I did exactly one year of high school marching band. One. If my high school’s system of pitting academics against the arts wasn’t enough to convince you of the validity of my choice, I challenge you to wear something wool outside for a few hours in Lower Alabama. Our practice field was a regulation football field surrounded by an asphalt track and concrete beyond, an island of grass on which a few hundred teenage souls clung to life in a sea of excess heat. The kind of heat where the mere thought of food sounds nauseating…you would think.
The greatest cruelty wasn’t the extra heat bearing down on us; rather, it was what was down the street. At some point during most practices the wind would shift just so, bearing with it the aroma of the local Sunbeam bread bakery. That sweet, starchy southern white bread that spoke of barbecue dives and sandwiches at the beach. For the record, we never got a scrap of bread at those practices.
Christianity talks a lot about bread and food. Today’s lectionary text from Matthew, about bread no less, is the gospel curriculum equivalent of a basket of rolls at a chain steakhouse. Of course it’s there, and someone will complain if it isn’t. But why does this short story of a scant nine verses hold so much weight? Let’s look closer.
Unlike Mark’s version Jesus withdraws not for a calm sabbath but with some haste in his steps. Right before this passage we are told of a dinner party full of proof that a high price tag on the chef’s special does not guarantee a pairing with true hospitality. After a raucous feast of who’s who’s, palace intrigue, and rampant immorality, Jesus’ cousin John is dead by Herod’s command. Being on the opposite side of a large body of water must have seemed like a splendid idea.
And the people followed. There were no concerns for any local ethnic lines crossed or the quickly approaching evening at the feet of Jesus. They found themselves in the wilderness; from my reading of Scripture and from my own life the wilderness is both a quick path to deep hunger and where God does his best feeding. Food just does taste better outside, doesn’t it? It’s science.
Only the crowd doesn’t have any food. The disciples, not known for their logistical foresight, suddenly switch to planning mode and make the suggestion that church wrap up not for the sake of beating the Methodists to lunch but beating the coming darkness and hunger. I hope for their sake they are here exhibiting their Master’s compassion without prophetic imagination. I will say, however, that from Cain standing before God to powers that simply shuffle our homeless neighbors out of sight, we as a species have a long history of looking at each other and saying, “Is this my problem” and “Can this problem be somewhere else?” Jesus’ response should leave us with little doubt as to God’s official view on the matter.
And then, right then, there’s a miracle. Actually, there have already been multiple miracles which have not been properly acknowledged and then there’s going to be a few more. Before this story started, before its day even began, someone made bread. Not Sunbeam–likely barley cakes, baked in clay vessels in the 500 to 700 degree range. No thermometer, no thermostat, just knowledge passed along like Scripture before printing, passed on to hold and sustain.
Cooking is a miracle. Cooking chemically changes the very substance of the materials involved, the particles of carbon and hydrogen rearranging to birth something new. Why do we only call it a miracle when the rearrangement of matter happens in unexpected ways? We didn’t get to program the dances of proteins, starches, and sugars any more than we get to command them to do something new. Of course it’s a miracle. If bread isn’t a miracle in this world of greed, rot, and temperamental ovens, then why did Jesus tell us to pray for it daily?
Gathering to be fed, physically or spiritually, is a miracle as well. In God’s fire, the distant particles of human society rearrange in defiance of all the things which would keep us apart, changed forever. Matthew here is describing an opportunity to share a meal together. The bread and fish aren’t the only things being offered for the miracle. Everyone with open hearts and willing hands is part of the offering. Jesus sees all this and asks his disciples with their empty lunch pails, what’s one more miracle when we’ve already had so many? And why would you want to miss out on the miracle by outsourcing to the local villages?
Often when I cook for others, especially a larger group, I have at least one moment where my brain shrieks in a panic, “Will this actually all work?” I hope I never lose that. I never want to get so full of myself or dull to the extravagance of God that I stop seeing every pan of cornbread and every full table as a miracle, even and maybe especially if it actually happens every day. Where else could I possibly want to be?
