The Text: Matthew 14:13-21
What do you have? Do you have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in,
clothes
to wear and food to eat? Do you have a car or have access to some form of
transportation? Do you have a bank account and does it have any money in it?
What luxury items do you have and what other odds and ends are lying around
your place? Could you pack all of your possessions into a suitcase or would you
need a removalist van to make a shift?
In 1964 Donald Horne, a Sydney journalist, referred to Australia as the ‘lucky
country’. This phrase stuck and has since been used to describe everything from our
weather and wide-open spaces to our overall quality of life. Many don’t realise
Horne’s quote has been taken out of context. He actually said: ‘Australia is a lucky
country, run by second-rate people who share its luck’.
You may sometimes think the people running our country are still second rate, but
most of us would agree that we are blessed to live here. Australia consistently ranks
in the top countries in the world in terms of our quality of life. It has always been
seen as a land of opportunity, a desirable destination for migrants and refugees
alike who are seeking to start a new life.
But there are still the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in our society. The gap between
the richest people in the land and the poorest is significant. Where do we see
ourselves on the wealth spectrum? Is it easier for us to focus on what we have or on
what we do not have?
Our Gospel reading deals with the very well-known incident in the life of Jesus where
he miraculously fed a crowd of thousands. It features in all four Gospel accounts –
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which is why it is very familiar to us.
Jesus had just heard news of the death of John the Baptist so he had withdrawn to
a remote place to regroup and grieve. But the crowds came from the surrounding
towns and followed him out there. Despite his grief, Jesus had compassion on them
and still set about healing their sick. The day passed and evening came. Jesus had
met their needs and it was time for the people to go home and get some dinner.
But Jesus said they didn’t have to go away and he instructed his disciples to feed
them.
The disciples didn’t have the resources to feed this large crowd – 5,000 men, with
the women and children to be added to this number. In addition to this, it wasn’t
actually required. You could see this as an ‘unnecessary miracle’. This wasn’t a life
or death situation of poverty-related hunger. The people could easily go and get
their own food.
No one asked to be fed. No one expected to be fed. There was no need.
But Jesus insisted. He took the food they had – five loaves of bread and two fish –
and miraculously turned it into a meal that fed all of the crowd of thousands. There
were more leftovers than what they had to begin with. So what is the moral of the
story?
Is it a call for us to meet the needs of our hungry world – ‘you give them something
to eat’? When you think of what we do have here in Australia then it is easy to see
this miracle as an encouragement to share what we have with those less fortunate
than us.
It is easy to use this account to focus on what we have, to be reminded of how
richly blessed we are in comparison to elsewhere in the world. The moral then
becomes one of counting your blessings and sharing your blessings. No one is going
to arc up about such a conclusion. It’s only fair and reasonable to expect us to give
from what we have, whatever that is.
Only…that’s not our text! It is not how the story played out.
What did the disciples have? They had nothing really – only five loaves of bread
and two fish. And in John’s account we hear that even this meagre amount wasn’t
what they had at all. It belonged to a boy (John 6:8-9). This miracle is not about
getting us to give from what we have. There is nothing especially miraculous about
that. We do that all the time to varying degrees: depending on our generosity and
on the perceived need.
Most of us are moved to give from what we have when we hear about an urgent
need: a severe famine in Africa; a child requiring life-saving surgery; a natural
disaster that devastates a community. We respond to these crises and so we should!
But again that’s not what our text is on about.
In the Old Testament book of 1 Kings (17:7f) we hear of how the prophet Elijah
miraculously provided oil and flour for the widow at Zarephath [pronounced Zar-eh-
fath]. On that occasion, the life of the widow and her son were at stake. With the
feeding miracle in our Gospel account there was no such crisis; no life was at stake.
There was nothing urgent or special about the situation.
As the disciples said: the crowd ‘can go to the villages and buy themselves some
food’. It is because the miracle is so unnecessary that you start to wonder why Jesus
did it and what is he trying to teach through it.
The natural order of things is that we take care of ourselves. We try and get
ourselves to the point of self-sufficiency; to the point where we have enough. If we
have more than enough for ourselves then we can share. But this mindset and
natural order of things is such a limiting one really. It is limited not only by what we
have but also by what we are willing to release, to let go of what we have. And we
are notoriously bad at doing that.
This miraculous feeding occurred once the disciples realised what they didn’t have;
that they had nothing to offer. In Matthew’s Gospel account, we see the greatest
miracles occur when people bring with them the least. It isn’t what we have that
makes us effective disciples in God’s kingdom.
Earlier the religious leaders presented their credentials to John the Baptist by saying:
‘we have Abraham as our father’ (Matthew 3:9). But John wasn’t overly impressed
with that, telling them that God could produce children from stones. It isn’t about
what we have but about what God can do with what we don’t have.
We see this throughout Jesus’ ministry. He was brought those who had diseases,
those who had severe pain, those who had demon possession, those who had
seizures, those who had blindness and those who had paralysis (Matthew 4:24;
15:30). It is not the greatest list of attributes to bring to the table; and yet Jesus
healed them all.
For, what did Jesus have? In the world’s terms he didn’t seem to have much at all.
He told his followers: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has
no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). So he didn’t have a roof over his head.
And when he came to Jerusalem to claim his throne as king all he had was a
borrowed donkey (Matthew 21:3).
But he did have authority: he had the authority to teach the truths of God’s
kingdom (Matthew 7:29) and he had the authority to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6). And
in the lead up to this latest miracle we see that he had compassion on the large
crowd that had come out to see him (Matthew 14:14). We have a God who loves
us and cares for us. We have a God who wants to give us each day our daily
bread. We have a God who wants to heal our hurts and bring us life and make us
whole. It turns out that he doesn’t need a whole lot or even anything from us in
order to make these things happen.
So what do we need to have? We need to have ‘ears that hear’ (Matt.13:43); that
is, the ability to perceive that God’s kingdom follows a different pattern to that of
the world. And we need to have ‘faith as small as a mustard seed’ (Matt.17:20).
And God has provided even these to us because we don’t have them naturally. For
even when we have so little (or nothing at all) God can still move mountains. God
can use us to feed the hungry and heal the broken through what he provides,
rather than through what we have. God will see to it that his kingdom comes, on
earth as it is in heaven. Amen.