Scripture: Matthew 14:13-21; John 6:35; Matthew 4:4; Romans 12:2; Romans 7:15; 2 Corinthians 1:20 Series: 2021
Preached in the ‘Songs of the Bible’ series, this sermon on the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21) reframes the miracle around an overlooked question: why were the people hungry? They had forgotten food because they were absorbed in hearing Jesus, the Word/Logos of God. Drawing on the preacher’s experience of losing himself in music, the sermon argues Jesus first fed the crowd with the word of God, then met their bodily needs. It develops a threefold transformation of mind (noos), soul/desire (psyche, malformed by sin and reformed toward God), and body, insisting salvation is whole-person transformation, not merely a ticket to heaven. The uncountable crowd points to God’s limitless ‘yes,’ ending with an invitation to the table of the Lord and Jesus as the bread of life.
Illustrations: double-bass-practice-trance, logos-la-parole-speech, stranded-on-the-lake-on-purpose, more-than-counting-game
August 1
How many people did Jesus feed?
When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.” He said, “Bring them here to me.” He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds. Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten. -Matthew 14:13-21
I started playing the double bass or string bass when I was in fifth grade. I practiced it a little bit and I was okay. I got a little more serious in high school and went to a few Allstates, but it was not more than something I enjoyed. I played in a community orchestra in College Station that performed some serious repertoire, and then I came to UT and I got even more serious about it. I wasn’t a music major like Matt. I was an economics major my first year, but I played a lot. I practiced a lot. And it was during that time that I really got serious about practice because I was able to focus on music in a way I’d never been able to before. I could practice for four hours without blinking and I’d come to the end of it, and realize that I was starving. I hadn’t eaten all day. I hadn’t planned on practicing that long. I was lost in the moment. I could not be distracted by food because I was taken up by music. I was focused on something that mattered and I put everything else aside. My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing.
Today, How many people did Jesus feed?
So the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 or the feeding of the 4,000, is found in all four gospels. Not all of the stories of Jesus are found in all four gospels. This birth is not found in all four gospels, but only one. A lot of the parables are not found in all four gospels. The feeding of the five thousand functions in about the same way in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a little different in John, but we will get to that in a little bit. What is often spoken of with the feeding of the 5,000 is like, “look how miraculous it is! Look how powerful God is! Look how amazing Jesus is!” It’s a miracle to point to the power of God, to look at the power of God,. Which is great and true, but there’s another aspect to it that’s obvious when you think about it, but is rarely discussed. The obvious aspect is: why are the people hungry? Cause there wasn’t a big advertising campaign that the disciples did to bring people over. Like, “Hey, we got free food.” There wasn’t a bait and switch going on to try and get a big crowd and get a big draw to Jesus. Most of the time, when there’s free food, it’s for another reason. But why were the people hungry? They had come to hear Jesus and they didn’t know how long he was going to talk. They weren’t thinking about food. They weren’t thinking about meal times. They were focused on the word of God. The word of God is a phrase that Christians use in a specific way that doesn’t make a lot of sense outside the church. Sometimes the Word refers to the Bible or to what God is saying or to Jesus. It rarely means like a single word in this kind of sense. The phrase ‘word of God’ comes from a Greek phrase, o logos Theou. Logos means a lot more than words. The early English translators used Word, but another way could be the logic of God, the reason of God, the purpose of God. All of the depth of meaning going on. We have the word of God offering words to people. In French, Logos is often translated as la Parole which means both word but also speech. Jesus is the speech of God. So in this sermon before the feeding the Speech of God gives speech. This is just this astonishing miracle. More than feeding 5,000, Jesus speaks to five thousand. God decided to speak in Jesus to people. How amazing is that? The son of God, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, becoming human, taking on human flesh and speaking with a voice, the voice that has a tone, a tambour, a pitch. And of course, people were drawn to that word of God being spoken out. They were mesmerized by it. They weren’t thinking about what they were going to eat. They were being fed by the word of God. In John’s gospel, unlike in Matthew, the miracle of the feeding of 5,000 comes earlier in Jesus’s ministry, but it’s connected to this great description about Jesus being the bread of life later in the chapter. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” As well, the feeding miracles with the temptation narratives. When Jesus, after the baptism, goes into the desert and the devil says, “turn this stone into bread.” Jesus says, quoting scripture, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. This is the moment he was speaking of in the desert. The words coming from the mouth of God is taking place in that moment. People are taking it in. The people are drawn to it, to the true speech of God. It is a miraculous, transformational moment with a logistical issue on the back end. There’s all these people. It’s late in the day. The disciples think of an efficient solution: send them home. I mean, I think this is what I would do. “We didn’t promise food. Like what do they expect?” I don’t know what the people expected, but I know why they were there. They weren’t there for food. They weren’t there for some Jesus swag. An event had taken place and their lives were transformed. Even more than the musical trance I felt in the practice room when I stopped counting how long I had been playing and ended up starving, each of them had a mountain top experience with Jesus. They were hearing the word made flesh speaking in a human voice. Their lives would never be the same. How many people did Jesus feed?
