For the next five weeks or so, we are going to be reading from John’s gospel, chapter 6, which is called the Bread of Life Discourse. in our journey, we are going to listen as Jesus reveals himself as the Bread of Life and gives the world its greatest gift, His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Christ starts with a miracle and then continues on with a series of teachings, reaching back to Moses and other great moments of the Old testament. Today's readings present us with the story of two different miracles, the story of Elisha, who in the midst of a famine feeds a hundred men with 20 loaves of barley bread and the story of Jesus, who when faced with a great crowd of 5000 hungry people, feeds them with five loaves and two fish.
Both stories share certain things in common.
Elisha's servant, on being told to feed the men with the offering brought by a man from Baal-shalishah, does not think it possible and complains to the prophet saying: "How can I set this before a hundred men?" With Jesus too, there is a servant, an apostle, who does not think it is possible to feed the people with what is available - the five loaves and two fish offered by the child that Peter's brother, Andrew, had found in the crowd.
In both stories, despite these small beginnings, the hungry are fed and there are leftovers - indeed in the story involving Jesus there is an abundance of leftovers - there is more than when the meal first began. The feeding of the great crowd, as John calls it, is the only miracle that Jesus did that is described in all four gospels. For this reason alone, we need to pay close attention to it. We need to ask ourselves, “why is this?” What is it about this miracle that catches the attention of the gospel writers.
I think it has to do with three things.
The first is the fact that this story tells us that Jesus has the power of God. Like Elisha he has God's favor and is able to feed the hungry: much as the people of Israel were fed by God in the wilderness with Manna. In fact John goes on after the telling of this story to speak of Jesus as the bread of heaven come down to earth - the one who is not only able to satisfy the physical hunger of his people but their spiritual hunger as well. Jesus has, and is able to use, the power of God to feed the hungry because he is one with God and the Son of God.
The second thing is that the story shows us not only God's power at work in Jesus, but also God's care. God reaches out through Christ to meet the needs of those who are following him much as God reached out through Elisha to meet the needs of the men who had followed him into the wilderness. Jesus cares for those who seek him out. He doesn’t abandon or forget them, rather, he wants to meet their needs and take care of them.
The third thing this story shows us is that Jesus is able to take what is offered to him and to multiply it - so that where there first seemed too little ends up being more than enough.
It is this third point that I want to focus on for the remainder of the homily.
It has been talked about a great deal, this miracle of feeding the great crowd of people, and perhaps more than any other miracle, people have tried to figure out how Jesus did it. Most people accept the healing stories, they understand that the mind has a strong effect on health, that faith can in fact bring about healing. But multiplying loaves and fish? This seems more incredible, more difficult, and so theories have arisen to explain how it was done. I don’t have time to go through all these theories but it is sufficient to say that most of them have a common theme, which tries to explain away any divine power or true miraculous happening with a natural explanation.
The most notable theory is that when the boy who had the loaves and fish shared them with others his example inspired others to bring out what they had brought with them and share as well. In other words, there really was no miraculous power at all but instead it inspired everyone to share the food they already had.
We can't say exactly how the loaves and the fish multiplied, nor do we need to. More important than how is the fact that they did, just as the offering made to Elisha by the man from Baal Shalishah. We really need to meditate on that fact: how too little became more than enough when it was offered to God. How human eyes saw impossibility where Christ and the Prophet Elisha saw enough to feed the people’s hunger.
Aren’t we often like the skeptical apostles or the doubting servant of the prophet? When there is a need in our lives, in our families, among our friends, in our world, don’t we often say something like:
- How can we help with what little we have? We don't even know how we will we make do ourselves.
- How can we feed so many? How can we fund so many. We have so little and the need is so great.
- What we can do is only a drop in a bucket. We don't have enough money to help out. We don't have what it takes.
We don't have enough time.
We don't have enough energy.
We aren't smart enough.
We aren't wise enough.
We haven't been trained in that area.
We aren't professionals.
There aren't enough of us to make a real difference,
there aren't enough of us to get the job done.
But Jesus, like Elisha, didn't listen to this from his disciples and he doesn’t want to hear it from us either. Rather, like the prophet, he takes what is offered to him in faith, blesses it, and gives it back to us so that we might distribute it to those who are hungry, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And if we trust in God, if we follow him and obey his will for us, there will be enough to go around, there will be leftovers, sometimes Even more than we started with.
This is what happens right here, right now, in the Eucharist. We give the meager gift of ourselves to God, and he in turn gives us Himself. By his gift, we are transformed, strengthened, healed, and then sent forth to help others. God wants to take the little we have ourselves, and multiply it so that it can be shared with others. Others who are hungry, lost, sad, searching, abandoned, and hurting. He make the gift of ourselves more than enough for the people he sends us to, there will be something leftover. All we need to do is to do is bring what we have, as did the man of Baal Shalishah to Elisha and as did the boy on the hillside to Jesus.
So, which voice will we listen to? The voices of the disciples and the servants, who say, when told to feed the crowd - there is not enough - it is impossible? Or the voice of the one who tells us "feed the people" and who takes what we have to offer and makes it enough?
