Two Sermons on the Feeding of the Five Thousand

This blog post is based on my February 24th, 2019 sermon, which was originally titled, "The Church Is Always in the Desert."

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." And he said, "Bring them here to me." Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, beside women and children.   --Matthew 14:13-21, New Revised Standard Version

Years ago I preached a sermon on this text, and after the worship service a worshipper grabbed me by the arm and started jabbing me in the chest with the index finger of his right hand, all the while exclaiming, "I can tell you exactly what happened. There was no need for a supernatural miracle. The people had all brought food with them, but they were afraid to take it out because they didn't know whether the others had brought food or not. But once they realized that others had brought food as well, then they relaxed and were able to share as the disciples and Jesus had shared. That's what really happened."

I replied, "I think you make a very persuasive case, now will you please stop poking me!" Later I told a friend about this man's very emphatic explanation of the loaves and fishes, and he said, "Well, either way it makes a great story."

Either way, it makes a great story, and either way it could make for a powerful sermon. All last week I wondered which sermon I should preach this morning. Should I preach the we-all-need-to-share sermon, or should I preach the we-need-a-miracle sermon? Which sermon did Katonah Presbyterian Church most need to hear this morning?

I wasn't sure, so then I wondered whether I could preach both sermons on the same Sunday. After all, if the four Gospel writers had included the loaves and fishes story a total of six times, then surely I wouldn't be out of line to preach two sermons on this text on the same Sunday!

Now, the compromise I'll make with you is that each of these sermons could be about five minutes, so that with a brief wrap-up, plus the time I've already been speaking, the total sermon length should still be just under fifteen minutes.

So, here's the first sermon: We All Need to Share!

Years ago the Quaker theologian and author Parker Palmer was on a flight from Chicago's O'Hare airport to Denver's Stapleton airport, which was the old Denver airport. Now, this took place in that long ago time when there were no security lines at airports, no electronic screening, and you could carry pretty much whatever you wanted in your carryon baggage.

The plane pulled away from the gate, taxied for a very long time, and then came to a stop at a remote corner of the airport next to a chain-link perimeter fence. The captain's voice could be heard on the intercom, "I have some bad news. There is a storm front in the west, exactly where we are headed. Denver is socked in and shut down. There are no alternatives. So, we'll be staying here for a few hours. That's the bad news. The really bad news is that we have no food on board." (Now again, I should mention that this story took place in that long ago time when when people looked forward to a delicious meal on the airplane, complete with silverware and cloth napkins. I don't remember such a time myself, but I've read about it in books.) Thus, when the captain announced that there was no food onboard, everybody groaned. Some passengers became angry.

(In the days of old, when passengers feasted on airplanes)

But then, Palmer said, one of the flight attendants stood up in the aisle and took the microphone. "We're really sorry here, folks. We didn't plan it this way, and we can't do anything about it. We know that for some of you this is a big deal. You're hungry and were looking forward to a nice lunch. Some of you have a medical condition and really need to eat. Some of you may not care. So I have an idea. We have a couple of empty bread baskets up here, and we're going to pass them around. Everybody put something in the basket. I know some of you have brought a little snack along, just in case--peanut butter crackers, candy bars. Some of you have Rolaids, Life Savers, chewing gum. And if you don't happen to have anything edible, you have a business card or a picture of your kids or a bookmark. The thing is, I hope everybody puts something in the basket. And then we'll reverse the process. We'll pick the baskets up at the back of the plane and pass them around again and everybody can take out what he or she needs."

"Well," Palmer said, "what happened next was amazing. First, the complaining and griping stopped. People started to root around in pockets and handbags and briefcases. Some stood up and retrieved luggage from the overhead racks and got out boxes of candy, a salami, Italian sausage, cheese, crackers, a bottle of wine (again, this was in the long ago days when this was permissible!). Now people were laughing and talking. The flight attendant had transformed a group of anxious people focused on their need, deprivation, and scarcity into a gracious community."

The flight eventually took off from Chicago and landed in Denver, and as he stepped off the plane, Palmer found the flight attendant and said, "You know there's a story in the Bible about what you did." She said, "I know the story. That's why I did it" (as quoted in a sermon by John Buchanan, "In Remembrance of Him," preached at Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church, October 2, 2011).