Jesus fed people first, not with fish and bread, but with the word of God, with the logos of God, with the reason of God, with the logic of God, with the why of God, with the yes of God. As Paul says, all the promises of God are yes in Jesus Christ. The people were fed by his word, but they are still flesh with human needs. Jesus first met that most important need of the God-sized hole in their life with the bread of life, but Jesus was not going to forget other needs as well. Salvation in Christ is not just about a ticket to heaven. It’s not about a get out of jail free card or a life raft in the fires of hell. It is a transformation of mind, soul, and body. The people who heard Jesus that day had their minds transformed through the word of God. This is the central aspect. In Greek, mind is usually Noos. It is the aspect of us that understands reality. When the people heard Jesus, they were in contact with the Noos of God, the mind of God in Jesus Christ. And you cannot leave that encounter unchanged.
As Paul says in Romans 12, do not be confirmed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds. Faith is not about leaving our minds at the door but understanding that reality is deeper than empiricism. So their minds were changed. Their souls were changed, as well. In Greek, the soul is psyche and functions as the location of desire. So the mind is the intellect, is the perceiving unit. The soul is the human desire factory. Hunger is a good metaphor for desire. Our desires are our hungers. It is what we long for. A way to understand the Christian language of original sin is that our desires have been malformed by sin so that we don’t desire the good anymore. Like Paul in Romans seven, I do the things I don’t want to do, and I don’t do the things I want to do. Our desires have been malformed, but in this encounter with Jesus Christ, our desires have been transformed and reformed to seek Jesus. This is whom I desire. I desire God. I desire Jesus. I desire the possibility of this radically transformed new life. I am no longer satisfied to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow I die. That is not on the top of the list after meeting Jesus. So these people, this audience, has had their mind transformed and their soul transformed but Jesus doesn’t leave them there. And it’s in the scale of it that we see the power of this miracle and this story. Children usually like song because of the scale and the gradations of numbers. Is it more than 10? Yes. Is it more than 20. Yes. Is it more than 30, more than 40, more than 50. Yes, it is going to be yes. And even when we get to the end of 5,000 people, Jesus fed that day. It’s more than that. 5,000 isn’t a hard count. There wasn’t a census of the people there. We don’t know who all was included in that number. Jesus didn’t cap out the possibility of transformation that day. Jesus included all in the transformations of their mind, their soul and their body. When we encounter Jesus, we are no longer the same. If we try to do the same thing, we realize we are stuck in the muck of our mistakes. We are stuck in the muck of our vices. If you have an encounter with Jesus, realizing that the God who created everything loves you, even you, loves me, even me. That God truly forgives you and sees you as worthy of love and time and attention. When we have that encounter and pretend like nothing has changed, it’s like being stranded in the middle of the lake and when people stop to help, you say “no thanks. I meant to run out of gas.” Sometimes we like the feeling of being stranded. We like being a victim. Sometimes we like some of the vices that we have become accustomed to. We like desiring those things that we know hurt us. We like that little bit of pain. We want to keep control, but ultimately God’s yes is greater than our no, when we encounter the risen Lord, we will be transformed.
How many people will Jesus feed? 50? 500? 5,000?
There is room for you at the table of the Lord. Come and See. Love is here. God is here for you. Jesus is the bread of life. And he gives you this day the food that will never perish.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.