When I tell you that today is the miracle of the Feeding of the 5000, what do you think of? You may think of the fish and loaves being multiplied. You may think of the abundance of the meal and the leftovers, twelve baskets full.
These are important things to remember, but this week when I read the story of what I am now thinking of as the Tale of Two Banquets, I was again struck by the words at the very beginning of this passage, “When Jesus heard this”. And then, almost immediately following Jesus’ hearing, we read, “When the crowd heard it.”
I couldn’t help but go back to read what it was that Jesus and the crowd heard. What Jesus and the crowd heard was that another banquet had just taken place where a series of events led to the tragic death of John the Baptist by beheading. After reading of the other banquet, it just kept crashing in on all of my thoughts concerning the banquet in the Wilderness.
No longer was I able to think of the abundance of the wilderness meal by itself, nor the provisions for the meal, nor the place of the meal. What struck me this past week was the account of the meal that isn’t included in this year’s readings, that is, the preceding meal, that of Herod’s birthday celebration and how that affects our understanding of this amazing feeding of thousands.
How Matthew ties these two meal events together seemed incredibly poignant to me. His telling of this feast at Herod’s birthday party and the Feast in the Wilderness is unlike the accounts of these events in the other Gospels, and I had not really thought of the consequences of that joining until this last week. Matthew intends us to read these two stories together in order to fully appreciate what Jesus was doing out there in the wilderness, in that deserted place.
The first meal Matthew describes came from the source of power and plenty. It was a birthday celebration; it was a time of great decadence. Herodias’ daughter danced for the company assembled, and then, following the dance, she requested the head of John the Baptist on a platter. After a short pause, Herod acquiesced, “Go ahead. Do it.”
Now, by all standards, this meal was disgusting. It was a meal of Roman delicacies celebrating wealth and power. Yet in spite of all that was there, it was a time of never-ending, insatiable appetite—of wanting more and more. Even the dance was not enough. Herod’s offer of a reward was not for the dance that Herodias’ daughter completed. Rather Herod was trying to bribe this young girl to continue. Moreover, Herod’s pledge to give Herodias’ daughter anything she wanted was not just for more dancing, but as reward for hoped for obscene activity. Herodias, even knowing what Herod’s intent was, advised her daughter to request a perversion of a delicacy of the time.
You see, the roasted head of a sheep served whole was a delicacy. In fact, it is very possible that a roasted sheep’s head might have been served at this meal already. But, instead of the sheep’s head, Herodias’ daughter asked for the head of John the Baptist to be served on a platter.
It was not the brutality of beheading John the Baptist that caused Herod to pause; it was the request to have the head served that caused Herod’s pause. Yet, acceding to the violence and cruelty of the Roman culture, Herod granted her wish. From that place of power, this horrifying thing took place.
Some outside sources say that it is because John the Baptist’s life is of such little consequence to those at this party that, after beheading him, the soldiers just threw John’s body over the wall. It is this discarded body that John’s disciples found and quietly took away to bury.
Our Scripture reading today continues from that earlier story. When Jesus heard this—when Jesus heard about the palace banquet and the death of John the Baptist, Jesus got into a boat and sought solitude. The ministry of John was over. A torch had been transferred; the baton had been passed from one of the runners to the next in the relay. It was time to recognize that going forward the ministry was going to have consequences, even life-threatening consequences. It was time for Jesus to consider what those consequences might mean and what his response to those consequences would be. This consideration was not to be done lightly, so Jesus went off to a place by himself.
When the crowd heard it, about the palace banquet and the death of John the Baptist, they followed on foot. We do not know whether they left out of fear because they were followers of John the Baptist and therefore feared their lives were in danger, or whether they went to the wilderness to grieve, or whether they went to organize a grass-roots movement to oppose the power of Herod and Rome. What we witness in Matthew is thousands of people who also went into the wilderness, and Jesus, when he got out of the boat, encountered this crowd that needed healing. Some were sick, and Jesus had the therapy they needed, and he took the time to care for them.
Matthew begins to describe the second banquet by saying that after Jesus spent time with the people, the time had come to eat. It was as if the dinner bell had rung. Now it was time for five thousand men plus all the women and children with them to eat. It is possible that the size of this crowd could have been as many as ten thousand, twelve thousand, maybe even as many as twenty thousand people. No wonder the disciples said, “Send them into the villages to buy their own food.”
