Sit Down in Groups
The miracle of Jesus feeding crowds is told in all four Gospels, and Matthew and Mark tell about Jesus feeding a crowd of 4,000 and another time of feeding a crowd of 5,000. What we can be certain of is that Jesus fed crowds, it was something that happened more than once over the course of his ministry and because it happened repeatedly during his ministry, the context the Gospel writer chose to tell about the specific incidence that he is recalling is important. Mark tells about Jesus serving a banquet for 5,000 immediately after he tells about a very different banquet that took place at Herod’s palace. N.T. Wright describes the event this way, “Herod is off in his palace, probably far to the south of the Sea of Galilee, hosting a banquet in his honor, carousing with his cronies (his invited guests include the most prestigious members of society), winking at pretty girls (that’s how NT Wright described it, but it was worse than that), and beheading the prophet John in response to Herod’s wife influencing her daughter who had earned a wish from Herod by dancing for his friends. Mark sets Herod’s banquet side by side with Jesus feeding 5,000 of Herod’s people, desperate for leadership. They have flocked to this young prophet. Is he the king-in-waiting? That’s the question we must hear echoing behind the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000.
Herod’s allegiance is to himself; Jesus is moved by compassion for the people because under Herod’s rule they were like sheep without a shepherd. Compassion is a verb, but in Greek it comes from a noun that means the inner parts of the body, the guts and the heart. The Hebrew synonym means “merciful love” and is a quality attributed to God in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament. Compassion is Godly merciful love that comes from within, it is a visceral response, that is a bridge from sympathy, as Jinney talked about in the children’s time, to action. Jesus sees the hunger of the people – they didn’t follow him to get bread and fish – they followed him hoping for a new leader, a new king, they followed him because they had hopes that he would bring the change they so desperately hungered for – and his gut-level response is merciful, loving compassion.
Halford Luccock was a professor of homiletics at Yale from the time of the Great Depression until the early 1950’s. Reflecting on this passage prompted him to ask, “Which comes most naturally to us, irritation or compassion?” Our natural response is not like Jesus’s response. We get irritated. A whole crowd of people all wanting something from us, pulling on our sleeves like kids who don’t know when to stop, expecting, some whining, some desperate, some so desperate they’ve become angry…our natural reaction is to put up a wall, to block them off, to not let them get to us, to protect, to push away…but we are supposed to be working on that…letting down our guard, listening to the cries, opening to the concerns…edging closer and closer to Jesus…turning from self-centered and self-absorbed into living sacrifices, serving, giving. One pastor wrote, “When I am fully Christian I will give ‘Jesus responses’ to life situations. Compassion is simply feeling with and caring about the needs of another. When we show compassion we crawl out of ourselves and into the shoes of a hurting person.”
They are a flock without a shepherd. And in Jesus’s compassionate response we see the metaphor that feeding is something that is both spiritual and physical, Jesus begins by teaching and also provides bread. The people are hungry for guidance and wisdom and also for food.
The disciples assess the situation and realize that a hungry crowd in a remote place that has gathered out of desperation is like a tiger on the prowl – predatory, hunting, wild, and dangerous – they could turn. They advise Jesus, “We are way out in the middle of nowhere and it’s already really late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
Jesus responds, “You give them something to eat.” “That’s going to cost too much.” That’s our pattern. God commands justice, we respond with scarcity. When Jesus says, “give them something to eat,” he doesn’t mean warn them that they need to head on and get something for themselves. He doesn’t mean tell the crowd they really should not have shown up here without food. He means see their hunger, have compassion, and act.
The disciples’ response is scarcity. It’s too expensive, Jesus. It’d cost nearly 6 months’ salary to feed all these people. There are too many of them and it would be too expensive to give them what they need. Besides, they are not our responsibility. We didn’t invite them; in fact, Jesus, we were coming here to get away from them. They just showed up. It’s their fault they are here. We do enough already, Jesus. We helped the crowd just over on the other side of the lake, and I’m sure we will help tomorrow. But tonight, send these people away.
