Matthew 14:13-21
Taken. Blessed. Broken. Given. This is the formula of the Eucharist, the actions that must take place in order to transform simple offerings of bread and wine into something bigger, something deeper and more satisfying. Different denominations define the blessing differently, different churches use different types of bread and wine, we have different rules and expectations about how and when it’s done and who participates. But the formula is the same. Gifts are offered and received. They are blessed, often invoking the words of Jesus on the night before he died and calling upon the Holy Spirit. The bread is broken, the wine is poured, and they are given to the gathered. Whether that happens at an altar rail, or comes from a tray passed across pews, or if the cup is passed from hand to hand in a circle, the blessed gifts are broken and divided until everyone has had a taste. The Eucharistic feast has always been distinct from other fellowship meals, although sometimes it takes place before or after one. We know, thanks to Paul and other Biblical authors, that after the ascension of Jesus, the apostles and the believers they led repeated the words of Jesus over bread and wine and shared it as a way of remembering and reliving the life, death, and resurrection of their Lord. They took his command to “do this in remembrance of me” to heart, and the action quickly took on a liturgical quality.
This liturgical sharing of bread and wine was so central to what it meant to be a follower of Jesus in the early church that missionaries like Paul taught it to new churches and admonished them when they allowed it to be adulterated with class divides and petty squabbles. The wealthy believers had to be reminded to wait for the laborers to end their workday, lest those laborers receive only the crumbs and the dregs while the wealthy moved on to their main course. The order of deacons was created in part to ensure that the blessed bread was not the only nourishment available for the widowed and marginalized members of the community, in recognition that the small morsel of bread and sip of the common cup were never intended to be our only daily bread. The church, from its very conception, has been in the business of filling people up, of meeting their bodily needs, not in place of the Eucharist but springing forth from it. The blessed and broken bread is the source of our spiritual strength, so that we will in turn go out and feed a blessed and broken world.
The miracle of the loaves and fishes, the feeding of the thousands, was so impactful to all who participated in it that it is the only miracle of Jesus found in all four Gospels. In fact, it is found in the Gospel of Matthew twice! Jesus replicated the miracle for two different crowds, as if to prove that it was more than simply an inspiring story or a metaphor. After listening to Jesus teach and preach and receiving his healing, thousands sat down and received impossible, inexplicable sustenance. We today can be a bit jaded when it comes to numbers and crowds. In a world of football stadiums and concert venues that can hold over 75,000 people, 5 thousand men plus women and children doesn’t sound like much. But it is important to remember that this number is larger than most towns and cities in the ancient world. Five thousand men constituted a legion in the Roman army, enough to start a war. Jesus has managed to gather enough men to make up his own army, and rather than rousing them to violence, he has compassion on them and cures their sick. He sees them tired and hungry after a long day’s journey to find him, and all he wants to do is feed them. He tells them to sit down in the grass, to stay a while and eat. Despite the fact that our passage started with Jesus seeking solitude and ended with a legion of people following him as he retreated, Jesus does not take the opportunity to send them away. Instead, he tells his disciples to feed them.
The baffled disciples almost surely showed Jesus their meager offering of five loaves and two fish with exasperation. There is no way they expected him to take what they offered and multiply it beyond anything they could have imagined or prayed for. They had seen him cure the sick and cast out demons, a few of them had even seen him raise someone from death and calm a stormy sea. But to manipulate matter itself, to make something out of nearly nothing, was not likely their first thought. But Jesus took what they offered, little though it may have been. He blessed it, he broke it, and through his disciples he gave it to the crowds. That reluctant offering of scarcity became an abundant generosity, multiplying exponentially as it passed from the hands of Jesus to the hands of his disciples to the outstretched hands of the hungry legion. All ate and were filled, and of the broken pieces left over they were able to fill twelve baskets. Even a gift offered halfheartedly can overflow when it is Jesus to whom the gift is offered.
In the Rite 1 Eucharistic liturgy, the celebrant says this on behalf of the gathered faithful: “Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.” At the same time that we ask God to accept our offerings of bread and wine and to make them into something more, we ask God to accept our selves, our souls and bodies, all that we are. In the words of the liturgy we ask God to transform us, to take and bless and break and give us like bread and wine, like loaves and fishes. I think perhaps most weeks we don’t entirely mean it. We might be holding something back, some part of ourselves we don’t deem worthy of God’s altar. We might hesitate to offer our whole selves, not entirely ready to learn what God might ask of us once we have been transformed. We might want the blessing, and we might like the idea of being given to the world, but still we resist being broken open. We might not want to be broken, or we might feel too broken already, crumbling pieces that could not possibly hold together long enough to be blessed.
No matter what the reason, we all struggle at times to offer and present unto God our selves, our souls and bodies, all that we are. It is the hardest part, the part that God will not do to us without our consent. God will not take and bless and break us without our participation, without our self-offering. God knows what it is to be broken, and God does not lay anyone on the altar or nail anyone to the cross. Instead, God asks us to lay down our lives for our friends. God asks us to take up our cross and follow. God asks us to look out over the crowds and have compassion, and find something for them to eat. God does not expect us to work the miracle, only to bring forward our gifts, our selves, our souls and bodies, the fruits of our life and labor. God will do the rest, and always does more than we could have ever imagined. Whatever we offer up to God becomes good food for the whole world, enough to fill us up and to have plenty leftover. So hold nothing back. Whatever you have, whatever you are, it is enough. God will make sure of it.
Mother A Writes 