In recent weeks, we have been following the Son of God as He fulfills His mission to the Lost Tribes of Israel. Today's Gospel Lesson depicts the first of two events — Feeding the 5,000 and then Feeding the 4,000 — which are designed to shock the collective memory of the Jewish people. He has led the multitude into a wilderness and prepares to feed them with bread and flesh recalling scenes recorded in Exodus and Numbers. In this replay of the miracle of manna, the Son of God reveals Divine mysteries, yet does not reveal them.
After all, if He so desired, Jesus could have stood among the multitude and declared His Identity calling down a great Pillar of Cloud and speaking in a voice that filled the air with thundering grandeur and undoubted authority. But He chooses not to do this. Later, in a different setting, Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, "Do you not realize that My Father could presently send me more than twelve legions of angels to protect me?" (Mt 26:53). But He chooses not to do this. He chooses to reveal, yet not to reveal. Just before the Feeding of the 5,000 Jesus' Disciples challenge Him on this point:
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And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"
He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull.'" (Mt 13:10-15) |
That is, the Advent of God is not a "Candyland" event. God does not rush about persuading everyone of Who He is, anxious for their approval and love. Rather, He asks,
| Who do you say that I AM? |
And when the Disciples equivocate, He asks again:
| But who do you say that I AM? |
The Advent of God is about the God-shaped space inside each of us and the great question this poses: How shall we fill this space? Shall we fill it with God? Or shall we fill it with our own versions of God, invented religions, or whatever we deem to "have meaning"?
I have heard sermons from Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy proposing that Jesus did not actually multiply the two fishes and five loaves. Rather, He coaxed the bread from the people, which they already had, teaching them to share. Do you see? These priests are embarrassed at miracles and mysteries. They style themselves "intellectuals." Like the Roman hierarchy who persecuted Padre Pio, they are embarrassed at what they deem superstition: embarrassed that Padre Pio bore the wounds of Christ and embarrassed at the Gospels' miracle narratives. "We are modern men, sophisticated men, educated men!" they say in effect.
They prefer "Jesus, the ethical teacher." For this man we may choose to follow .... or not. But countenancing Him to be God?! Isn't that asking too much? By the way, I heard these words preached verbatim from a pulpit by a bishop of the Episcopal Church. This logic proceeds apace: Wouldn't believing in God pose many problems? For God is apt to make demands upon us. God might take away the life-style permissions we have granted ourselves. Like priests and nuns I have known who have made the "Matthew 25 deal" — feeding and clothing the poor during "work hours," then indulging in forbidden activities after hours — they have invented a Jesus they find easier to live with (in the darkness of their imaginations). And in so doing, they have banished the Lord of Life.
God does not need our obedience, not for Himself. The Advent of God is about our salvation and the state of our hearts and souls, not because God profits by this, but because He loves us.
Do you know the saying, "familiarity breeds contempt"? Jesus Himself attests this: "A prophet is not without honor .... except in His own land." This is yet another way of dealing with the God-shaped space within us, which is domesticating God, editing God to suit our inclinations and tastes.
In his survey of major Western Christologies, including those of Albert Schweitzer and Rudolph Bultmann, the Hungarian monk, Father Roch Kereszty, O.Cist., wrote that they all share a defining feature: they are not so much about the Jesus we find in the Gospels as they are about the ideals and desires that these authors have projected upon Jesus. They have made him the champion of their causes. The Jesus they present has been domesticated to suit their individual agendas. Certainly, we see this operating in our Gospel lesson this morning. The Disciples order Jesus about as if He were their assistant:
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"This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away,
that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food." (Mt 14:15) |
As He normally does at such moments, Jesus ignores their pretense to authority. He hears their command, spoken in the imperative mood in Greek: "Send them away." And He replies quietly,
| "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." (Mt 14:16) |
His rejoinder is two-edged. First, it pushes back, declaring, "Do you not believe that I am able to feed the people in the wilderness?" Second, it plainly challenges them: "Since you have arrogated to a position of authority, why don't you feed them?" The Disciples reply, owning their powerlessness and the limits of human capacity:
| And they said to Him, "We have here only five loaves and two fish." (Mt 16:18) |
And here Jesus assumes full command. In a tone of weariness, His next words are, "Bring them here to Me."
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Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five
loaves and the two fish, and looking up to Heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Mt 14:19-21) |
This pericope is framed with other Dominical commands:
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Immediately, Jesus made the Disciples get into the boat ....
while He dismissed the crowd. (Mk 6:45) |
You see, He presides.
God takes His people into the wilderness and feeds them with bread, which appears ex nihilo from His hand, virtually from nothing. This is a signature act from the summit of Mt Sinai, we might say. Yet, for all of this, there is no acclamation. We hear no report that the people marveled. We see no hands outstretched to Heaven glorifying God. Later, when Jesus discovers that even His Disciples did not get it, He asks in exasperation,
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"Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand
and how many baskets you took up?" (Mt 16:9) |
Anyone in the towns, speaking later to those who witnessed this miracle, might say, "So you ate. Is eating now accounted to be a miracle? Do you not eat every day?"
