This coming Sunday, the lectionary brings us round to one of the most important teachings about Jesus that we can find in the Gospels:
When hungry people are around Jesus, they get to eat till they are full.
They also get to cross lakes in the middle of storms without harm and even try a little water-walking if they aren’t too full of bread or doubt, but the most important message shows up in the first part of this lectionary passage - hungry people get to eat.
I’ve heard sermons where the preacher tries to explain how five loaves and two fish make it around the crowd. I personally think the moment you do that you lose the point. The point isn’t how the crowd gets fed but is instead that they are fed. I really don’t care if the fish just kept growing or if everyone suddenly remember the picnic lunch they had tucked up their sleeves before setting out and then deciding to go ahead and share with everyone else. Not only is the how not particularly important but it is also outside of this story.
The most important point in this story is clearly and simply stated in verse 42:
“And all ate and were filled.”
In Jesus’ world, hungry people get enough to eat. So much enough that there are twelve baskets of left-overs scattered about the field and I’m guessing that’s after everyone ate and stuffed some bread up their sleeves for the next few meals yet to come.
I don’t blame anyone who drags in outside explanations (everyone shared what they had brought in the first all-church potluck) because then it becomes easy to tell the congregation to go and do likewise (and a great opportunity to remind everyone to keep those summer pledges coming). I really don’t mind a sermon that reminds us to share what we have with each other and the stranger. I think we could use a few thousand more sermons on that topic. Its just that we don’t have to understand how two fish and an armful of bread makes it around five thousand men and uncounted women and children. We simply need to remember that in Jesus’ world - it happened.
Our world wants to think that hunger is normal. That hunger is just a part of what is and that the best any of us can do is to keep ourselves and our loved ones fed and good luck to the rest of you. Our world wants the hungry to just go away and forage for themselves. Disappear. This most important point in this story stands in direct condemnation of that assumption.
In Jesus’ world, hungry people are fed. No more and no less.
We’re still standing this side of the-way-the-world-will-be as God continues to create and re-create this place and all of us: God’s beloved creation. We know we haven’t yet fully arrived in the Reigndom of God because, among other signs, we still have hungry people. But we know how the world should be and will be because we have this story. We have this story that completely invalidates any paradigms that dare to suggest that somebody has to be hungry, that there isn’t enough for everyone nor will there ever be enough for everyone. We have this story, this crazy, impossible story, which declares to us in no uncertain language that hunger is not part of God’s plan.
Hunger is not acceptable to Jesus. The disciples urge him to send the crowd away in hopes that they’ll be able to find some food but there aren’t any guarantees in that plan. Not that grocery stores existed back then but can you imagine any community being able to suddenly offer food, even at a price, for five-thousand men and the uncounted, unseen women and children? While sending away the crowd might have meant that some, even most, might have found something to eat, it was very likely that many would have continued to go hungry that evening. Instead, everyone around Jesus gets fed right where they are. Everyone. That is how it works in Jesus’ world, what Mark calls the Kingdom of God.
Of course, part of the problem of hearing this story is knowing that some two-thousand years later and still counting people are still going hungry. Some one-billion people, according to estimates published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization. And worse (if its possible), the cause of this hunger is not (yet) climate but economics.
"A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf quoted in a June 19th press release. "The silent hunger crisis — affecting one sixth of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions."
"The present situation of world food insecurity cannot leave us indifferent," he added.
If we follow Jesus, then we follow the idea that when we are confronted with hunger, we feed those who are hungry. We don’t ignore them or send them away. How we do this depends on who we are, where we live and who is hungry around us and why they are hungry. How we do this is discerned in prayer and tested in action and then re-discerned in prayer. How we share food isn’t really the point of this story we find in Mark. The point is simply this: Hungry people get food.
No exceptions.
No indifference.
And that's enough for any sermon don't you think?
------------------------
Anitra Kitts is a writer, an occasional preacher and a Candidate for the Ministry of the Word and Sacrament in the PC(USA).
Thank-you for this post. The "Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.." As Christians, we are called to model him and indeed he commands us to feed his sheep.
Posted by: Ann Bingham | August 16, 2009 at 09:02 PM