But instead of sending the people away, Jesus did something remarkable. Reading the Greek this week, I was struck by how really remarkable the words describing it are. Listen to them carefully: “Looking up to heaven, Jesus took the bread and the fish, blessed them and broke them and gave them to his disciples and his disciples to the crowd.” Did you hear it? “He gave the bread and the fish to his disciples, and his disciples to the crowd.”
Earlier in Matthew, John had been given to the people of Herod’s party in a very perverted and deadly way. But here, the disciples were given to the crowd as living servants for the administration of the gifts that God has given God’s people. This reminds us of God’s gift of the manna showering down on the people in the wilderness during the Exodus.
As Herod’s banquet continued to create greater cravings, so now, we read that the crowd in the wilderness has been filled to overflowing. From Jesus, the disciples serve a meal where all ate and were satisfied.
This crowd could have become an army of revenging rebellion, but Jesus showed them compassion. He touched their lives in a way that gave healing, and he fed them. Yes, Jesus healed them; he soothed them; and then he sent them back into the world from which they had come satisfied, no longer a potential army of malcontents who would wreak revenge for the loss of their leader John the Baptist. With the new leadership of Jesus, these people would travel from this place of desert wilderness into the beginnings of a kingdom of heaven ministry.
Yes, on the one hand, Herod’s meal was a banquet of individual power, but, on the other, this banquet in the wilderness was a meal of empowerment. This meal changed the way the people thought about power. Jesus demonstrated for them that power is not something to be held alone but something to be shared.
This shift in thought changed their world. It changed the way they thought about power as they returned home. No longer were they a grieving, vengeful people reacting out of fear; these people had encountered the source of life, the giver of food, in the wilderness, the one able to satisfy the needs of life, the one in whom there is wholeness. These people were now able to go into the world to preach the good news they learned of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of loving wholeness and caring peace.
As I consider what Jesus was doing in this meeting with the crowd, I can’t help but think about how that story would read today in our current atmosphere of tension and polarity. In a climate of adversarial contention, this story might be very different. How easy it would have been to turn that crowd into a militant, destructive mob. Can you imagine what a political leader might do with a militant group who was primed for violence today? We might find ourselves confronted with leaders who, instead of calming the people, want to hold power unto themselves and stir up the crowds to support them and their agenda. The whole idea that power is something to be shared for the benefit of all rather than the profit of a few continues to be very foreign to many in our current world. We have been seduced into Herod’s world, but Christ’s banquet of forgiving wholeness is still waiting for us in these wilderness days. Christ’s meal is still available to us for healing and peace.
Are you beginning to see what I see? We live in this world that says, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But this story tells us that from the wholeness of even a little, breaking is necessary. Unless the bread is broken, people cannot eat. It is the very breaking of the bread and the fish, the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, that brings us wholeness. It is the breaking of Christ’s body that gives us the wholeness and healing that we need in order to live each day. In this “broken wholeness meal", we receive a commission of sharing teaching, leading us into the holy, therapeutic, caring work of Christ himself.
Beyond this, we live in a culture that tempts us to believe that individualism and personal effort will win the day. We sing with gusto, “I did it my way,” forgetting the community and the needs of the community God has given us. We live in an individualistic world that encourages each of us to, “Pull yourself up by the boot straps.” I don’t know if any of you have ever tried it, but, if you have boot straps, and you start pulling on them, you are not pulling yourself up, you are pulling yourself down, down to your feet in the bondage of the boots. One quickly discovers that one is not lifted up by pulling on boot straps but by the action of those around us who have the power to lift us up. And in acknowledging this world around us that reaches out to lift us up, we begin to encounter the benefits of this wilderness meal received in community and the buoyant experience of one another’s company.
Think about it. Thousands returned from this meal thinking of the world differently. And the continued miracle of this meal is that we continue to be fed from this meal and we are sent into the world with the same gift these thousands received so many years ago.
Today, some will argue about how this miracle happened. But frankly, I am not concerned about whether people had brought small amounts of food into the wilderness for themselves and Jesus’ act of generosity convinced them to be generous too or whether Jesus’ actions of prayer, blessing and breaking actually did the feeding. What impresses me is that, in this deserted wilderness place, in this place of desolation and grief, in this place of anger and fear, Christ’s presence brings a sense of wholeness and peace into the midst of a violent and perversely broken world.
So, it is through this brokenness that we come to know the wholeness of God’s world, the fullness of the kingdom of heaven, the way of peace for ourselves and the world.
May we, in these days, know that peace again.
No comments:
Post a Comment