The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Matthew.
When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Mt. 14: 13-21)
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One day my dad came home from work, tired and hungry, after a shift underground in the coal mine, to find no dinner waiting for him. My mother was in tears. A man had come to the door, ragged, and unkempt, and she took such pity on him that she gave him my dad’s dinner.
Now you might think that there would be enough food for more than one person anyway, but this was wartime, when food was rationed, and ours was a poor family, where meat and potatoes, and veggies, and Yorkshire pudding came along very rarely.
Food is important.
One of the ways that people hereabouts show how much they care when tragedy strikes, is to bring food.
It’s a fact that food, eating, sharing bread, have quite a meaning to us all, even though we would say that we were merely being neighborly.
In Jesus’s day, in a strictly hierarchical society, who was invited for a meal, and what was served, and where people sat, indicated much about the host and the guests.
Higher ranking guests would be seated near the host. If the host were reasonably well off, he would have servants whose job was to keep guests fed, and those guests, spared from having to get their own food would recline on couches during the meal.
Higher ranking guests would also get the better food, while guests who were rated as lesser mortals would be served not such choice food.
Imagine if you were to give a dinner party with rules like that. The local mayor, reclining on your right hand would be served the very best lean meat, while others might be lucky to get a piece of that fatty stuff – the stuff which is so hard to chew.
And if you don’t think a system like that is fair, then how would you feel about poor people paying taxes, and the rich paying nothing? Because that’s how it was in the Roman Empire.
Jesus’ ministry quite deliberately included eating with all classes of people, and using those occasions to bring lessons on equality to the host and guests alike.
You will remember hearing the Pharisee’s asking the disciples, “Why does your master eat with tax gatherers and sinners?”
You will remember Jesus telling assembled guests that they should not take the best place at a feast, but take a lowly place. Taking a higher place and then being asked to move to a lower, would be embarrassing to say the least.
Jesus told a parable about a rich man who invited many guests to a feast and was turned down by many of them, so he sent his servants out along the highways and byways to bring in any who were hungry.
Eating, dining together, breaking bread together was an occasion where Jesus could highlight class differences, and their unfairness, in his ministry of bringing God’s kingdom to bear, here on earth.
At the table, he could point out how people are hurt, rejected, used and manipulated by those who know no God except their own appetites.
On the other hand, the table, was also where equality could be shown. The table was where those who had could share with those who hadn’t.
The table was where friends could get together and enjoy each other’s company.
The table was where people interacted with each other.
Things haven’t changed too much, have they?
We ‘ do lunch.’ A lot of business gets done over lunch.
We invite friends over for dinner, or to barbecue, to drink, and laugh together.
Politicians use dinners as a prime way to raise funds. You might pay as much as a thousand dollars to be in the same room as a leading politician.
No, things haven’t changed.
No wonder feasts figure so much in Jesus’ parables. No wonder he used such moments to bring home his message.
Eating with people outside your class was a radical thing to do, so when Jesus ate with tax gatherers and other sinners, he was deliberately making a radical statement about the way things were in his world, and how they should be better.
He was deliberately demonstrating how it would be when the kingdom was realized – there would be equality, brotherly love, a communing one with another, and a coming together of people despite their place in society, free or slave, Hebrew or Greek, man or woman, rich or poor.
No-one would be higher than another.
No-one would be exploited by another.
No-one would be abused by another.
The leader would be the one who served. Not the one who sat back waiting for others to serve them.
And this was shown most amazingly in the story in today’s Gospel of the feeding of over five thousand people.
Jesus took the bread and the fish, blessed it, broke it, and shared it with all who were there. No-one was left out. Everyone ate. All sat down together, right where they were –no placing by rank – everyone ate the same food, in peace and in amity, and in brotherly love.
Some writers hold that this event was the first Eucharist, and that bread and fish were the first eucharistic foods.
Whatever we think, this momentous event was something that had a spiritual component to it – other than the words they heard from Jesus – and foreshadowed the meal that Jesus had with his disciples on that Thursday night, before he was betrayed.
That meal, shared between more than five thousand people, is echoed in the meal we share in our Eucharistic feast.
You know, we talk about a eucharistic feast don’t we? But that little wafer and a sip of wine hardly comprise what you would call a feast. You tend to think of a feast as somewhere where you get lots of food.
But cast your minds back to the most enjoyable evenings you ever had; the times you look back upon with a smile, the times when tears of love come to your eyes, and I bet what made that evening great was the people, or person there, and that the food didn’t matter, really.
You may remember, in the year 2002, Pope John Paul the second, celebrated mass in Downsview Park, Toronto. Some 800,000 people were said to have attended.
There have been big events before. Large stadiums are regularly filled by rock groups. And sports events.
One major difference between those secular events and the religious events of that week, was that there was no rowdiness. No-one was hurt. There were no reports of drug taking.
The newspapers reported that in the clean-up, afterward, numerous things were found in the garbage. Wallets. Bibles. Flags. Rosaries. Shoes.
No mention of needles, or other drug paraphernalia.
This was a feast – a feast of people coming together to be with one another, to share equally in the blessings that were to be had, and to worship and praise God together.
We don’t serve big portions at our Eucharist. It is true that if you wait to the end you can get more wine, because we like to have the last few people finish off what is in the chalice, but you could hardly say you are sated when you attend this feast.
But that is not what it’s about.
In his miracles, and through his parables, and through his healing, and eating together, Jesus intentionally places the people of his time, and us in our time, in physical and spiritual contact with God, and in physical and spiritual contact with each other.
He creates equality, brotherliness and sisterliness – community – or as Paul calls it –calls us – the body of Christ. He brings us close to God and each other
I hope that when you next share in the Eucharistic Feast, as small as the portions are, that you will find fullness – fullness of the Spirit. I hope that you find your spiritual hunger satisfied. I hope that sharing with others, in equality and love, and sharing, and being blessed, and blessing in turn, you will feel that you have feasted.
For that is what it was all about then, and what it is all about now.
Amen.