Involvement
feeding a multitude
It’s one of Jesus’ most impressive miracles: feeding the 5000. And that’s just the men who were present — there were women and children also. It was an enormous crowd! And from a few small loaves and fish they’re all fed, filled to the brim with plenty of leftovers. It’s quite astonishing.
If one of the disciples had a marketing bent he might have suggested to the Lord, ‘I tell you what, next time why not do it without any fish or bread at all? That’d take it up another level entirely!’ But the next time he does something similar — for the 4000 — a few loaves and fish remain the raw materials. Because this isn’t about the display of naked power. So what is it about?
Involvement.
How do we know? I think it’s plain in what Jesus said to his disciples:
They don’t need to go away. You give them something to eat.1
What were they meant to do with that? Is this Jesus simply saying to them, ‘I need you guys to understand that you are completely broken, hopeless, lost, and wanting. You simply cannot meet the needs of any other people. It all, always, comes down to me. If you forget that you’ll be of no use in my mission.’ Was his sole intent to lay bare their inability in the most visceral manner?
Well, of course that’s not entirely untrue and much of it is actually the case (even if he would never put it in those terms). But still I think not. Yes, it’s always good for us to remember that everything ultimately, finally, depends upon Jesus. “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”2 But there does seem to be more than that happening here.
Indeed, the text demands we see it differently. In Matthew’s gospel the feeding of the 5000 is followed immediately by the Lord Jesus walking on the lake and that account corroborates this theme of involvement. He walks on the water, treading down the waves, demonstrating who he is, the LORD who alone has mastery and authority over all powers of chaos and darkness. And he appears to be passing his terrified disciples by. But Peter speaks up and makes a confirmatory request, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.”3
Is he rebuffed — this is not territory for a mere man like you? No, not for a moment. In fact he’s bidden come join his Master on the water, walking upon the waves. The victory the Lord Jesus ultimately enacts at the cross is to be shared by all his people. Paul makes the same point when he takes up the statement about the Seed of the woman in Genesis 3 and applies it to the Christians in Rome — Satan will soon be crushed under their feet.4
And so Peter walks on the waves. In this demonstration of the power of the Lord Jesus, his victory over the watery powers of chaos and darkness is shared by his eager disciple. Peter doesn’t stand at a distance and observe; he is involved, even if he falters in the frailty of his faith.
Back to the 5,000. The disciples could say, ‘But we simply can’t feed such a crowd. You know it Lord. We’re not the Messiah; you are. We have so little. If anything good is going to happen to these people, it’s got to be you and you alone who does it. That’s the posture we often adopt in prayer and we’re none the for worse for that. But perhaps this is meant to play out a little differently, recognising he’s serious about what he’s saying. And so the response might be more along these lines:
We’ve got so little. Our resources are slight at best. And we feel our lack, deeply. Lord, we need you to take our little and do something with it. You clearly don’t need to involve us and yet you as clearly want to do so — so take our lives and let them be consecrated to you and to your great mission of grace. Use us as you will Lord, not as faceless, nameless materials but as those whose hearts have been flooded by your Spirit of love, as those who have seen in your face the mercy of our Maker.
It’s an immense privilege, to share in his victory, however small the ways in which we might do so.
Yet the invitation to involvement is not without a certain price, one we may find ourselves reluctant to pay, as it calls us out into places of pain and perplexity, something this poem tries to capture:
Not Healed
They said,
“Physician, heal thyself!”
And, of course,
he could
and, of course,
I can't.
And of course
he didn't, wouldn't
ever, because wounded
for others.
That choice is not
mine
to make,
because mine is not
that heart,
coming not to be served
but to serve in unhealed
agony.
I'd take the shorter route,
the path more trod,
that leads to a seed
not planted.
Yet however reluctant we find ourselves at times, and however confused in the process, his words remain potent with a plentitude of blessing: “if it dies, it produces many seeds.”5 Involvement may come at a cost but the privilege is beyond compare.
Matthew 14:16
John 15:5
Matthew 14:28
Romans 16:20
John 12:24