What Kind of Miracle?

Matthew 14: 13-21, page 692
When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Sermon
I saw a Haitian painting this last week, published in “The Wilson Quarterly,” a journal published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I’m not really a scholar, but one in our congregation bought me a subscription recently and I’ve at least been able to enjoy the pictures.
The painting, titled, “Paradise on Earth,” features Adam and Eve lounging under a tree, seemingly without a care in the world surrounded by animals and fruits to eat. Wilson Bigaud, the artist, looks on this scene with nostalgia it would seem. Looking back at the moment when Eve, seduced by the snake to eat from that one tree off-limits in a forest of plenty, reaches for the apple. Genesis tells it as though it were the decision that exiled human kind from a life that was easy, where there was plenty for everyone.[1]
It’s significant that the painting is from a Haitian painter, considering how far the Haitian people have come from a land of plenty. As rice prices climb, this country, close to the hearts of many in this congregation, is more in need than ever. Their situation is not unique, and according to the United Nations World Food Program, today hungry people riot in the streets of the world out of desperation with high food prices that threaten to plunge more than 100 million people into hunger.[2]
In one sense, it is in this context that Jesus responds, providing food to people who do not have enough, to people hungry, struggling to eek out a living.
But we know that considering the limitations of medicine in the ancient world, it was not only the poor who sought Jesus out, but also the wealthy. In need of a miracle, people who no doubt had plenty, if not more than enough to eat, also sought Jesus out.
Of course, they would have been amazed by this man who, “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to haven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves,” then fed 5,000 men, not even counting the women and children and managed to have 12 baskets full left over.
But this kind of miracle wouldn’t have given them anything they didn’t already have. We know that the wealthy in Roman society often gave banquets celebrating with friends who would eat and eat to the point of explosion, often forcing themselves to vomit in the alley so they could return to the feast and do it all over again.
It’s true that prices have been rising in our grocery stores, causing us all to tighten our belts during an economic crunch, but I can relate better, even to this picture of the Roman elite than the poor in the ancient or modern world.
Like an Ancient Roman Banquet, my first trip to an all-you-can eat buffalo wing restaurant was not an exercise in restraint but excess, and it didn’t take me long before my pants felt too right, my skin felt clammy, and I was making my own trip to the bathroom, though I didn’t return to the feast so I might do it all over again.
I recognize then, that what I need is not a miracle of multiplying loaves and fishes, but something else.
Like Adam and Eve, tempted by the snake from the Garden of Eden to go for more, it is not want that I suffer from.
So it strikes me as miraculous, not only that Jesus fed these 5,000 men, in addition to all the women and children, but also, that the wealthy in the crowd “ate and were satisfied.”
While we do live in a society where our most essential needs are met, ironically, we don’t often experience true satisfaction. So for us, Jesus provides a different kind of miracle.
A journalist specializing in consumerism named Rob Walker recently wrote a book titled: Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. In this book he analyzes a study that polled middle class families, asking them: Which products could they simply not live without. They were asked about their dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, home computer, microwave oven, high-speed Internet service, air-conditioning, and especially their cell phone.
Their answers: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.[3]
Products like the cell phone, once considered a luxury item of “high-class extravagance” had become a tool Americans can’t imagine life without.[4]
But how has it happened? In a relatively short time, our lives have changed and adapted to new products, new ways of living, and once we have evolved to incorporate these new tools into our lives it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine ever going back.
We were once a country of one car, one-income households. We lived on less; we had more time for each other.
But today we are a country where many families own multiple cars, often duel incomes, and though we live on more, have more, we also work more to get things that we want – which, according to the findings of that recent research project, in a short time will become things that we can’t imagine life without.
According to journalists and sociologists, consumerism has convinced us that we need more, and commercials, like the snake from the Garden of Eden, meet us in our living rooms to tempt us away from satisfaction to pursue goods and services that we never even knew we wanted.
Convinced then, we work and work, buy and buy, drink and drink, shop and shop, eat and eat, as though we have lost the ability to say “enough.”
To save us from this cycle, that truly does enslave, God calls us to Haiti, into the presence of those who truly do not have enough, to realize the difference between what we want and what we need. There is a saying there, that God has provided plenty. However, God left it in our hands to share.
In our passage from Matthew we see that God does indeed provide, but the miracle Christ brings to the 21st Century American Church is that all, rich and poor, walked away from this great feast satisfied.
This miracle is significant, as we are not satisfied; but our dis-satisfaction doesn’t come from a state of hunger, as we have plenty to eat; a lack of shelter, as most have homes; but from a constant message telling us to buy more than we need, want more than we can afford, to never be satisfied with what we have. This message, one that is seemingly inescapable, is one we must learn to fight against.
We are all the victims of an unquenchable thirst for more, more, more. Today a feast is provided. This table is set for rich and poor, strong and weak, for the hungry and the full. Invited by Jesus Christ we are called here together, so that the hungry might be filled, and that we all would be satisfied.
Amen.

[1] Daniel Akst, Cheap Eats, Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2003. 31.
[2] Sue Kirchhoff, Poll: Food costs a major worry for consumers, USA Today, 4/25/08.
[3] Farhad Manjoo, Branded, New York Times, July 27, 2008.
[4] Ibid.