Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Matthew 14:13-21

On Tuesday evening, it seemed like a simple project. Clean up the branches that had fallen on the garage roof after one of those summer storms. I held the ladder while Darin scrambled up on the roof. On the far side of our garage, the wall that faces the neighbor’s garage, our neighbors had planted a lovely vine that has been making its way across that wall, a much more beautiful and lush view from their backyard than the stark beige siding. A few of the vine leaders seemed to be growing through our soffit, so Darin planned to do a little trimming while he was up on the roof. I waited with one hand on the ladder and with the other I scrolled through Amazon on my phone. Darin said, “Um. You better come see this.” His few snips had brought the entire vine down. It was lying across their driveway like a big green theater curtain, fallen from the stage. The strong and now thick branches of the vine had been growing just under the aluminum, holding the whole thing up. The growth of the vine was little by little destroying our garage. When our neighbor came home and saw the garage, he said, “Well now we have a screen for movies!”

I’ll come back to this story. First this gospel reading. At one level, the story simply says, “Feed the hungry.”  Jesus sees a world where there is enough, and he enacts it, inviting his 12 accomplices into this radical work of sharing. Five loaves and two fish feed a multitude. I’ll call it the feeding of the 15,000 because Matthew only counts the men. Let’s imagine there are as many women and children as men.

It’s really a radical concept in our world to say that everyone gets to eat no matter what. If you didn’t bring enough, you get to be full. If you weren’t organized or prepared the right way, you get to be full. If you’re incapable of managing your life, showing up at every event, needing something, you get to be full. If you listened to Jesus, or if you dozed off, you get to be full. If you help with the sharing or not, you get to be full.

This is the logic of heaven that Jesus is willing to give his life for. As you can imagine, the world as it’s currently structured resists this idea of sharing and grace with all its might. “Hunger” and “deserving” get paired together in the human mind. The juxtaposition of “my food” and “their need” stirs up notions of fairness and justice that aren’t really in the bible. “Why should I help them?”

In other gospels, it’s the child who brings the fish and bread, and models the entire biblical witness, who becomes the image of God, “Here’s what I brought. You can have it.”

We’re all hungry. If we’re not hungry at the physical level, we’re hungry for acceptance; or we’re hungry to be noticed or valued. We’re hungry to be at home in the world; hungry to have meaningful work or decent friends; we’re hungry for a community that welcomes and heals. We’re hungry for a future that doesn’t keep us awake at night. We’re hungry for peace and some decent kindness.

This is where that vine on our garage turned into a little parable for me. As the vine grew and spread, it slowly began destroying the very thing that was holding it up. Sam Wells says that there are two kinds of hunger. “There’s a hunger that has a name. It’s a hunger where you know what you want but you haven’t got it or can’t have it.”  Such hunger can become all consuming, but we’re clear about what will satisfy it. There’s another kind of “hunger that lingers deep, disturbingly, in the bottom of your soul, but it doesn’t have a name. There’s no simple solution to it, no hot meal or job title or box ticket that will satisfy it.”  This is the Rolling Stones:  I can’t get no satisfaction, cause I try and I try and I try and I try.[1]

That notion of two hungers made me think about the deeper level in this parable, the restlessness and hunger that is deep within every human life that only God’s presence can meet. Our problem is that we’re destroying the world, warming the planet, building walls from our most beloved, by trying to fill a hole that nothing on earth can fill.

I suspect that most of the time when we’re scrolling through Amazon or pushing a cart through the grocery, we’re working on a need that the item or the colorful box of something sugary or salty will not fill. In America, our ache to be fed by something more has created an economy and a lifestyle that requires constant, ongoing, and finally destructive growth and expansion.

The feeding of the 15,000 does play like a movie that shows us a world where the physical and the spiritual find satisfaction, where having something smaller—just the few loaves and fish—turns out to be enough; where Jesus is at the center orchestrating an Easter coup de tat, convinced as he always is that everyone has something that the world needs to be whole. We all have our five loaves and two fish to share.

Once the destructive striving gets pruned off the wall—when we look up–the movie plays with a vividness and color that we regularly miss. And suddenly, you realize that you’re a character in the story. You realize that you’ve been fed all along; and that in this glimpse of God’s wide, cinematic heart, there’s enough. There always has been. And there always will be.

My grandfather always prayed in a voice that was so quiet that it was hard to hear, but eventually I heard it and learned it by heart. It was simply the words from Psalm 145:  The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season. You open wide your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

We’ll say those words in today’s liturgy when we break the bread.

That tiny bit of bread, placed in your hand, a portion still of those original five loaves, the feeding of the multitudes, is the miracle without end.

[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/hunger-no-meal-satisfies?code=UyDUaXPpVAKeV5DTg0Ww&utm_source=Christian+Century+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a9abe81cd7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2023-07-31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D