The Feeding of the One Billion

                                   

 

            You may have noticed that I pay close attention to numbers in the Bible, especially to frequency. When something is repeated over and over in the Bible, that’s a red alert. Pay attention! Focus! This is really important.

 

            The story of Jesus feeding the hungry crowds on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is the most repeated story in the Gospels. Not only do we find it in all 4 Gospels, but Matthew and Mark tell the story twice. Matthew 14 tells the story of the feeding of the 5,000. Matthew 15 contains an almost identical story of the feeding of the 4,000.

 

            Obviously, this feeding of the masses is one of the core stories of the Bible. Understanding this story must be absolutely crucial to understanding the Christian message. 

 

            The story begins with Jesus badly in need of a vacation. He has been surrounded by crowds for many weeks, relentlessly hounded by people with demands. You can’t blame these people, they’re desperate. If they understand nothing else about Jesus right now, they understand that he brings healing. Full of sickness and despair, they come to the one person who brings hope. All day they press in on him from all sides. It’s exhausting work trying to deal with all this, day after day.

            Then to top it off, Jesus learns that John the Baptist has just been beheaded. What a grim reminder of how much work needs to be done. Despite what all Jesus has done, for so much of the world, peace is a long way off, the road long and difficult. For the moment, Jesus is worn out. He needs a little bit of time alone to rest and recharge. So he gets into a boat and rows himself to a deserted place where he can get away from it all.

 

            Word leaks out of where Jesus is headed. The paparazzi lead a mad rush to get to this out-of-the-way place where Jesus is going. Before Jesus even has a chance to begin his badly needed time or reflection and meditation, before he even gets out of the boat, in fact, he is mobbed by the people right there on the beach. All kinds of people pleading for healing and comfort and hope.

 

            Now what would your reaction be to this situation? Suppose you just finished a huge push at work. You’ve been working overtime, you’ve gone weeks without a day off. The pressure is relentless; you’re worn out. But you finally reach vacation time. You are so looking forward to this time off, you’re just chuckling with anticipation. You drive up to that isolated lake in the Canadian wilderness or you board that airplane for the west coast.

 

            And the moment you arrive, you are greeted by your secretary or your boss who dumps a folder on you, overflowing with papers, claims that an emergency has come up and you have to go back to the office right now and get back to work on the project. And don’t count on getting home before midnight.

 

            What would your reaction be? You might blow up and go into a rant and refuse to change your plans. You might trudge back to the office, seething with resentment and despair. You might bury your head in your hands and cry.

 

            What was Jesus’ reaction on seeing the crowds and the loss of his quiet time and the massive pile of work to be done? Matthew says that his reaction was compassion. He had compassion for them, and cured their sick.  

 

            Now this story is not a lesson in employee relations. It’s not saying that God expects you to just suck it up and keep your nose to the grindstone, that the Lord loveth a workaholic.  

 

            The story is about the absolute importance of compassion. Of putting yourself in another person’s shoes, looking at life from their perspective, seeing the need, feeling the pain, and then doing something about it. You can be sure that the last thing Jesus wanted to see on that deserted beach was a crowd of poor and ragged people with their hands out. But when faced with that, he had compassion.

 

            That compassion continued when evening came. These people had all been in such a mad frenzy to head Jesus off at the pass that it appears that many of them had not taken time to think it through. They had made no preparations. They just raced there as fast as they could.

            As result, food was in short supply.

 

            Remember, this was an isolated place. There were no towns nearby. No farms. No fields. No roadside stands or farmer’s markets or fast food establishments. The disciples realize that those people without food are going to be in a bad way if something isn’t done. They advise Jesus to send the crowd away so that they will have time to reach a village and get something to eat.

 

            Problem is, the need is still great. Many of those people have come a long way with urgent needs, and Jesus has not had time to get to them yet. They aren’t going to go away. They expect that the minute they leave, Jesus is going to make his getaway, and he’s going to be more careful this time. They were lucky to catch him this time; it probably isn’t going to happen again. So they are going to stay, even if they have to go hungry.

 

            And Jesus had compassion for them. He wouldn’t let them go hungry.

 

            Jesus was not in the habit of providing free meals for the masses. He did not run a catering service or a soup kitchen. But when confronted by great need, he acted with compassion. He made sure they were fed.

 

            There is creative speculation among scholars as to exactly how he did it. Was it a physical miracle, where a seemingly endless supply of food appeared out of nowhere? Was the miracle one of the heart? Where Jesus and the disciples came out and gave away every bit of food they had, and this inspired those who had brought food to do likewise and share what they had until everyone was fed?

 

            I don’t get too concerned with behind the scenes stuff. When I watch a video, I almost never look at the behind the scenes items on the menu. I just enjoy the result. When dining out at a good restaurant, I don’t usually guess what ingredients the chef used or how they did it. I just enjoy the result.

 

            In this case, the point of the story, and the reason why it plays such a prominent role in the Gospels, has nothing to do with how they did it. The point is the result. When faced with need, Jesus acted with compassion, and the result was that the sick were healed, the lame were made well, and the hungry were fed.

 

            We hear a lot about compassion fatigue, about becoming worn out by all the appeals for contributions and aid that come our way. This story shows us that even when Jesus was worn out by the appeals, worn out by the need, when it was the last thing he wanted to deal with at that moment, he had compassion. And that compassion made a difference.