In and with and through all these miracles, we get the miracle with a capital M. The food heading out supernaturally exceeds the initial count, extravagantly exceeding what is required for the people present. It would have been reasonable to give them the ancient equivalent of those little adult lunchables with the cheese and crackers, or a protein bar. Jesus isn’t much for the reasonable in quantity or quality when it comes to the table; just ask the wedding guests at Canna.
This story is so important, I offer, because with regards to miracles it is only second to the resurrection in its centrality to understanding Christ. This is in fact the only miracle other than the resurrection to be recorded in all four gospels, with two more similar stories thrown in for good measure. This is a miracle of supernaturally increased food, but also cooking, gathering, being willing to be gathered, and eating together. It is a miracle of hospitality and communion. From the granting of manna to the banquet at the end of all things, with the Last Supper ushering in the grand fulcrum of messianic history, God’s story of redemption is a story of hospitality and the Feeding of the Five Thousand has it by the basketful. This morning we will hear Jesus’ words again, first spoken over bread as death and resurrection drew near. The cross and tomb may be the how, but the bread and table are why.
We know hospitality is this important, we all do, long before I walked up here. Is it even legal to assemble an old fashioned feltboard Sunday School lesson kit without this story? I imagine I stand before many for whom running out of food is far scarier than death. Our word for where lives are saved, hospital, and our word for taking care of others, hospitality, come from the same root that reaches back to a Latin word for strangers lest we think this is only about our inner circle. Going into this weekend the #1 movie in the US is Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey. The film, based on a story even older than Latin, has at its heart a dire warning: if hospitality dies then civilization dies, and as we pass the point of being able to count on each other we likewise can no longer count on Creation itself. We need reminding of this so frequently because sustaining food and life-giving company are miraculous. We must treasure, cherish, present ourselves for, and pray for our daily miracle.
If we have received the miracle, why wouldn’t we want to share it, to accept Christ’s invitation to carry it to the crowd? Will Guidara, former co-owner of the famed Eleven Madison Park restaurant in New York, released a book in 2022 titled, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect. Early in the book, Guidara goes into tearjerking detail about the impact hospitality made on his life and career after the loss of his mother from years of illness. He had reached out to acclaimed chef Daniel Buloud whom he had met when Guidara was in college, asking for a table so he and his father could have a night out to be together. He describes the chef’s table overlooking the kitchen, the extra courses, the long after-hours hang in the kitchen, the years of care melting from his father’s face, and the refusal to take any payment. Rather than ending the chapter with thankfulness for what he received, Guidara goes further and rightly declares, “[W]e have an opportunity–a responsilbity–to make magic in a world that desperately needs more of it.”1
I want to commend to you that on the first Saturday of every other month your teenagers and their volunteers present themselves to be part of what Guidara calls magic, what I go even further to call a miracle. They show up at church on a Saturday morning, no small feat itself. By noon they have made a meal from scratch for all who come to Stewpot, a meal good enough to make them look forward to their own turn to eat from it together. By 2pm they have also fully cleaned up and prepped any leftovers for future Stewpot needs as well as the Billy Brumfield House. Some may say that cooking like this in a soup kitchen situation is unreasonable. According to Matthew 14, presenting ourselves like bread and fish is exactly what God uses for things we can’t fathom. And welcoming our neighbors unreasonably is as Christlike as it gets.
Yesterday was a Stewpot day. Cheeseburger macaroni, greens, and peach cobbler plus homemade ice cream, in case you’re wondering. But today is Sunday. We can be a people that offers not just the teasing aroma of bread but the substance of a good meal, good company, and that which feeds long after grain fades, just as it has been offered to us. Today we find ourselves in a position that we’ve studied. Bread has been made, and brought. A crowd has willingly left their boundaries and their lives to see Jesus. There is an opportunity to share a meal together. Jesus sees all this and asks, what’s one more miracle when we’ve already had so many? And why would you ever want to miss out?
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1 Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect (New York: Optimism Press, 2022) 20