Rev. Dr. Neil Thomas

Feeding the multitude was clearly a fundamental and critical story for the early church. The context for the story is typically understood as a deserted place away from the cities and towns, out in nature. The event calls into question our devotion to the idea of scarcity and our unwillingness to look to the divine for the miracles of sharing and compassion, of trustworthiness and reliance on God and our community. The story also places the disciples as key characters with the obligation to exercise agency in determining the outcome. Jesus breaking bread is the pivotal image in every version of the story. The imagery draws us to the story of the Last Supper, and in the case of Luke’s Gospel, to the Emmaus reveal. We are reminded that all the Gospel writers recognized the centrality of Jesus’ role in engaging the memories and imagination of the participants, ultimately inspiring an atmosphere of sharing. If the earth is our table, what does it say about our understanding of community and diversity? How does this inform our understanding of the scarcity of resources? How does it speak to the miracle of God’s love in our world? Too often we get hung up on how the miracle worked in this story of multiplying resources and we miss the real miracle of why an expanded table is made manifest and available to all.