A Homily by Dcn. Michael about the Miracle of the Feeding of the 5000
The “Feeding of the Five Thousand” is a miracle that appears in each of the Gospels of the New Testament. In all four of the accounts when see Jesus miraculously feeding five thousand people with only two fish and five loaves of bread. The event describes the disciplines, concerned that there was not enough fish and bread to feed everyone, advising Jesus to send the people away to the local villages, so that they could “buy themselves food” (Matt. 14:15). What the disciples were saying is that they had only enough food to supply their own personal needs, and the rest of the people would have to go out and fend for themselves.
In a practical, worldly sense, the disciples made a very logical conclusion: What responsibility did they have to feed this huge crowd? The little bit of food on hand—five loaves of bread and two fish—was probably intended to be the meal for Jesus and His small band of disciples. Having five thousand guests for dinner was probably not in the original plan. No matter how creative they got, there was no natural way for them to make the food stretch to feed that many people, so the disciples thought the best thing to do was to send the people away so that they could find their meals in the surrounding villages. Since there was no expectation on the part of Jesus to feed all the people, there was no shame in sending the crowd away.
It must have been quite a site to see: Five thousand men, besides the women and children (v. 21), all gathered in the same location and all of them are hungry. St. Matthew describes that location as being a “deserted place” (v. 13), indicating that there was not much at that location that could have supported such a large crowd. The people had come from the cities, following Jesus on foot to this deserted place. Jesus felt compassion for the crowd and proceeded to heal the sick among them (v. 14). While the focus of the account seems to shift from healing to feeding, the fact is that the activities are similar in the sense that they are meeting the needs of those gathered around Christ. This is should sound familiar to us today, since that is the essential call of the Church: To meet the physical as well as the spiritual needs of those sent to us by the Holy Spirit.
Let’s take a moment and consider the emotional state of Jesus prior to His encounter with the crowd. The previous verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus had just learned about the death of His cousin, St. John the Forerunner, at the hands of King Herod. St. John’s disciples gathered the body and head of their beloved teacher and told Jesus about of the events of His cousin’s death (John 14:9-12). Upon hearing the news Jesus traveled by boat to the deserted place to be alone and presumably reflect on the devastating news (v. 13). Despite the sorrow He must have been experiencing, Jesus still was able to look beyond Himself and have compassion on the gathered crowd (v. 14). Jesus put the needs of others—total strangers—ahead of His own need to mourn the death of a close relative. Often, we can be so tied up in our own situation that we cannot look outside of our own sorrows to see the needs of others. How can we be bothered with the problems of the world when we have so much pain and suffering in our own lives? But we can see this example of selfless love and care for others in Christ as well as in the lives of the Holy Martyrs of the Church, men and women who set aside their own needs to look after the needs of others.
One thing today’s lesson certainly should drive home for us is that we as faithful Christians are often the conduits for God’s miracles. I am quite sure Jesus could have somehow just conjured up the food for the multitude without going through all the work of distributing the loaves and fishes. To feed well over five thousand people had to have taken an exorbitant amount of time and effort on everyone’s part. It would have been much easier to just make the food drop down from heaven. This would have been just as miraculous and with a lot less effort. But we see that there is much more to the story than just filling the stomachs of the masses: There is also the personal and spiritual aspects as well. The Gospel tells us that Jesus took the bread, “looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowd” (v. 19). Does this sound familiar? The Church Fathers see this as the same liturgical act that we experience with the Eucharist, reminding us that there is always plenty for everyone. But notice that it is the disciples who are doing the distribution. In that act they are participants in the miracle being recorded, adding that very personal, human dimension to the event. It demonstrates that each of us can be used by God to perform the miracle of feeding His sheep, both physically and spiritually.