 

            This failed attempt to get away from it all for awhile reminds me of John Lennon’s famous line: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” We all have plans for living this life. But we all find ourselves confronted by need. It arrives unbidden, unlooked for, and usually unwanted. It arrives at inconvenient times. How do we respond to need that isn’t in our plans?

 

            Jesus knew only one way. Compassion. The Gospels tell us that over and over and over again. Because he responded with compassion, people were healed, people were fed.

 

            The feeding of the 5,000 provides a dramatic backdrop to two contrasting stories of people who were faced with situations similar to what Jesus faced on that remote and deserted shore.

 

            The first is about the infamous Donner party, one of many wagons trains that heading west in 1846. This group, running late in the season and with many children in their party, was extremely vulnerable. Food and water was a serious issue.

 

            It was a situation that called for compassion.

 

            What happened?

 

            A man named Hastings had grand ambitions of setting up his own empire in California. To do that, he needed pioneers to settle the land. Unfortunately, his plans were upset by the fact that almost all families traveling across the great American West in 1846 chose to use the Oregon Trail, the best-known and most reliable passage across the mountains.

 

            He sent word to Donner wagon train of a short cut that could get them to a better climate in California in less time than the Oregon Trail. He even volunteered to serve as a guide.

 

            Within a few days journey, the group’s leader, named Reed,  received ample evidence that this shortcut was a bad idea. He ran into one of his army buddies who told him that route was impassable. Others who knew the area described it as a brutal salt desert where oxen would find nothing to eat, and where a shortage of water would put them all in grave danger. Hastings, who was supposed to lead the way, never showed up.

            At that point, the expedition was in grave danger. The prudent thing to do was to change course, backtrack a couple of days and rejoin the established trail.

            Reed, however, had made his plans. He was, by all accounts, a vain man. He didn’t like to admit he was wrong. He did not like being at the tail end of the wagon trains heading west that year, and he wanted to gain an advantage on the others. He wasn’t particularly conscious of the fact that many families, including very young children, depended upon him for their very lives.

 

            He argued for going on with the shortcut, and his influence won the day.

 

            Time and again, the group showed no compassion. When an elderly man grew weak and asked for a ride in someone’s wagon, they all refused. They left the man behind to die alone in the desert. When a woman asked for help in carrying her 3-year-old child through the snow, they all refused. As a result, those two didn’t survive.

 

            Those decisions sealed the fate of the Donner party, one of the most tragic stories in American history. The only reason they didn’t all perish in the wilderness is because some Californians showed compassion. They risked their lives by crossing a mountain pass where the snow lay 30 feet deep in order to save others.

 

            Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. Do you act with compassion, or do you yield to pride and stubbornly go ahead with your plans? Do you act with compassion or with selfish ambition, and greed?

 

            Dozens of people in a desolate place, in need of food. They did not get fed, and nearly half of them died. That’s what happens when people fail to respond to the intrusion of need upon their lives, and instead stick to their own plans.

 

            Then there is the story of the greatest person ever to come out of the state of Iowa. Norman Borlaug grew up in the town of Cresco, in northeast Iowa, in a Norwegian Lutheran congregation that his grandparents helped found.

 

            At this point I have to interject that Linda is the only one in our family who was born in Iowa. I must admit that the kids and I have occasionally made fun of her for her habit of singing the Iowa Corn song every time we crossed the border into this state.  

 

            I probably won’t do that anymore after hearing the effect that song had on Borlaug. One of clearest memories of his youth is going to a school where the Norwegian Lutheran kids from Cresco and the Czech Catholic kids from Spillville joined together every morning to sing the Iowa Corn Song. He came to understand from that, and his religious upbringing, that we are one in God’s eyes. 

            After growing up during the Great Depression, Borlaug attended the University of Minnesota, where he did well in the sciences. His intention was to become a forest ranger. Upon graduation, he was on the way to fulfilling that dream, when he was offered a position in his chosen field.

 

            But life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. Due to budget cutbacks, Borlaug had to wait 6 months before he could start his new job. While killing time, he attended a lecture by botanist Elvin Stakman. Stakman directed his attention to a crisis of famine in the world, and urged his listeners to “use science to go further than has ever been possible to eradicate the miseries of hunger and starvation.”  

           

            That wasn’t what Borlaug wanted to hear. He had his plans for his career all set up. But suddenly, he found himself faced with a need. How did he respond?

            With compassion.

 

            Borlaug changed his plans. He went into genetic crop research, developing new strains of high-yield, disease resistant wheat. He went to Mexico, where his work changed that nation from a land of serious food shortage to an exporter of grain. He moved to Asia in the 1960s and doubled the yield in Pakistan and India, just in time to avoid a widely predicted famine.

 

            It has been estimated that Norman Borlaug is directly responsible for feeding a billion people this world who otherwise would not have been fed.

 

            The feeding of the 5,000. The feeding of a billion.  

           

            Plans run smack into desperate need, and how do we respond? When the response is compassion, people get fed. People get healed. People get life. When we say “Come to Jesus and live,” that’s what we are talking about. And that’s what Jesus was all about.