Sermon for Ninth Sunday after Trinity. Take, bless, break, give.

2 Kings 4: 42 - 44

⁴² A man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing the man of God twenty loaves of barley bread baked from the first ripe grain, along with some heads of new grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” Elisha said.

⁴³ “How can I set this before a hundred men?” his servant asked.

But Elisha answered, “Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the Lord says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’” ⁴⁴ Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.

Matthew 14: 13 - 21

13 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.

14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

15 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 that they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.

16 Jesus replied, They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.

17 We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish, they answered.

18 Bring them here to me, he said.

19 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.

20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

5000 people sharing ‘five loaves of bread and two fish.’

That’s not going to work.

Let’s have a think about this passage from Matthew that asks us to believe ‘five loaves of bread and two fish’ can feed five thousand.

First we should remember that Matthew is a Hebrew convert to Christianity.

Both Matthew and his Jewish readers would know the Old Testament story of how God provided food for His people in the desert, the people of Israel complained to Moses that they had no food, so God sent manna from heaven – the bread of heaven – to feed them.

They would also have known the story of Elijah who provided for a poor widow a jar of oil and a bowl of flour that by God’s grace never ran out.

There’s also the story we heard from Kings concerning Elisha, a story that pre-echoes the feeding of the 5000. In Kings twenty loaves feed a hundred men. In words that pre-echo the gospels, Elisha says, “Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the Lord says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’” Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.’

Such Bible stories about the miraculous provision of food are called ‘multiplication miracles’.

To the faithful Jew multiplication miracles where a reminder it is God who provides for our needs, we are not self-sufficient, neither are we reliant on the gods, but rather we rely on the one true God, who has the power to create and recreate endlessly - it is who He provides for us.

So, the question for the people as they ate the bread and fishes miraculously multiplied by Jesus was, ‘who is this man, this Jesus, surely he is at least a prophet like Elisha, or Moses, or Elijah?’

After this account of the feeding of the five thousand the miracle stories continue, they accumulate, and ask increasingly the question, 'who is this man?'

Then in chapter 16 Jesus asks his disciples, ‘who do people say I am?’

‘They reply, some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

But what about you? he asked them. Who do you say I am?

Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

The story of the feeding of the five thousand is a story about who Jesus is, and how we are to respond to him.

A miracle, like a parable, is a story with a meaning. A miracle is not just an impressive event – if it has no meaning, it's not a miracle.

In the bible miracles reveal the nature of God.

This is true of the bible, and of knowledge in general.

Every time a scientist rolls back the boundaries of our knowledge by discovering something previously unknown or thought impossible, then a miracle has occurred, and thus we learn a little more about the nature of the universe, and consequently a little more about the Creator of the universe.

I sometimes hear theories that try to explain away miracles. It is said, maybe the words of Jesus and the act of sharing the little food they had encouraged others to do the same, and hidden food came out of pockets, or maybe the ‘food’ Jesus gave was spiritual nourishment not actual bread.

When I hear these explanations I think, ‘are you reading some other story?’

Matthew writes that the people had no food. So you have to ignore the text if you go with the sharing theory.

Matthew also writes, that the people where satisfied, so we are not talking about spiritual nourishment - if Jesus had given hungry people an encouraging word or two they would have not been satisfied.

More than, the story of the feeding of the five thousand is a revelation about the nature of God, it confirms the understanding of God as provider from the Old Testament, and begins to reveal the New Testament understanding of Jesus as God the Son.

Primarily miracles do not invite either scepticism or credence, they invite interpretation.

At the feeding of the 5000, and at the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to the people.

Such was the characteristic power of this action that after his death and resurrection two disciples walking the road to Emmaus, who for grief and disappointment could not recognise the man who travelled with them, finally realised it was Jesus when he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them.

In a Communion service, we remember that Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples.

If anyone asks you who Jesus is, you would do well to tell them he is the one who makes himself known by taking bread, giving thanks, braking it, then feeding the people.

Or better still, feed them. Feed them with whatever you have to give, be it bread, or time, or a kindly word, or a listening ear - whatever they need that you can give, and you too will see a miracle, you will see Christ revealed in the breaking of the bread.

Jesus is the bread of life, taken from heaven to live as a man, at his baptism God gave thanks for His Son, on the cross he was broken by human hands, and in the Eucharist Christ is given to the whole Church so that we in turn may feed a hungry world.

Amen.