POT LUCK!

Medora Gordon, Asst. for Pastoral Care

I must admit that when I first discovered that today's lesson was about the "loaves and fishes," I was dismayed! For those of you who are new to us, the parable of the loaves and fishes is Christian code talk for Jesus and the apostles feeding five thousand people on a sunny hillside, just a little bit east of the Sea of Galilee, way out in the country about 150 miles north of Jerusalem. What could I possibly find to say about this story that has not been said a thousand times? We have grown up with this tale. We were taught it in Sunday school. The quandary is where to go with something that is so familiar?

We could say that the "loaves and fishes" is an allegory, a story made up to tell us that the kingdom of God is like Jesus feeding the five thousand, and while I think that is true, it doesn't quite hit the mark for me. Or, we could muddle around in just how Jesus took 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes and fed 5000 people. After all, the story is repeated in all four gospels. But as you know the gospel writers likely borrowed the story from one another, except in John where it is a little different. In John there is a little boy with five barley loaves and two fishes in a basket. In Mark, somehow the disciples have the food, and the details are a little foggy. So, I decided to go with the fog! This story is a pericope! Gotcha!! I just knew that no one would know what a pericope is!!

Pericope is a Greek word that means a "section" or "part" of scripture. But a pericope is more than just a section. A pericope is a story from scripture, not unlike this morning's lesson, that we are trying to understand through it's many historical layers. I had a professor explain to me once that a pericope is like putting an historical happening behind a curtain. Not a lacy curtain that we can see through, but a heavy curtain, a curtain through which we can just barely make out figures and movement. Then we try to explain the story based on what we can see! That is what the "loaves and fishes" is, a pericope, a piece of scripture where we can just barely make out the figures and the movement.

Like most of the early Christians, Mark's audience probably lived in large, multi-national urban areas around the Mediterranean basin. Church tradition has the Gospel of Mark associated with Rome, or possibly Egypt. The Book of Mark was probably written between 60-75 C.E., and the people were flocking to the cities looking for the improved financial and social conditions that urban living promised. But, in separating from their native traditions, lands, and family kinship groups, the people often found themselves socially alienated, disease ridden (resulting from poor living conditions and bad sanitation), and hungry. Hungry, because for all of their other gifts and talents, the Romans never could quite figure out how to supply large urban areas with sufficient food.

Mark depicts Jesus as one who calls into existence a new family based not on blood relations but on doing the will of God. Mark also emphasizes Jesus' abilities as a healer of diseases of all sorts, and a multiplier of bread and fish, which would obviously have struck a resonant chord with hungry, disease-ridden people.

The New Testament is also full of threads that claim our roots in the Hebrew scriptures as if to say "see, we really are legitimate - it says so in Exodus or Isaiah." This wonderful story about the multiplication of the loaves and fishes is one of those threads. You see, this miraculous feeding is intended for new comers, to point back to God's feeding of the people in the wilderness. Please note, that this miracle did not take place in downtown Rome, no, no, my friends, Jesus and the disciples, and all those people, were waaaaaay out in the countryside. Granted, the countryside does not qualify as a desert, but the location is remote, and it is dinnertime.

The next similarity is the presence of bread, which can be equated to manna in the wilderness. The bread tells us that God provides for people, just like God provided for the Israelites. And, of course there are the fish, which are almost an afterthought. In the early centuries fish were often included as part of the Eucharistic meal - sea creatures for food - just like quails which fed our ancestors in the desert.

What the writer of Mark was likely doing is writing a story for people who truly needed to hear that this new teacher was legitimate and would teach about God's caring for people in the wilderness of their lives. Jesus was teaching a whole new concept, the concept of a God that is not the enemy, but a God who lives among us and cares for us. A God who expects things of us and feeds us - just look at what happened to the Israelites in the wilderness.

Then I thought that this is not too different from what all of us are trying to do. We are talking to and teaching, not only one another, but also total strangers, seekers in an urban setting. We present ourselves as warm and welcoming, and have you noticed how we always feed people? All we have to do is whisper the magic words "pot luck" and tons of food appears. Gorgeous salads, soup to die for, gooey desserts and pizza, things that we would never eat at home. These are things that most of us don't even have at home and it often feels like a miracle.

Soup suppers are a perfect example. Years ago we gave up taking sign ups. The rule is, if you show up, bring something. Sometimes we have eighteen loaves of bread and not quite so much soup. Sometimes we are drowning in soup but, there is not quite so much bread. There are cookies and desserts and nothing to drink, but no matter how many people show up, we never run out of food.

I think that the kingdom of God is like that. Sometimes it is manna and quail in the wilderness, sometimes it is loaves and fishes on a grassy hillside, and sometimes it is soup and bread, or cookies and salad. A little of this, a little of that, but there is always more than enough. The Israelites collected extra baskets of manna and quail, there were twelve baskets - and some fish - left over in Mark's lesson, and we are always putting extra food in the refrigerator for whoever needs lunch the next day. God just simply never runs out!

The mystical intrigue here, is that we don't quite know how it works. Where did all those quail come from in the middle of the Sinai desert? And were there really five loaves and two fishes, did they multiply, or maybe everyone brought something and shared? Why don't we have forty-three loaves of bread and no soup? I don't know how God works, but I do know that God does work, and we are the proof of the parable.

The other secret ingredient is that there are a lot of people involved in these miraculous banquets. The Israelites were grumbling about not enough to eat in the wilderness and low and behold a miracle. The apostles were worried about spending a half of a years wages to donate for a meal, and Jesus said take what we have and pass it around. The 5000 sat down in an orderly fashion knowing that they would be fed, and all of us, well, we just bring something and it works out. You see it takes us all to make it a miracle. Through out all of these stories if it was just one, it wouldn't have worked. But with everyone finally pulling together, feeding all those who are hungry and seeking becomes part of what we do. It is one of those miracles.

We are working hard at defining a vision of ourselves. I would argue that we have a least some of that vision put together. We are seekers just like the Israelites who headed out of Egypt, or the 5000 who followed Jesus to the countryside. We want to hear and learn more about God. We have surprised ourselves by being mystics and some of us use our heads, and some of us use our hearts. But we are all trying to faithfully go where God calls us. The one thing that we really do agree on is the miracle of food. We have dinners, and luncheons, and coffee hours, and soup suppers. We take bread to newcomers, and we send along a casserole if you are sick. We are always feeding one another, and anyone else who happens by. If we are in the wilderness, there is plenty, or if we have followed Jesus to the countryside there is more than enough in our baskets, and if all we can do is manage to show up, don't worry, there is plenty to go around.

And Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish,
looked up to the sky, and gave a blessing.
He broke the bread apart, and started giving it
to his disciples to pass around.
Even the two fish they shared with everybody.
Everyone had more than enough to eat.
Then they picked up twelve baskets full of leftovers,
including some fish,
and the number of people who
had some bread came to five thousand.

Mark 6:30-44 (Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels)

Amen.

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