Throughout the Gospel of St. Mark and the Gospel of St. Matthew, which contains 94% of Mark's Gospel, Jesus insists that each of us must decide Who He is. It is a deeply personal and individual decision. We recognize the formula:
| But He sternly warned them that they should not make Him known. (Mk 3:12) |
Beginning during His lifetime and continuing to our own day, the human inclination is to domesticate Jesus, to make Him over into a convenient image. Shall we follow so-called progressive thinking and cast Jesus in the role of an ethics teacher? Shall we redefine Christianity, saying that it is simply about "being nice to each other"? There is no warrant in the Scriptures for this Jesus. You must heavily edit the New Testament to come to this conclusion. And this has been done in Anglican and Roman Catholic lectionaries and breviaries: either bracketing out the "offending" passages or omitting them altogether — a decision made by the Church a half-century ago as we find in Anglican and Roman Catholic prayer books.
For many cannot bear to hear Jesus. They cannot bear the Divine command to pick up a cross and to follow Him. They cannot bear His injunction to sell all they have. They cannot bear the thought of suffering, which is what the cross always means. Never forget: all of His followers suffered. And the heart of the Most Holy Mother of God was pierced by a sword. Eleven of the Twelve Disciples were martyred for His sake.
Yet, many do choose to follow Him. Many do understand the invitation to suffering. The Sisters of this Hermitage understood this clearly. They did the math: one life offered to prostrate Haiti in holy oblation over years and decades would equate to thousands of lives being saved. One Sister here grew a tiny ministry to one that served a quarter-million people a year. She understood. She understood that a life spent pursuing pleasure, self-advantage, and random wants was obscene when set beside hundreds of thousands of precious souls and their needs in a bid to survive.
The Lord our God has given us the pure air we breathe, the crystalline water we drink, and a whole world of beauty set around us in a series of masterpieces. If the soaring canyons of light and color we see at sunset appeared but once in a century, I suppose societies everywhere would shut down and cease what they were doing in order to cherish every moment of it.
But, you see, familiarity breeds contempt. The Disciples have seen so many miracles proceed from God's hand that they no longer marvel. And may I count all of us as being in their number? Are we not surrounded by miracles every day but have come to take them for granted?
Permit me to close with a question. Which is harder for God to do? To feed ten or fifteen thousand men, women, and children with five loaves and two fish? To walk on water (as we will see Him do later in this same chapter)? To raise the dead? Which is harder for God? To do all or any of these things or to extract a measure of our begrudging faith? When will we give Him our hearts, and, yes, our whole-hearted belief?
From time to time, people will tell me that they are not far from believing. They are not far from believing that Jesus is Lord. "Well done!" I reply. "For you are not far from beginning a very long journey through mysteries, through countless temptations, through spiritual warfare, through self-denial and suffering, but arriving in the end to Heaven by the grace of God and with the assistance of His holy angels.
And what is the alternative? What is the end point for begrudging half-belief, or sometimes-belief .... granting ourselves lifestyle permissions along the way? At the very least, this will fail to fill the God-shaped space within us. This life, or shall I say anti-life, will fail leading us to a destination of our own design and choosing: to emptiness, meaninglessness, and then becoming a hideous creature, who was born to inherit abundant life as God's daughter or son. "Two ways there are," begins the Teachings of the Apostles (Didache). Let us never forget: only two and never variations according to our inclinations or tastes.
"I believe!" the Catechumen declares, for these are the first words of the Creed. And the Scriptures reply that belief marks the beginning of the spiritual life:
| You do well! [But mind you] even the demons believe .... and tremble! (Jas 2:19) |
We start at the bottom, alongside demons who tower above any other figure in the Holy Gospels in terms of belief.
Tragically, we live in a world that falls far beneath this standard, a world of unbelief, a world which repudiates God and rejects Heaven as a fiction with its every indecency and rebellion — a world far below the standard of the demons.
But be of good cheer. For there is mirth in Heaven and joy for each heart that loves God and a crown that awaits the one who is faithful to the end. Everyone.
We must always remember in our long, sometimes wearying, road of goodly labors and inevitable temptations that each battle is fought against no less a rival than Hell. This is no invention but the realest of realities: Hell. The outcome is not temporary. There will be no second chance once the fog of war has finally cleared. Either we waken from this illusory world when we die surrounded by angels, or we shall be roused from our torpor by demons.
Finally,
certainty!
Here is belief.
And
you shall search in vain through every part of
Heaven and Hell
for
half-belief or sometimes-belief.
atheists.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.