PENTECOST VIII 2014

Feeding of the Multitude  Limbourg Brothers

• Genesis 32:22-31 and Psalm 17:1-7, 15  • 
• Isaiah 55:1-5 and Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21  • 
• Romans 9:1-5  • 
• Matthew 14:13-21

The feeding of the five thousand, the subject of this week's Gospel, is a strange episode for modern readers. Are we to believe that bread and fish actually multiplied? Can we visualize how this might have happened? However perplexing these questions may be, we cannot ignore the fact that this miracle is recorded in all four Gospels. It even occurs in Matthew a second time (with four thousand), as it does in Mark. Evidently, 'the feeding of the multitude' was a strikingly important event for the Gospel writers. But what are we to make of it?

As with many other instances, it it crucial to remember that the ancient world (like most people at most times and places, in fact), thought in terms of symbolic meaning. For the Jews, symbolic meaning had to be connected with their Scriptural inheritance. In other words, their assessment of Jesus -- who he really was and what his words and actions meant -- drew on the parallels they could find with the promises of God recorded in Scripture. So too it must be for us since, as St Paul emphatically declares in the Epistle, it is the Israelites who were given "the adoption, the glory, the covenants, . . . the law, the worship, and the promises . . . the patriarchs". Furthermore, "from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever".

Grunewald The Prophet Isaiah

Whatever the realities of the event that underlies this particular episode, Christ's feeding the multitude has at least one evident parallel with Scriptural history -- the manna that God provided for the Israelites as they wandered through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. There is an echo too of the words of the prophet Isaiah in this week's Old Testament lesson: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." Isaiah is not making dietary recommendations, of course. The background to his remark is the Mosaic warning that "man does not live by bread alone". 

In John's Gospel Jesus himself dwells on  the significance of the feeding miracles.  He draws a key distinction which we might describe as the difference between 'bread for life' and 'the bread of life', which he then declares himself to be. The essential message is that even the provision of astonishing quantities of bread for life is not an adequate substitute for the one True Bread of spiritual life. Viewed from this perspective, the feeding miracles still carry an important lesson for a deeply consumerist culture such as ours.