“You give them something to eat.” Jesus, let’s rethink this. There’s an impossible situation right in front. More than a few thousand hungry people. We’ve got next to nothing. And you’re saying we should give them something to eat? With that kind of talk, we’re wondering if this ministry is getting to be too much for you.

Pressure Stress

Granted, the last couple of days had not been good. A trip home to Nazareth brought rejection from those persons who had known him most of his life. Who did this guy think he was, teaching in the town synagogue, reputedly doing miracles, when his family were folk as ordinary as they were? Playing preacher before them didn’t sit well, and they weren’t buying it. (Matthew 13:53-57)

Really bad news followed right on top of that. Word came that Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, had met a gruesome end on the order of Herod Antipas, despot of the Galilean region. Herod had backed himself into a corner by promising his new wife’s daughter whatever she wanted for having performed an erotic dance at his birthday party. Her mother told her to ask for John’s head on a platter, and so it was delivered.

Once informed, Jesus beat a retreat into a boat so he could be alone. Besides his own understandable grief, he needed space to think out what the loss of John to his ministry meant going forward. Just as significant though, besides his own friends and family rejecting him, he also had to consider how political tyrants might want him gone as well. If ever Jesus needed to be alone, it was now. (Matthew 14:1-13) 

Not going to happen. While some people wouldn’t accept him, there still was a major crowd that couldn’t get enough of him. Likely he was considered a better teacher and preacher than the credentialed priests were and that meant something. Others had real needs to be addressed, illnesses with no cures or treatments, symptoms that were not understood and even frightening in presentation. Many also were the losers of the world, those who had no chance of pulling out from unjust oppression but found hope in the one who joined sinners at dinner and called children to his knee. The gathered followers tracked him to the place where he disembarked. No rest for the weary this day.

Hunger, Helplessness and Hope

Maybe it was in Jesus’ own pain and hurt that he found enough compassion to meet them where they were. Likely, some of them came to him in order and reverence as he healed them in his way, every illness and disease. But knowing human nature, some were likely pushy and demanding, violating his space, telling him what he was supposed to do for them. After all, that’s how people are known to approach God even in prayer.

It was a long day, and in wanting to care for their rabbi as well as dissipate the crowd, the disciples tell Jesus to send them away into the villages to buy food for an evening meal. That’s when Jesus lost it. “You give them something to eat.”

He wasn’t even rational at that point. All the twelve had among them, maybe given to them by persons in the crowd as some accounts have said, was five loaves of bread and two fish. This crowd could fill a small arena. Crumbs weren’t going to go far. Helpless in the face of the impossible, the hopeless were looking to them. In the back of their minds, the disciples may have felt doubt saying, “This gig is almost up, you guys.”

Active Hope

But he said, “You give them something to eat.” Quietly, without much fanfare, Jesus moves in action which would be so ordinary and yet for which he would be known at open tables for centuries. After telling the crowd to be seated, Jesus first took the loaves and fish. Not much more than what was a good lunch for one, still it rested in his hands. It was his now, his to do with what he would, all he had, and his alone.

Rather than focusing on what was not, Jesus raised his face up, called out to heaven, and asked blessing upon this little fare in his hands. His prayer was not just for nourishment, for that would limit what needed to be done and soon require more. Jesus’ prayer wasn’t even for thanks in this meal, for gratitude usually comes only for good circumstances and expectations, not when trial demands building strength. Instead, Jesus asked a blessing of grace, grace that is extended when the offering is insufficient, when lives don’t meet the measure of good, when only divine intervention pulls through the undeserved.

Next, he breaks the bread. In doing so, there is a change in it. The bread is still bread, but no longer a full loaf, just a piece, a part of what was. Yet, it still is bread, carrying in itself that which chases away hunger, the kind of hunger that eats on itself making a being smaller and less than what it was. In its brokenness, it has power to feed many by restoring and transforming health and wholeness, giving life and growth.

Finally, Jesus directs the disciples to do as he asked. He gives them the broken food so they can give the people something to eat. By his taking the simple elements of this meal, praying a blessing of grace upon them, and breaking it into portions that would fill a need, these twelve servants can distribute and fulfill the missional task asked of them.

Multiplied Hope

Likely, the miracle didn’t happen until then. Everyone had enough food, as much as they wanted, yet it never ran out. Not until it was given could the small be made bigger than what it was. The miracle wasn’t in the quantity of the food feeding more than 5000 persons, but in how Jesus did not do everything by himself, giving others, the average and the ordinary, the believers and those who maybe could have more belief than they do now, a part in changing hope into a realized miracle. Twelve baskets of food were left over, full baskets that not only met a need but were multiplied beyond the wildest of expectations.

Miracles are meant not to only fill empty stomachs. The greater miracle fills a life which has been taken into the hands of God, blessed in grace no matter how little it is, broken and changed into something more than it is, and given for purpose beyond itself. 

“You give them something to eat.”

Matthew 14:13-21

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