You Give Them Something to Eat
Today is the 18th Sunday in Ordinary time.
If you have been doing the daily Gospel readings,
you know that we are progressing through
the Gospel of Matthew during the week,
and also on Sundays.
We spent the first half of this year in John's gospel,
so to shift to Matthew is a bit of an adjustment.
Matthew
is the first of the three
"synoptic gospels."
Synoptic is Greek for "one vision"
Syn means one
optic means vision.
The three gospels,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
draw from the same source material--
probably oral tradition and familiar stories
retold by eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus.
They all share familiar
phrases and details.
Although the first three gospels share the same
general form and content,
they each emphasize different parts of the ministry of Jesus.
The emphasis of Matthew is found in
chapter 5, verse 17:
Jesus came not to abolish the law and the prophets,
but to fulfill them.
Jesus is the fulfillment
of the Old Testament.
And because of this,
Matthew's gospel is placed first
after the Hebrew Scriptures.
Of all the miracles in the gospels,
there is one that stands above all the others.
Jesus feeding the five thousand.
This miracle appears in all four gospels,
and is described, except for a few details,
nearly word for word
in the same way.
And the context of the story,
following the beheading of John the Baptist,
and preceding Jesus walking on the water,
is also the same.
So this story is very important,
as well as where the story happens in the life of Jesus
and his ministry.
This is a turning point in the ministry of Jesus
where his revelation as the Messiah and Incarnate God
is intensifying.
The forerunner is gone,
and now
Jesus is manifesting clearly
that he is the Messiah.
As I have mentioned many times,
and I mention in my book Body: Where You Belong,
many will say this miracle is important because
food was important in a subsistence culture.
That is earth bound thinking.
This miracle is about the food
but it is not about the food.
This miracle is bigger than food.
Jesus went off to a lonely place
because he is grieving the death of John the Baptist.
In life John was the forerunner of Jesus,
and Jesus knows that John is going to be his forerunner in death.
Jesus is going to die.
And so he goes off to grieve.
Matthew uses word "lonely"
throughout this story.
A.W. Tozer gave a powerful message in the 1950's
entitled
"The Saint Must Walk Alone."
When Jesus calls you
he calls you to his path.
And that path is going lead you to lonely places,
where you have to step out alone.
Many years ago a missionary commented to me
that when you Jesus calls you
your life is marked by good byes.
And so Jesus walks out to a lonely place
to process the death of John.
There is a problem.
Jesus is now a celebrity
and Jesus is going around healing people,
in a world where there is little to no medical care.
Jesus goes to the lonely place,
and it doesn't take long for the crowds to find him.
In the old days when I worked in healing ministry,
I saw how the crowds would pull on the clothes of
people who had healing gifts,
and press on them.
And these folks would have to be ushered in and out
of conferences
to protect them from the crowds.
Several of these evangelists had teams of bouncers.
This is exactly what was happening to Jesus.
And Jesus looks out on the crowds,
and he has compassion on them.
They are like sheep without a shepherd.
And in his grief stricken state,
he heals the sick and teaches them
almost to nightfall.
And Jesus sees them
and realizes that no one has had any dinner.
Think about this.
Jesus is concerned that they have not eaten.
It is not about him.
It is not about his ministry.
His bouncers
the disciples,
come to him and ask him to send them away.
They were thinking
"Jesus, you need a break,
you came out here to be alone and grieve,
and now you have to feed all these needy people.
Send them away to go find food."
The truth is,
there wasn't any place to send them.
This is a lonely place.
And if Jesus had sent them away
they would have been like an invading army
to the local villages.
It would have caused chaos.
The Kingdom is about order.
And so Jesus
looks at the disciples
and he says,
"You give them something to eat."
When Jesus calls you,
several things are going to happen.
First,
he is going to take you to places you did not expect.
Then he is going to ask you to do things that you did not want to do.
And then when you do them,
you are going to find out that his directions
were not about the task,
but about something else,
and that something else was bigger.
It is always bigger.
And so the disciples
are now given the responsibility
of feeding five thousand people
with no money,
five loves of bread
and two fish.
Impossible.
If you really think about what God asks you to do,
you will sit down
and cry in despair.
Trust me.
That's the point.