This first sermon focuses not so much on the miracle, but on what happens to us when we are motivated to share graciously with one another. As Barbara Brown Taylor explained in a sermon that she preached on this text:

The problem with miracles is that we tend to get mesmerized by them, focusing on God's responsibility and forgetting our own. Miracles let us off the hook. They appeal to the part of us that is all too happy to let God feed the crowd, save the world, do it all. We do not have what it takes, after all. What we have to offer is not enough to make any difference at all, so we hold back and wait for a miracle, looking after our own needs and looking for God to help those who cannot help themselves (from Barbara Brown Taylor, "The Problem with Miracles," in The Seeds of Heaven).

Those who preach this first sermon emphasize the fact that Jesus told the disciples: "You give them something to eat," putting the responsibility squarely on the disciples' shoulders. That's the first sermon: we-all-need-to-share.

In contrast, the second sermon is We-do-need-the-miracle.

Three years ago last summer, another one of my favorite preachers, Nadia Bolz Weber, was speaking at a conference of Lutheran pastors and musicians. She was preaching on the Feeding of the Five Thousand. She knew that Lutheran bishops and seminary professors would be present. She wanted to be sure that she delivered a wise, funny, and learned sermon that did justice to the Lutheran theology of the Eucharist. She struggled to write the sermon. She felt like she was too much in her head. She woke up at two in the morning on the day that she was supposed to preach and rewrote her entire sermon. She decided to write the sermon that she needed to hear and not the one that she thought that the bishops and the professors were expecting.

In her sermon Nadia confessed,

I just couldn't preach a Jesus wants you to be nice and share your juice box sermon to you today . . . Not that thousands of human beings sharing with their neighbors isn't a little miraculous, it is, it's just that . . . maybe this story is too important for it to be [primarily] about people sharing their lunches.

Because miracles, and not lessons about sharing, are what we really need. So as crazy as it is--I believe in miracles--not because I think I'm supposed to but because I need to. I need to believe that God does what we cannot do (from a sermon by Nadia Bolz Weber on the Feeding of the Five Thousand, July 25, 2015, from her blog , the emphasized bold text is her own).

The disciples themselves were just as hungry and just as weary as anyone else in the crowd. They were grieving the death of John the Baptist, how he had been beheaded because the king had been so entranced by a dancing girl that the king promised to give her whatever she asked for, and the girl's mother told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist. That's a grisly story, and I'm struck by the contrast between that lavish, drunken royal banquet and the desert feeding with five loaves and two fish.

The disciples were grieving and hungry and depleted and worn out. They were in need of a miracle. As Nadia Bolz Weber said, "the most important resources that day was not the fried chicken and potato salad that people had hidden in their tunics, but the need of humanity for a God that can do miracles."

Those who preach this second sermon, the we-need-a-miracle sermon, are quick to point out that right after Jesus says, "You give them something to eat," Jesus says, "Bring them here to me."

All of you who are exhausted caregivers, any of you who feel hopelessly overwhelmed the moment that Jesus says, "You give them something to eat," can take heart in the fact that "Jesus includes you in the category of the hungry and himself in the category of bread" (Nadia Bolz Weber).

Which of these two sermons do you most need to hear this morning? The we-all-need-to-share sermon or the we-all-need-a-miracle sermon?

I suspect that some of you probably do resonate a little more with one sermon than the other, and that you may well resonate more with one sermon on one Sunday and with the other sermon on another Sunday.

What I know is that all of us--the we-need-to-share crowd and the we-need-a-miracle crowd--are here in this desert wilderness together and it is time to eat.

(thank you to Sue Kravits for the meme)

As Tom Long writes in the quote that is printed on your bulletin cover:

Indeed, the church is always in the desert, the place where it cannot rely upon its own resources, which are few. The church is hungry itself and is surrounded by a world of deep cravings, people who are lonely, disoriented, and poor in many different ways. Against the savage realities of human need, the church sees only small numbers on the membership rolls and even smaller ones in the mission budget. It is no wonder, then, that the church joins the disciples in crying, this is a desert. Send the crowds away to fend for themselves. Jesus is still the teacher, though, and there is a lesson for the disciples--and the church--to learn: God is abundantly able to provide (from Thomas G. Long, Matthew, Westminster Bible Companion series).

At the end of the day, I don't believe that these two sermons are contradictory at all. To the extent that we know ourselves as hungry and in need of God's grace and miracle-working power, we will be surprised again and again by what happens when we pass the baskets and share what we have.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.

With which of these two sermons do you most resonate, and why?: The We-All-Need-to-Share sermon or the We-All-Need-a-Miracle sermon? Please feel free to use the space below to post your comments and questions.