Something we should notice from today’s lesson, which may be the crux of the Gospel teaching, is the command that Jesus gave to His disciples: “you give them something to eat” (v. 16). While the disciples saw only the difficulty in the situation, Jesus was able to see the opportunity to demonstrate God’s glory. Jesus gave the disciples the opportunity to be ministers of God’s miracle, and as a result the people were not only fed physically but also spiritually. Life is full of difficult situations where it might seem easier to simply send strangers away to find their own sustenance. But the words of Christ need to be our call to action as well. While we may feel that we do not have the financial resources available to feed five thousand strangers, we do have the spiritual resources to address the needs to all of those who God sends our way. We do not need a degree in theology to be able to explain the love of God. We do not have to be an ordained clergy member of the Church to have compassion on a stranger and provide a compassionate presence in their time of need. What we do need to have is a faith in God and a willingness to be used by Him to show the glory of His Kingdom. This does not require any special commission or anointing, since we already received both by virtue of our baptism and chrismation. We are fully equipped to do God’s work.
The purpose of feeding those in need was the reason for the institution of the office of the deaconate in the Church. Today we commemorate St. Stephen the Protomartyr who was among the first seven men chosen to help with the feeding of the widows and orphans, which was the primary charitable focus of the early Church (Acts 6:1-6). But St. Stephen’s work went beyond waiting on tables and included evangelism, the ministry that would ultimately cost him his life. His defense of the Christian faith and zeal to spread the Gospel message made him an enemy of the religious establishment. Since they could not silence him, they chose to kill him. And even as he was being stoned by the religious leaders outside the city of Jerusalem, St. Stephen still prayed for the forgiveness of sins of his murders (Acts 7:60), emulating the love and mercy of our Lord as He was crucified on Calvary for doing nothing worse than spreading the Good News of a loving Father in Heaven (Luke 23:34). St. Stephen’s example of service and sacrifice has set the standard not only for those who are ordained deacons of the Church but for everyone, since we are all called to be servants to the Lord and to our neighbor.
In his homily on the Gospel on Matthew, St. John Chrysostom points out that it was through His disciples that Jesus performed the miraculous feeding, and the miracle continued even after the multitude were fed, for when the people were finished eating the disciples were able to collect 12 baskets of leftovers, noting that there was a basket for each disciple, including Judas Iscariot, the one who would betray Jesus (Homily 94 on Matthew). When we give—when we feed Christ’s flock—there is always enough to go around. There is even an abundance of leftovers! This demonstrates what Jesus taught His disciples, “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38). The miracles of God never come up short when we step out on faith. Through their obedience to the Master’s command, “You give them something to eat,” twelve followers of Christ were used to miraculously bless thousands.
We should never get caught in the devil’s trap of believing that we are unable or unworthy of spreading God’s blessings in the world. Setting our minds against the will of God is the first step in hardening our hearts against God’s purpose for us as conduits for His miracles. Even the little bit we have—be it money, time, talent or knowledge—is more than enough to meet the needs of others when we use them for God’s Kingdom. We do not need to be great saints or theologians; all we need is to have the willingness to look on our neighbor with compassion and offer what we have in the name of Christ.
As the Gospel lesson demonstrates, we should never send someone away who is hungry, whether that hunger is physical or spiritual. By doing so we may deny someone the miracle that God had planned for them and for us. We can ask, who benefited the most from the miraculous feeding: The multitude or the disciples? I would say that they both received a blessing by giving and receiving. Every time we have an encounter with someone in the name of Christ, we too are changed by that experience, no matter how big or small the effort. No one can be touched by Christ and not walk away a changed person.
May we make the commitment to never turn away a stranger who is in need of either physical or spiritual nourishment. Not having enough for ourselves should never be a reason for neglecting our call as Christians to reach out to a stranger in the name of Christ. The words of Jesus should be our guiding principle: “You give them something to eat.” Whether it is the bread of wheat or the Bread of Life, we are all responsible for feeding the people God sends to us. By stepping out in faith and love we, too, will see the miraculous bounty that God has planned for the world.