super meaningful to mention it that way. In 20 CE, the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, created a new capital for himself in Galilee, on the Sea of Galilee, and named it for the Roman Empiror Tiberius. The goals seemed to be twofold: one to flatter the Roman Emperor Tiberius directly; another to commercialize the fishing on the sea, then building up the economy, and proving his powers as an good leader. Both of the goals were really aimed at trying to get access to lead more of the Roman Empire, as his father had.

Tiberias was a noticeably Roman city, one that offended the Jews as it was built on burial grounds, and represented the ways that the Empire sought to exploit the people for economic gain. To call the Sea of Galilee the Sea of Tiberias is to remind those experiencing the story of the social and political location of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, his miracle itself undermined the empire because it fed the hungry masses whose hunger the empire sought to exploit. The Sea of Galilee had been the primary food source for the people, but had become a source of income for the Empire, at the expense of the people’s primary food source.

On the shores of the Sea, Jesus fed the hungry and hurting people, both with food and with hope.

The initiating act of the miracle was the child who offered his meager bread and two small dried fish.

Those three characters shared what they had, despite it not being enough: that child, that man bringing his first fruits to a politically unpopular prophet, and that widow who shared her last meal. None of them did anything all that unusual. People share sometimes. People offer tithes. Desperate people make do and share what isn’t even enough for them over and over and over again. Many people have told me stories of their own parents limiting their food intake so they could eat enough as children. This happens.

But the Bible says that even little gifts can create significant good. That narrative is feeling really big right now, because the problems of the world feel really big right now, they feel like a hungry and frightened mass of 5000 people looking expectantly for food! Sometimes, for me, what I have to offer feels really small sometimes – a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, a voice to raise in prayer, a presence in the midst of the struggle that stays calm and peaceful. They’re SMALL when the problems are BIG. But the Bible says that God can do a LOT with what we give to God, even when it appears that what we have to offer is a lot less than what is needed to solve the problem.

God isn’t asking us to give out of resources we lack! God asks for what we can give, no matter how small, and then God works with it.

In the midst of the really hard times of life, the things that pick us up aren’t usually big miracles. They’re still the small stuff! They’re the little indications that someone cares and we aren’t alone in the struggle. I encourage you to think about the hard times in your life and what picked you up. Was it big things? Or was it things so small that the person who offered it might not even remember?

The small stuff matters. A little tiny loaf of bread. A regular tithe offering. The simple supper of a poor child. Each became a means of grace in the world. God can work with what we have to give.

So, let us go from this place, offer what we have, and watch to see how God multiplies our gifts into signs of hope and grace. God is able, and so are we. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron 

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady