30 August 2007
David J. Goa
With these texts we enter two spheres of holy work that women and men have enjoyed since the beginning of time and that is a preoccupation of the scriptures running from Melchizedek offering bread to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 14:18-20 through Jesus frying fish for breakfast for his friends on the shore of the Sea of Galilee; from Noah’s wife casting her net into the flood to those nameless men who prepared the shewbread for offering in the temple until the day of its destruction in 70 AD; and, of course, to Martha and Mary who prepared loaves and fishes for their friend Jesus. If my father and mother were to be believed Jesus was always served King Oscar Sardines from Stavanger Norway on bread baked, as my mother did, with Sonny Boy Cereal from Camrose Alberta when he showed up unannounced at his friends home in Bethany just at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Loaves and fishes, baking and fishing, have a special place in human memory. At least for some of us these memories, these experiences, have fed us body and soul and been the occasion for the renewal and recreation of our spirit and the ground upon which we stand to serve the human family.
Norman Maclean captured one such moment in A River Runs Through It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979:3-4) an unusual novel that is part spiritual meditation, part biography. Here is how he begins:
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
It is true that one day a week was given over wholly to religion. On Sunday mornings my brother, Paul, and I went to Sunday school and then to “morning service” to hear our father preach and in the evenings to Christian Endeavor and afterwards to “evening services” to hear our father preach again. In between on Sunday afternoons we had to study The Westminster Shorter Catechism for an hour and then recite before we could walk the hills with him while he unwound between services. But he never asked us more than the first question in the catechism, “What is the chief end of man?” And we answered together so one of us could carry on if the other forgot, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” This always seemed to satisfy him, as indeed such a beautiful answer should have, and besides he was anxious to be on the hills where he could restore his soul and be filled again to overflowing for the evening sermon. His chief way of recharging himself was to recite to us from the sermon that was coming, enriched here and there with selections from the most successful passages of his morning sermon.
Even so, in a typical week of our childhood Paul and I probably received as many hours of instruction in fly fishing as we did in all other spiritual matters.
The theme of loaves and fishes is drawn from the Gospel. Indeed it is the only miracle story found in all four gospels. In the Matthew and Mark accounts this narrative does not open on the sunny slopes of Palestine but rather with the terror of history, an evening banquet where there is more than could possible be consumed, and, consequently, unchecked passions. The miracle of the loaves and fishes takes place within the terror of history not simply within the context of poor planning that finds 5000 people without their evening meal. Palestine was under siege ruled by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch and son of Herod the Great who had some thirty-three years earlier ordered the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem in the wake of Jesus’ birth. And now we meet his son, the unhappy governor of this outlying province, celebrating his birthday, having recently taken his brother Philip’s wife Herodias as his own wife. This marriage was a scandal to Jews and the Romans alike and John the Baptist had railed against it. Because he spoke of how appetite pollutes goodness he was arrested and jailed. Herod Antipas, the text tells us, spared his life for fear that the people, thinking him a prophet, would rebel if he were executed. Herod was a sensible governor able to read the political wind. The problem, of course, was not that John the Baptist was foretelling the future. That is the work of fortunetellers not Biblical prophets. Rather he was telling forth, even to the governor, the implications of current behaviour. And that is where our call to vocation and this story first meet. As the party heated up Herodias’ daughter Saloma is summoned to dance for the entertainment of the tetrarch and his friends. She is beautiful and a brilliant dancer. In his exuberance and pleasure Herod promises to give her “whatsoever she would ask.” As they sat together over the meal, we are told, he consents to her request that the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter. Some of you may have heard Strauss or Mariotte’s opera or read Oscar Wilde’s play based on this gospel. This part of the story has entered our popular culture although its implications have remained largely underground.
This is the first martyrdom of the Christian tradition and the meal of loaves and fishes is set over against the meal that culminates in John’s beheading. John’s disciples came and got his body, buried him, went and found Jesus and told him what had happened. In the face of this terror, we are told that Jesus “departed thence by ship into a desert place apart.” And, others fled as well, some 5000 we are told. This was no picnic. And, it was not absent-mindedness that brought so many to this isolated place without loaves and fishes.
In the Gospel of Luke the feeding of the five thousand is prefaced with healing narratives, the women who touched the helm of Christ’s garment and the raising of Jairus’ Daughter. Herod got wind of these goings on, of this new movement afoot: preaching the kingdom of God, healing the sick, casting out devils and doing all forms of ministry without regard for the bureaucratic institutions of either state or synagogue or compensation of any kind. It made Herod nervous and he had to remind himself that he had beheaded John. It couldn’t be John who was again up to no good; or, perhaps more precisely, up to good beyond Herod’s control and purpose.
In the Gospel of John the miracle of the loaves and fishes comes on the heels of Jesus’ encounter with the impotent man struggling to enter the healing waters of the pool of Bethesda, all surrounded by a marvelous discourse on the Bread of Life and the banquet of God’s Kingdom. It is in this telling that we meet the boy who has the five loaves and two fishes and offers them up to feed the five thousand. The loaves and fishes are part of our call to join the Great Physician in healing the world in the midst of history’s terrors despite the intentions and purposes of state or colonizer or pestilence or famine or what the new order has brought about.
There is a golden strand running through each of these tellings of the story of the loaves and fishes. There is a golden strand running from this story to our own day and to the human vocation we are called to reflect on, hold up and support. Our context is frightfully similar to the context in which we hear story of the loaves and fishes. Two dinners: one a banquet in the precincts of power and appetite, the precincts of fear. It culminates in a beheading and flight. The other a communion on a hillside where the gift is simple and immediate and offered freely without expectation, blessed by the Shepherd who has no ambition because he aspires to the healing of those present.
This second meal we have been asked to reflect on is a Eucharist, a communion. “Eucharist” is a Greek word that simply means “thanksgiving” and many know it as the Lord’s Supper at the centre of worship, liturgy, another Greek word that simply means public service for the life of the world. The central vocation of the Christians life is a form of liturgy, a public work for the healing of the world. It is not utopian, does not offer to bring about a new kingdom of peace and harmony under the messianic banner of either a new political order of a set of non governmental agencies as good as they may be. Rather, the Christian vocation gives shape to that vision that comes when one’s eyes are restored and we see again what really is at work in the world and are able to answer the question that Jesus asked, “Who is my neighbour?” The kingdom of God that Jesus calls us to begins when, like that little boy among the five thousand who offered his five loaves and two fishes, we offer what we have for the nurture of our neighbour. And, just as in the story of the Good Samaritan, the modest response of caring makes it possible for those who have fallen among thieves to pick up the next day and begin life anew.
Our vocation is simple and modest. It takes place in the deserted places as did the feeding of the five thousand. It takes place in the face of the terrors of history as did the feeding of the five thousand. It takes place when we offer our five loaves and two fishes so that we may join our neighbours in the banquet of life and thus, with them, enter into the presence of the kingdom of God. For God’s kingdom, as Jesus taught us, is only entered hand in hand “with the least of these my brothers and sisters.”