And Jesus asks, “What do we have? Take stock of our resources. What has God already provided?” Jesus sends them to “Go and see” to talk to the people in the crowd, to get to know the people, to network and connect with them.
It’s not enough. It wasn’t just compassion that was in short supply. Two fish. Five loaves of bread. It’s never enough. There’s not enough money. 12 people to feed 5,000 men plus their families. There were likely 15-20,000 mouths to feed. Too little to give, too few to help, and they were already exhausted. How many times have you heard that little whisper when you were considering responding to a need, “It’s a good cause, but you don’t have enough.” You know how it goes, “What’s reasonable?” Then what seems reasonable seems like way too little to make a difference, so you do nothing. Churches do the same thing. Can’t solve the problem, can’t meet the full need, so instead of doing what we can or coordinating with other churches, we shrug and do nothing…waiting for a problem that is just our size.
But God doesn’t start with the problem the disciples raise, “How are we going to feed all these people?” God starts with what God has – everything – and asks what God has given us – five loaves, two fish…clearly not enough…let’s send these people away to fend for themselves. It’s our lack that is the real problem. We don’t believe in God’s abundance, we don’t trust God’s provision, and instead we live in fear of scarcity.
And Jesus says, “Sit down.” Sit down in groups on the green grass. “Sit down” is actually an inaccurate translation; the Greek word means “to make to lie down or recline.” The late New Testament scholar Doug Hare argued that in this passage the people “are made to lie down on the green grass in symposia, that is, groups gathered for table fellowship. Reclining,” he says, “indicates that this is a festive occasion.” These people without a shepherd are made by Jesus to lie down in a green pasture…I don’t know about you, but I hear an echo of the 23rd Psalm, a Psalm of King David, and surely the crowd heard it too as they hungered for the return of Godly leadership, a King of the lineage of David, for the long-awaited Messiah. What we see here is a glimpse of God’s Kingdom, the great banquet, the way heaven comes to earth, life the way the world works when we live according to God’s Will, sit down in groups, recline around a table, be vulnerable to each other, hold conversation.
NT Wright says we are “meant to make the connection between Jesus’ compassion for the crowds and his action with the bread and the fish. God’s kingdom is not simply a matter of power, but also of overflowing love, and the two here go inextricably together.”
Listen just to what Jesus says:
You give them something to eat.
How many loaves do you have? Go and see.
Then he directs them to recline in groups on the green grass.
It was not an ordinary picnic. It was power-dynamic shifting. The late OT scholar Walter Bruggemann wrote that “Jesus left ordinary people dazzled, amazed, and grateful; he left powerful people angry and upset, because every time he performed a wonder, they lost a little of their clout. The wonders of the new age of the coming of God’s kingdom may scandalize and upset us. They dazzle us, but they also make us nervous. The people of God need pastoral help in processing this ambivalent sense of both deeply yearning for God’s new creation and deeply fearing it.
The feeding of the multitudes, recorded in Mark’s Gospel, is an example of the new world coming into being through God. When the disciples, charged with feeding the hungry crowd, found…five loaves and two fishes, Jesus took, blessed ,broke and gave the bread. ….. He demonstrated that the world is filled with abundance and freighted with generosity. If bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all.”
Jesus feels the desperate hunger for the ways of this world to be overcome by the ways of God’s will, and he is moved to compassion. He sees the spiritual and physical hunger, and begins to teach us how to live in the kingdom now. He tells us, “You see a need. Meet it.” And when we respond with our scarcity, he tells us to network and assess the true situation and come back with what we do have. Then, he makes us get vulnerable in community – and I think there is something for us to notice in command to recline on GREEN grass – settle where life is nourished and sustained and is springing forth. Then offer what you have for Jesus to take, to bless, to break – and what seemed small and insignificant becomes enough, more than enough, with leftovers. The good news is that together, when we vulnerably offer what we have as a community to God, the impossible is possible.