Friday, September 10, 2010
When Jesus heard of John the Baptist's death, he withdrew from Galilee in a boat, to a place apart, in the desert. But the multitudes followed him on foot from the cities. When he came out and saw so many people, he had compassion on them, and healed their sick.
When evening began to fall, the disciples came to him, saying, "This place is a desert, and the hour for supper is already past. Send the multitudes away so that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food."
But Jesus told them, "They do not need to go away; give them food to eat."
They replied, "We only have five loaves and two fishes."
And he said, "Bring them here to me."
And he commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass; and he took the five loaves, and the two fishes. Looking up to heaven, he blessed them. Then he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the multitudes. And they all ate, and were filled. They gathered up all that remained of the broken pieces, which filled twelve baskets.
Those who ate were about five thousand men, as well as women and children.
When I was a child, I always puzzled over this story, which every child in Sunday School hears. I suspect a lot of other people had the same thoughts. I tried to envision a loaf — I think I had in my mind a fat unsliced loaf of Italian bread — being torn into pieces and eaten, while a giant pile of crumbs grew under whoever was eating it, mixed in with flakes of fish. I couldn't quite get my mind around it.
And I never did quite figure it out, how it would have looked. What I did do, was to figure out how unimportant it was to my core beliefs. Christians disagree about a lot of secondary issues, and you could find as many opinions about this wonderful Bible story as there are people who read it. Many people would insist vehemently that it happened literally and exactly as Matthew recounted it — and they might be right. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some would say it didn't happen at all, but is an allegory of some sort. And there are no doubt all kinds of diverse opinions in between.
What is important to me is not how we drive ourselves away from each other with our prideful opinions, but how united we are by the main point of the story. Our "daily bread" is a gift from God. Modern science has made great strides in explaining the "how" of existence, down to tracking the sub-atomic particles in the sun and how they react to create the light that is turned into sugars and starches by wheat and corn; and modern science has taught us to increase crop production and food distribution, to the great benefit of humanity.
But, ultimately, our Promethean pride is delusional. What man can make the sun shine? Birds and bears eat without our assistance (and actually, we seem to be more likely to destroy wildlife than to help it); and our food is no less a gift from God than theirs. To me, the point of today's scripture is that Christ was God and had the power to give God's gift — the fundamental gift of food.
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