Isaiah 55:1-5
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21
One version of the story goes like this:
Wilfred the Hairy, who was Count of Barcelona, Urgell and Besalú at the end of the 9th Century, had fought for the independence of his territories, which were later to be known as Catalunya. As he lay mortally wounded on a battlefield in Southern Spain, he asked his ally, the King of France, to give him a flag, a badge of honour he could leave to his descendants. The King dipped four fingers in Wilfred’s blood and drew them across his golden shield, thus creating the Catalan flag: yellow with four red stripes.
I’ve been spending part of my summer holiday visiting Barcelona, which is the regional capital of Catalunya. After years of repression under Franco, the Catalan identity has bounced back stronger than ever. Catalan is the first language spoken, the Catalan flag is everywhere, and the story of Wilfred the Hairy is still told.
History and legend are not simply facts recalled from the past with no power in the present. The story of Count Wilfred is part of the identity of the Catalan people; in telling the story they remember who they are now, it evokes a sense of belonging and shared destiny. Re-membering, in this sense, means rediscovering membership, entering anew into an identity with a community which is not just something in the past but a present reality.
It’s useful to remember, when we read the Bible, that the stories we read there have much the same kind of function. When we read the Old Testament we are reading the story of the Jewish People, the story of God’s providence and care which formed the destiny of that particular people, the people who were rescued from slavery in Egypt and received God’s revelation through the law and the prophets.
The telling of those stories in the Jewish community was and is a part of what establishes that sense of identity. The scriptures were not written to be books for private study, but to be read aloud in the assembly of the people. That wasn’t simply for instruction about righteous living and good behaviour, although that was part of it of course. Gathering together and telling the stories anew were an act of collective re-membering, re-establishing their identity as the people God chose for his own.
The early Christians continued telling those stories in their own gatherings, discovering new meanings in the light of Jesus. They also added their own stories, memories of the life of Jesus and his teachings, and the teaching of those who were closest to him in his earthly life. After a few decades these were codified and written down, forming the material we now call the Gospels. And the Gospels, like the earlier Jewish scriptures, were meant to be read aloud in the assembly of the people.
The Christian assembly, from the very beginning, was the Eucharist, the gathering for the breaking of bread. On the first day of every week, the day that Jesus rose from the dead, his followers gathered to do what he had commanded, telling the story of the last supper, sharing bread and drinking wine, his Body and his Blood, the memorial of his death until he comes again.
The Gospels were written to be read aloud at the Eucharist, to be part of our re-membering, our belonging in the people of God whom Jesus has called and established. It’s therefore very significant that all four Gospels contain the story of the feeding of the five thousand. It is an identity story of the people of God.
Firstly, it recalls the exodus from Egypt, God’s deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery. They left Egypt, you’ll recall, and were led by Moses into the desert, the wilderness of Sinai. Today’s Gospel reading says literally in Greek that Jesus went out into a desert, followed by the crowd. Now in fact the area round the Sea of Galilee is not a desert, it is a fertile area with lots of small towns dotted around. But Matthew wants us to get the meaning that Jesus is like Moses, leading God’s people out into the desert.
Then, Jesus feeds the people miraculously in the desert, just as Moses had called on God in the desert and God had sent the manna from heaven to feed the children of Israel.
But this story of the feeding of the five thousand also refers to the Eucharist – and remember that this is a story meant to be told at the Eucharist. In the desert, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples – exactly the same words as are used at the last supper.
The earliest Eucharistic liturgies we know about, from the early second century, use a peculiar Greek word to describe the portion of the bread given in Holy Communion and reserved for the sick – klasmaton. And this is exactly the same word that the Gospels use for the fragments of bread gathered up at the end of the feeding of the five thousand. This story of miraculous feeding, and the Eucharistic liturgy, use the same language. So, in the feeding of the five thousand, we have both the Exodus, and the Eucharist.
The ancient Israelites were freed by the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. What are Jesus’ disciples freed from?
Immediately before this passage, Matthew tells the story of the death of John the Baptist. On Herod’s birthday, he gave a banquet for his friends. A banquet of debauched entertainment, poisoned with envy, hatred, and malice, desire spiralling out of control and culminating in murder.
By placing Herod’s banquet immediately before the banquet which Jesus provides, Matthew makes the contrast clear. Herod’s banquet represents the old order of sin and death. Jesus gives the banquet of compassion, love and life, a banquet in which there is no rivalry or envy because there is always more than enough for everyone.
And this is precisely what is told, and enacted, and becomes real, when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. The Last Supper, when Jesus instituted the Eucharist, was of course a Passover, a meal enacting and re-telling the Exodus, making real in the present God’s saving acts for his people of old.
So, too, the Eucharist enacts, re-tells, makes real, God’s saving acts in Jesus. His death and resurrection are our liberation from sin and death, and our entry into new life. The Eucharist is our re-membering as the people of God, in which we become what we receive, the Body of Christ.
Now, how many people were fed by Jesus with the loaves and fishes? Five thousand men, not counting the women and children, because, of course, in those days they didn’t count women and children. So, very many more than five thousand, then. It was a huge multitude.
Well, here we are, celebrating the Eucharist, entering once more into the identity that Jesus gives us as the people of God. But there aren’t five thousand of us here.
In the parish of Old Saint Pancras, there are about 26,000 people, more or less. And most of them aren’t with us here in Church. But we will be with them, as our neighbours, friends, work colleagues, the people we meet as we go about our daily lives this week.
Today we re-hear the story of our identity, the story of God’s saving work in Jesus, and we re-member our place in the people he has claimed for his own.
But that crowd in the desert wasn’t a select few. It was an enormous multitude, everyone and anyone, all sorts and conditions. Everyone has a place in the story of salvation which we tell. Everyone can find, if they will, that they too are called out of the old order of sin and death to new life in Christ.
Our challenge is to live the story we tell in a way that makes a difference not just to us but to those around us. It is to live the story in a way which rekindles the imagination of a society which, perhaps, has forgotten that there might be any other way of living than that old order of sin and death. Our challenge is to live the story that makes love real in a world where love has grown cold.
Does that seem too much of a task for our meagre resources? Fear not. For the story is the story of Jesus, who brings abundance out of our poverty. Five loaves and two fishes were enough to feed the multitude; our own poor love, if we will offer it to him, he will transform. And it will be enough, and more besides.
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