Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (proper 13): July 31, 2005.

Isaiah 55:1-5

Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
--Psalm 145:15

First Reading

The opening verses of Isaiah 55 (of which we heard later verses several weeks ago) extend God's invitation to Israel to participate in the feast of the covenant. Neither self-conscious dieting nor binging on junk food ("spend[ing] your money for that which is not bread" nor "for that which does not satisfy") are recommended behaviors. Rather, Israel is urged to "eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." Here Second Isaiah echoes the sentiments of the original Isaiah whose reading we heard as an Easter text: "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear" (Isa 25:6).

Jesus will not only use the metaphor of salvation as eschatological banquet in his teaching, but inclusive table fellowship will become a parabolic mark of his ministry and a major point of contention with his foes. See Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 200ff. Walter Brueggemann suggests that the scene opens in what might be taken to be the hawking voice of a street vendor offering to passersby free water, wine, and milk, which is to be contrasted to the "life resources" offered by what Brueggemann calls the "empire." (For a stimulating contemporary theological critique of American "empire" see Sharon Welch, After Empire [Augsburg Fortress, 2004].)

Yahweh's free "alternative nourishment" of life lived in loyalty to the covenant is a stark contrast to Babylon's tempting allures that are nonetheless "always expensive, grudging, and unsatisfying" (p. 159). Many communion hymns sing of this reality, notably WOV #711, "You Satisfy the Hungry Heart," the old spiritual now available as Renewing Worship Songbook #R172, "Welcome Table," as well as the Spanish hymn "Let Us Go Now to the Banquet," #R178.

In a culture in which obesity is epidemic and even the church's Board of Pensions has begun to get serious about preventive health care, nutrition, and exercise because of skyrocketing health-care costs, the counsel to "delight yourselves in rich food" may need to be subordinated to the prior word to "eat what is good" (v. 2).

Still, banqueting/feasting/celebratory partying with good food and drink is a dominant image of that messianic feast to come of which the Christian Eucharist is to be experienced as a "foretaste." While as Christians we live always in awareness of the inequitable distribution of the world's goods, including notably food and water, we nonetheless worship a provident and even prodigal God who did not create a world of scarcity and hunger. Many first-worlders will testify to the astonishing feasting and generous hospitality they have experienced while visiting the "poor" third-world communities of our "companion" synods. (It's worth remembering that the word "companion" derives from the Spanish word meaning "to share bread with.")

Pastoral Reflection

I am one of those pastors who finds fiction and film great resources for reflection on issues of faith and life. Two of my all-time favorites happen to be short stories made into films retaining the same titles, Isaak Dinessen's "Babbette's Feast" and James Joyce's "The Dead." Both stories/films center around a gala meal in which the feast becomes a communal epiphany. Transcending the mundane existence of everyday life, the feast opens a window onto the abundance-celebrating "culture of God," which lies both beyond and below our ordinary plane of existence.

Today's story of the feeding of the 5,000--the only New Testament miracle story involving Jesus to be found in all four Gospels--carries Jesus' penchant for table fellowship outdoors into a picnic setting. The disciples of Jesus play an interesting role in the story. They are the ones who first inform Jesus that "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late" and then plead with him to "send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." I always hear this as the disciples' plea to Jesus, after a day full of Jesus' healing the sick, now to heal them of the hungry crowd by sending them home. It's a feeling, as a long-time pastor, with which I am familiar.

But Jesus sees this as a teaching moment for his disciples as he says to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." Apparently they had anticipated some such response from Jesus, for they report, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." Jesus responds, "Bring them here to me," and proceeds to bless, break, and give the loaves (in words that anticipate his blessing, breaking, and giving the bread at table on the night he was betrayed--see Matt 26:26) to the disciples, who in turn distribute the food to the crowds. The miracle is that "all ate and were filled" with twelve baskets full left over--the "all" including five thousand men, not even counting women and children.

Parker Palmer sees this as a story that illustrates the "scarcity assumption," under which we ordinarily live in our world, being overcome by the "abundance reality" of God's way. For Palmer the true miracle is how "suddenly, through a community ignited by an example of generosity, scarcity turns into abundance" (The Active Life [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990], 131). I once heard Palmer illustrate this further by telling what he claimed was a real-life experience of flying into a Canadian city for a weekend speaking engagement and then boarding for the return flight early the next Monday morning with many of the same fellow passengers. The takeoff was delayed, and somehow the expected food and beverages had not arrived before taxiing out onto the runway, so the hungry, tired, and late passengers quickly became surly to the point of rebellion. Into this deteriorating situation, as Palmer tells the story, stepped a take-charge, canny, funny flight attendant who immediately calmed the crowd by saying something to the effect of, "Listen up! Now, I was working the flight in on Friday afternoon, and I know that many of you put those extra bags of peanuts and pretzels we gave you in your pockets. I know some of you have brought with you this morning some fruit and sandwiches and bottles of water for the flight. So let's all break them out now and share what we have."

The miracle wasn't simply that they did so but that, in the process of sharing, passengers began talking with one another, smiling, and becoming a true if temporary community--all enabled and encouraged by that savvy flight attendant. Palmer, something of a guru in leadership training circles, winked at the flight attendant on the way out and said "Nice job!" She smiled back, nodded, and said, "You know the story of the feeding of the 5,000, don't you?" JR