When discussing the miracles of Jesus in Bible study groups or confirmation classes, it’s not long before someone usually asks the question “did this really happen?” “Did Jesus really heal this person?” “Did he really walk on water?” Or, as we are faced with this morning, “Did Jesus really feed 5000 people with fives loaves and two fish?” And indeed interpretation of the gospels in recent times has focused on what these miracles might tell us about Jesus, perhaps viewing them as literary devices rather than historical description and remaining rather sceptical (or at least uninterested) in whether or not these things actually happened.
And because I am no biblical literalist, people are sometimes rather surprised when I say that I do actually believe that these rather strange events really did take place. I believe that, not because of an uncritical engagement with scripture, nor because I want to downplay symbolic or literary interpretations. Rather, I believe the miracles took place because of what I believe about God – who God is and what God does.
I believe in a God who is active in the world, today as ever before, to bring healing and truth and to reveal God’s glory.
I believe that wherever people are finding wholeness in their lives and overcoming their weaknesses, the Spirit of God is at work.
I believe that wherever people are pursuing justice, protecting the weak and feeding the hungry, the Spirit of God is at work.
And wherever glory and wonder is touching people’s hearts, I believe that God is there.
So it seems to me that we shouldn’t, by any means, be surprised that in the life of Jesus Christ – the man who fully embodied the work of God in the world – we see this bringing about of healing and truth and glory manifested in rather more acute forms than we might expect to see in our daily lives. God was at work in a uniquely intense way at this particular point in history, in and around the life of this particular man. So did Jesus miraculously feed 5000 people? Well, given what I believe about God, I can’t see why not.
God heals. God restores. At the beginning of this passage that is seen in the healing of people’s bodies, and in the rest of the passage we see that same work in the feeding of hungry people – the healing of a world broken by undistributed food.
That might challenge some of what we thought Jesus’ ministry was about. Many people today see Jesus simply as a kind of teacher who enlightens the minds of his hearers about God and about good ways to live your life. But Jesus does far more than this: he is fully revealing and enacting the breadth of God’s purposes for the world, and in this story, that includes God’s will for the feeding of the hungry. Jesus brings about all goodness, all truth and all justice, and so that doesn’t stop at people’s hearts and minds, it encompasses their bodies, their communities and their shared political life. In short, it includes the whole of creation.
So the miracles are intense signs to us of what God is always doing, throughout history, and today: that is the bringing about of healing and truth and glory in our world. This makes our relationship with God and our life in Jesus Christ something far more significant, far more world-changing than many of us have become accustomed to believe.
Part of the unspoken settlement with religion in the modern era has been its confinement to personal matters of the heart or private morality. It’s not seen as relevant or appropriate to issues such as the feeding of the hungry that might be called social or political issues. It’s taken some Christians of real integrity and vision like Archbishop Desmond Tutu to remind us that we can’t accept this settlement. Accused of overstepping his remit when calling on the churches to do more for the poor in South Africa, he replied: “The gospel of our Lord Jesus is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say ‘Now, is that political or social?’ He said ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”
We hear this gospel this morning in the context of a world entering a serious food crisis. The price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, wheat by 130%. And according to the World Bank, one hundred million people could be pushed into deeper poverty by these high prices. It’s not that there isn’t enough food in the world. Of the grain produced globally this year, less than half of that will be eaten. Much will go into biofuels, to feed the insatiable appetite for car travel, and even more will be fed to cattle, most of which will be sold cheaply in western supermarkets and fast food outlets. On top of all that, as we have heard over the last couple of weeks, one third of all food bought in Europe will linger in the fridge and then be thrown away.
So it’s in this context that we have to ask, “Where is God working in the world today to feed the hungry and how do we, the body of Christ, participate in those purposes?”
We are hindered in that by the fact that these are not seen as religious issues, even by many people, as ethical issues. They are technical issues, to be solved by tinkering with the mechanisms of supply and demand or magically solved by the wonders of genetically modified crops. And in so far as they are seen as ethical issues, what we are told is lacking is political will. Men in suits can’t get their act together to solve the problems that, of course, we all wish they would solve.
But the truth is that the political will is not there because there is little human will in the Northern Hemisphere to feed the hungry of the Southern Hemisphere, and because there no human will there will be no technical solutions.
And it’s in this kind of impasse that I believe human society needs to start talking again about God. When there is no human will to do what is right, we must turn again to God, because when we ask “where is God working in the world today to feed the hungry?” the answer is surely among people who have themselves turned to God. We see that a bit on the international scene. I think we saw it encouragingly in the procession of bishops through central London last week calling on governments to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Then there are the many agencies, Christian and non-Christian, some of which this church support, which do so much to bring food to those in desperate need.
But when it comes to the shaping of human will according to the purposes of God – including for the feeding of the hungry – that can only begin at the grassroots, with the conversion of the heart to shape our own habits and practices. And given the crises facing our world today, I so strongly believe that to be the direction that the church needs to pursue in modern day discipleship. So how can we, in our small ways, tap into that work of God to heal and restore our world – to feed the hungry?
I would run into the same pitfalls as Gordon Brown if I stood in this pulpit and told you all to eat up your leftovers! So I won’t do that! But with the awareness we all have now, I think the time has come to think about the ethics of food and energy consumption in relation to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m just going to advocate two ways into that:
Firstly, Christians believe (though many of us have forgotten) that food, like all the blessings of creation, is a gift from God. So we thank God for our food, not because he has made it magically appear but because we are privileged to live in the rich half of the world that lives off the poor half and we need to keep mindful of that. Why not try to say grace occasionally if you don’t already? And maybe that thankfulness for what we have will start to help us make sense of the reality that our unthinking squandering and wasting of food in the western world comes at a very real cost to others on our planet.
But secondly, while recognising food as a sign of our relationship with God, Christians would do well to think of food, like all market commodities, as a sign of our relationship with those who have produced it. We need to start asking ourselves the question, “Can I really stomach food that I know has been produced by someone not paid enough to feed his or her own family?” How long is it possible for Christians to go on ignoring those kinds of issues when we are now so well aware of them? The fair-trade stall is at the back of church this morning. Please support it.
These two shifts in attitude, toward seeing food as both a blessing from God, and as a sign of our relationship with those who produce it, may lead to actions that feel like a drop in the ocean. What difference does my shopping basket make to the millions in sub-Saharan Africa? But human will must be changed to bring about political will and, as we saw in the success of the Jubilee 2000 debt-relief campaign, we are part of a communion of millions of Christians, in solidarity with many other people of good will who can genuinely make a difference.
We are followers of the one who gave bread to the hungry, people who will gather around this altar to share bread with one another as a sign of the banquet with Jesus to which all creation is headed. So we need to reflect hard on where it is that God is working today to feed the hungry. We need to commit ourselves to that work, to encourage others to do likewise, and as righteous actions become the salt and light of our broken world, then, I believe, God will really be doing something miraculous in our own time, to heal and restore.
Amen.