Wonder bread
Is 55:1-3; Ps 145:8-9, 15-16, 17-18; Rom 8:35, 37-39; Mt 14:13-21
When I was a kid, one of my favorite stories in my children’s Bible was this Sunday’s Gospel, the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes. What drew me then was not its spiritual profundity, but rather the vivid drawing of Jesus and his disciples sitting in a field, surrounded by what looked like a 20-foot-high pile of loaves of Wonder Bread, accompanied by thousands of fish flopping on the grass.
As I grew up (and my Bible did likewise), the pictures went away, but the basic narrative remained. We refer to the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, but none of the Gospel accounts of this miracle actually describe any multiplying. We are simply told that the hungry crowd ate and were “satisfied.”
I think we should call this miracle “the satisfaction of the crowd.” It’s the satisfaction of their hunger (which is about much more than empty bellies) that Matthew is inviting us to focus on.
Only Jesus can satisfy that hunger, right? Well, not exactly. When the disciples initially see the hungry masses, they are compassionate, but they feel helpless. The only solution they can imagine is for Jesus to exercise his authority and dismiss the people to go home. They don’t believe they can contribute to a solution, but Jesus thinks otherwise.
Before he does anything with the bread and the fish, Jesus simply looks to the disciples and calmly tells them: “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves” (Mt 14:16). At this the disciples object that they lack the resources to meet the enormous need; they insist that he take charge.
Why did Jesus tell his disciples to satisfy the crowd? Was he just testing them? Did he want to drive home the point that only he had the power to solve such a dilemma and they had better learn to rely on him more?
Perhaps, but there is really nothing in the text to imply that was the case. I suggest we take Jesus at his word: that he actually did believe the disciples had it within them to produce satisfaction for the hungry masses. In fact, I think Jesus telling them to feed the crowd themselves is as important as the actual miracle.
His confidence in his disciples’ abilities is infinitely greater than their confidence in themselves. He saw a capacity within them that they had yet to grasp. It was not a capacity for some sort of superpower over the laws of nature (he could have given that to them if he wanted to), but it was a power of providing “satisfaction” to the hearts that were seeking the healing that Jesus affected.
How could they have provided such satisfaction? By sharing what they had themselves received from Jesus: his new vision of the kingdom of heaven breaking into their midst (see Mt 4:17). They could share what he had taught them; they could share the healing he had delivered to their own hearts and minds; and they could do it with the confidence instilled in them by Jesus when he had earlier sent them off on mission (see Mt 10:5-15).
The entire Gospel scene takes place in a world you and I can never know. They were living before Pentecost and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We are living in a world transformed by that Spirit and we ourselves have received a power and capacity through our baptism and the sacraments of which the pre-Pentecost disciples could never have dreamed.
Do you have the confidence in your own ability to satisfy the spiritual hunger in your heart or in the hearts of the “hungry crowd” coming to you from your family, your community or even your nation? It’s not a power born of your own strength, but of your willingness to receive the Spirit’s transforming love and wisdom.
This week, seek out the famished places in your heart or the hearts of others that seem beyond hope of ever being fulfilled. Sometimes when it feels like our pleas to Jesus are falling on deaf ears, it’s because our own ears are deaf to his encouragement: Feed them yourself.