Thoughts on Miracles: I

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost,
Preached at St Mathias Bellwoods, Toronto
3 August AD 2008

There was once a parish priest who was preaching to his parishioners and said that our Lord fed five hundred persons with five loaves. When the parish clerk heard him say this, he stood up and whispered softly in his ear: “But Sir, you’re mistaken; the gospel says five thousand.” “Hold your peace, you fool,” said the preacher; “they will scarcely believe that they were five hundred.”

Not much of a joke, I suppose, even with the language updated a bit. And really, five hundred or five thousand makes little difference; both are difficult to believe or imagine. This may be why this miracle sometimes gets explained away, and we are told something like this. When Jesus made all the people sit on the grass, they saw that he was taking all the food that he and disciples had, and were moved to take food they had and share it, and so all were fed. The true miracle was a miracle of sharing and generosity, for such virtues are always miracles. I suppose that is a good lesson, but ever since I first heard in Sunday School, I’ve been suspicious. Surely if that’s the lesson the Gospel writer (and the Holy Spirit) wants us to learn from this passage, the text might say something like, “and the people began to share the food they had and all were filled.” I must admit that this explanation is not without support. The Revised Common Lectionary Commentary website from the diocese of Montreal notes that “A peasant in Palestine, then and now, travelled with food”. We will consider that point in a moment. What we must do first is read the passage a little more closely. Some of the finer details are in the lectionary notes on my blog.
Over the past few weeks the Gospel readings have been taken from Matthew 13, which is a chapter of parables taught by the sea, but the last six verses and the opening section of chapter 14 are not read in the Sunday lectionary. At the end of Matthew 13, Jesus returned to his Nazareth, where he taught in the synagogue; the people were astonished by his teaching, because he was a local boy, and took offence at him. Jesus utters the words, A prophet is not without honour except in his own country and in his own house, and is not able to do many miracles there, because of their unbelief.
Chapter 14 begins with the report of Herod Antipas asking who this Jesus was, and declaring his own conviction that Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead. Then the Gospel writer tells how Herod had ordered the Baptist’s execution, because he preached against Herod’s unlawful marriage. The first words of the passage we heard refer to John’s death: Now when Jesus heard this. John’s death moved Jesus greatly; here, perhaps he saw what the call of God could, and would mean. We are not allowed into Jesus’ private thoughts here, beyond the notice that he withdrew from there, Nazareth, in a boat to a lonely place apart.
When they heard this people followed him on foot from the towns. This is where we have to consider the comment that peasants “travelled with food”. If it is nit-picking to ask whether these townsfolk were peasants, it is reasonable to ask whether going out to hear a preacher in the countryside is travelling. Tabgha, traditionally said to be the site of this miracle, is only 2.5 km from Capernaum and about the same distance from Chorazin. Rather than thinking of people preparing for a journey, we should imagine people going out rather suddenly, so that they find themselves away rather longer than expected and so caught without food. Some may have had food and other may not. This has to be left up to your judgement of human nature, but I believe it is the natural interpretation of the text.
When Jesus landed on the north-west shore of Galilee, and saw the throng, he had compassion on them, and healed their sick, and that they were there till evening, when the disciples suggested that he send the crowd away to get food. St John Chrysostom noted that Jesus waited to be asked, as always not stepping forward first to do miracles, but when called upon. In passing we may take this as a reminder that God wants us to pray. Like us the disciples are weak in faith, they say This is a deserted place, which calls to mind the complaint of the people in the wilderness, They spoke against God saying, Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? He smote the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed. Can he also give bread, or provide meat for his people? One of the important lessons of this miracle is that God can and does supply his people’s needs even in the wilderness.
When the Lord replies, they need not go away, we might expect him to say, I will give them food. But he says, you give them something to eat, to which they reply, We have only five loaves here and two fish; essentially, we do not have enough. Two points emerge from this: the first is that Christ gives the authority and ministry of service to his disciples, so that this miracle is one of the foundations of the apostolic ministry; but the second is that all their, all our, resources are nothing unless first offered to God in Christ. We cannot discuss in detail Christ’s actions on receiving the bread and fish, except to note that they are described in exactly the same terms as his actions in taking the bread at the Last Supper, showing that this miracle is a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. Indeed, the eucharistic teaching of John’s Gospel is entirely centred around thios miracle, a fact which should remove any doubt. What we must stress is that there is not the slightest hint that this is a “miracle of sharing”. There is no earlier version we can look to to show that the miraculous element was added later, no evidence of such a story underlying the Gospel accounts except what we might read into it if we start off disbelieving in miracles.
So the question we will end with is the one really should have asked at the beginning. How do we start off? If we reject the possibility of miracles out of hand, then we will never accept the Gospels without making them say what we want and not what they say, that is, by doing violence to them. Nonetheless, stories of miracles have been a stumbling block to the faith of many in our day, and we need to consider them very carefully. But that is a good place to stop for this morning, because it opens up the question of whether we can believe in miracles or have to turn the story into something else. Since next week’s Gospel reading is also a miracle story, the account of our Lord walking on the sea, I will return to this theme of miracles next week.