Jesus has called the disciples into something
so impossible that the human mind can't even understand it.
Jesus never calls you to independence.
He always calls you to something
so far out of who you are
that you are forced to let him be in control,
and depend on him for every direction.
In 2006 the Lord asked me to not do the prevailing thing:
no fundraising,
no ministry building,
no networking,
no vision casting.
I was invited to do the impossible,
raise up an army of artists who will build Jesus a throne in the earth.
With no money or methods.
It took me years
just to unlearn all that I learned in ministry.
And as I stepped out,
I discovered that the Lord could multiply
my two fish and five loaves.
Jesus sends you into impossible situations
so that you will have no choice but to have faith.
That is how you learn faith,
it really is sink or swim.
Matthew's version of this story is just the basic details.
No little boy,
no conversation about money.
Just
we have two fish and five loaves.
So Jesus has them sit down.
This is about rest.
The people do not have to do anything to receive the food.
Matthew leaves in the details about numbers.
Two fish are symbols of being separated from the kingdom of Satan
and five loaves represent the mission of the Jewish people
through the Torah.
And Jesus does what he does in everyone of these retellings.
He takes the bread.
He blesses the bread.
He breaks the bread.
He distributes it to the disciples,
and then they feed the people.
And in the breaking,
and in the giving,
the bread multiplies.
And everyone is fed and is satisfied.
This is action
is the making of Eucharist.
Jesus gives thanks.
In Matthew's gospel
it says that Jesus "eulogizes" the bread.
He speaks a word over it,
just as I speak the words of Jesus over the bread.
This story is not about the food,
but it is about the food.
Jesus is saying
I have bread that will satisfy you.
It is not bread bought with money.
It is bought with a higher price.
My bread was bought with my blood,
and this bread will satisfy.
That's why this story is in all the gospels.
It is about the heart of the Christian faith,
the Eucharist.
Where the body is,
the birds gather.
To quote David Whyte,
"People are hungry,
and one good word is bread for a thousand."
The first Christians understood this at a deep level.
I am coming off eight weeks of rest.
Wow,
it is great to not be on the verge of burnout.
During that time
I began to ask God to show me every place
where I was out of alignment with him.
When things start to go sideways,
it is good to stop and see where you may have not been
walking in obedience
and do the last thing God asked you.
After Easter
the Lord spoke to me about starting a daily Eucharist
for the whole community,
about getting off Google,
the need to prayer walk New York City regularly,
and about returning to the simple call to live by faith.
Little things had crept in,
like Substack being a subscription driven platform.
I thought getting off Google would be impossible
for many reasons,
and I thought that a daily Eucharist was too much work
when I was already burning out.
It took stepping away to see
that I was burned out
because I wasn't in alignment with Jesus.
So as you know
we are now GOOGOO free,
and tomorrow after prayer
we will be giving thanks,
breaking the bread
and sharing it.
We will discover that there is more than enough
at the Father's table.
Everyone will eat
and we will be satisfied.
This community,
Belonging House International
is a eucharistic one.
We are called to be broken bread
and poured out wine for the life of the world.
No program
no strategy
and no vision
will fulfill this call.
The only way to fulfill an impossible mandate
is to offer it to Jesus
and become like him.
Our lives are called to be like his.
Surrendered,
full of the Holy Spirit,
the Word made flesh,
and broken and spilled out for others.
Last Sunday,
after Church
I logged out of Google and Youtube for the last time.
It is a bit wild to be free.
There are a few little bumps,
but overall
I don't miss it.
And on Thursday I went into New York and met Rachel
and we prayer walked all over the place.
Ironically,
whenever God calls me back to simple obedience,
I am struck by the loneliness.
This is not the American church model.
For a season God is going to strip Sunday's down
to their essential elements.
No canned worship music.
You can't learn a new song
until you stop singing the old one.
God is calling our community
to be a prophetic
John the Baptist
community.
God is calling us to stay ahead of the pack
and keep going.
I've shared what God has called me to in this season.
Some of you
are in a lonely place
and you are looking at the multitude
and they are hungry.
And Jesus is saying,
look in your hands.
"What do you have?"
You give them something to eat.
The only way you can do this
is to listen
surrender,
and do what ever he tells you.
All things are possible
for those who believe.
Member discussion