Food for the Body and Soul

Isaiah 55: 1-5
Matthew 14: 13-21

Lord, Feed My Soul

Our two passages for this week speak to us on a very elemental level. They are about never being thirsty or hungry again. With rising food and fuel costs lately, it would be pretty great if we would never have to buy another thing to eat or drink again. Isaiah tells us that even those who have no money may come and buy milk, wine and bread with no cost to them. All they have to do is give their ear to God, come to God and you will have all you will ever need.

We spend a lot of time and energy trying to make enough money to feed our children and ourselves. We work forty, fifty, seventy hour weeks and we cut coupons and go on double coupon days to the grocery store. We check out all the shopping inserts and sometimes we visit several different places because while this place has the best dry goods prices, this place has better quality and cheaper meat. Then when we bring our food home we spend a lot of time and energy preparing the food.

Apparently, the older we get the more our lives revolve around meal times. I know this to be true because I have done a very impartial and professional survey that involves my grandmother. Basically, every time I visit my grandmother I have noticed her first real question to me is always, “What do you want to have for supper?” and the whole time I am at her house she is constantly asking me if I want something to eat, if she can make or bring me something and what does she think we should have that night for dinner. Now, if my grandmother was a big woman, I could understand her fascination with mealtime, but she’s a little bitty woman who doesn’t even eat all that much.

What is it about food that our minds constantly come back to it? Why does Jesus so often speak of food to his followers and why is there not just one story where Jesus feeds mass quantities of people, but there are two stories of him doing it in the Bible? In the next few weeks the Old Testament passages are about Moses and how he frees the Hebrews. While they are in the desert where there is no food or water to be found, they constantly complain to Moses that they’d rather be slaves because at least then they had food and water. Then when God provides manna to eat and dew to drink, they quickly become bored with these offerings and complain that at least as slaves they had variety. Then God provided them with other food.

Jesus understands our preoccupation with food and water. We pretend we are high above the animals of this world, but when it comes down to it we are just creatures that walk upright and have thumbs. We need to eat and drink to survive. We understand this on a primal level and our body and mind continually reminds us of our needs. Food and water are necessary to our continued existence. God understand all of that, after all, God did create us.

These two passages are definitely speaking of food and water in a physical sense, but as in all the scriptures there are many meanings behind these simple words. When the disciples realize the time, they go over to Jesus and remind him that these people are far away from home. They want the people to go home and eat so that they may eat as well. It has been a long day and they are bone weary. We can all appreciate how they must be feeling.

After a long day at work, often we just want to come home, eat a quick meal and then relax. But Jesus, who has been working hard all day as well, doesn’t seem to feel the same way as the disciples. He replies to their request by saying, “They do not need to go away. YOU give them something to eat.”  The disciples, whose minds are on the physical food, are absolutely incredulous. It is as if when we got home from our hard day of work and anticipating a quick meal, we are told by our spouse that we are having a houseful of guests and so put on an apron and help them rummage up some food.

The disciples’ minds immediately think of the impossibility of it and are probably secretly hoping when Jesus realizes how little they have to feed their own bodies that he will give up his crazy idea. But no, Jesus is not thinking of the physical side of things. Jesus had had one heck of a day and his mind was on the spiritual. He found out his cousin and fellow prophet, John the Baptist had been killed and when he went to grieve in private, a huge crowd – five thousand men, women, and children followed him. Instead of being angry and lashing out as we would have, Jesus had compassion and began to heal their sick. Then, instead of grasping on to the excuse the disciples were offering him, he said, “No, we will feed them. They do not need to leave.”

Jesus understood something we seem to only understand vaguely, if at all. These people needed fed in more ways that just bread and fish. They needed fed by the hand of God. They needed to be with someone who cared for them completely. Jesus, compassionate and sensitive to their needs, fed them the healing grace of God as he cured their diseases and then he fed them food to strengthen their bodies. Jesus does the same for us today. He hears our prayers and provides us with the ability to make it through our work day so that we may have money to buy what we need. Jesus hears our prayers for healing and also offers us his grace to get through each day.

The cynics will say that this miracle is impossible. You cannot take two fish and five loaves of bread and feed five thousand people until they are full. They will say that the law of matter is quite clear which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed. If you start with two fish and five loaves, no matter what you do to them they will only ever produce the same amount of food equal to their matter.

I’m not here to tell you this really happened or not. I believe it did, you may believe that it is a metaphor that Jesus feeds us in many ways. What I will tell you is that if you want to never be thirsty or hungry again, if you want peace in your life – Jesus will be your chef. There is a reason so many of our good memories revolve around a meal. This is when we commune with each other. This is what makes us different from animals. Not that we can talk, but that during a meal we share our food and we share pieces of ourselves with our fellow diners.

Jesus fed the people by offering them healing and by offering them bread and fish. Our mission can be no different. We open our doors and we welcome in everyone that would come in, but we also welcome everyone that will never walk in these doors. Our mission as Jesus’ church is to feed the hungry – those who are starving for the Word of God and the ones who are starving for bread and water too. If we do one and not the other, then we are not following Jesus. Jesus was never a halfway person and we cannot afford to be either.

Amen.