Always Enough 7-28-24

Always Enough

2 Kings 4:42-44; John 6:1-21

2 Kings 4:42-44

A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.” But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.

John 6:1-21

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

Prayer -

The first thing that is important to know about the feeding stories is how significant they were in the Gospels. The feeding is the only miracle that is shared in all four Gospels, and two of them may have told the story twice. Both John and Mark have two feeding stories each. So, either (a) both of them thought the story was so important that they wanted to share it twice (which would attest to its significance to the early church) or (b) Jesus did more feeding than most of us had assumed (which would attest to its significance in the ministry of Jesus). Either possibility testifies to its importance.

John’s version of the story is laden with symbolism, some of which is apparent to “normal” readers, and some are not. I’ll point out a few of the most important, but John starts right at the very beginning giving us interesting messages. Notice, for example, that he begins with Jesus getting off of a boat at the Sea of Galilee. All of the four gospels agree on this. But only John adds that it was also known as the Sea of Tiberias. Why did he add that? Possibly because Tiberias was one of the most hated and politically volatile cities in Palestine, and he wants the reader to take note. It had been in existence for only a few short years. It was built by Herod Antipas in 20 c.e. at the edge of the Sea of Galilee. It was built to facilitate trade with the gentiles who populated the opposite side of the Sea. What made it a hated name and avoided by many locals was that it was built upon a local Jewish graveyard and was therefore considered unclean to observant Jews. Only people from outside of Israel would ever dare living there. 

Additionally, between the time of its founding and the time of Jesus, it grew rapidly to become the largest city in Israel, surpassing even Sepphoris, which Antipas had rebuilt from ruins and enlarged just a few years earlier. This meant that in less than a generation tiny Israel grew to have three major cities (these two plus Jerusalem), two of which were populated mainly by outsiders, and all demanding resources from the surrounding farms and villages. Their growth put difficult demands on the food supply in the region and contributed to an upswing in hunger around them. This trend was in turn exacerbated by the pro-city economic policies of Antipas, which forced rural farmers to either give up some of their produce to feed the cities or pay a tribute on what they did not give. So, the more they grew the more they had to pay in tribute to the powerful urban centers. Farmers could lower the amount of tax they paid by not growing as many crops, but that would also lower the amount of food they had for their own personal consumption. So, they lost either way. Biblical scholar Obery Hendricks, describes the economic life of first century farmer this way:

When food production for the average resident of Galilee went down, it did two things. First it simply lowered the amount of fruits, vegetables, and grains that could be consumed and made the region grow incrementally more hungry. Second, and more interestingly, when such large percentages of grains were taken out of system, it made the prices of the remaining grains go up. It’s the simple law of “supply and demand”: when there is more of something the price goes down and when there is less of something it goes up. So, there was less food to go around and the food that was grown cost more to purchase for the non-farm families who didn’t have direct access to it themselves. 

When the ancient farmers of Israel were unable to pay the food tax, they did have access to a convenient loan program from the large wealthy land owners to tide them over—but the interest rates were often as high as fifty to sixty percent! With this precarious combination of fees and loans, whenever there was a bad harvest either from drought or unseasonable rains, many farmers would simply lose everything and have to sell their animals, or their farms, and finally their bodies as slaves to their creditors. High rates of interest were one of the key tools used for creating poverty and debt slavery in the ancient world. 

In the US following the 2007-9 recession this same philosophy was used to cripple state economies in order to save them. The belief that cutting salaries, pensions, benefits, social services and jobs to pay off loans would somehow result in growth—was imposed on state and local governments in the US and the poorer countries of southern Europe. The belief was that if you can just fire enough people and cut enough salaries, pensions and benefits, and cause enough suffering and hunger, then it will miraculously lift the economy and promote business and trade. 

That theology is not totally wrong. In the long, long, long, long, term, perhaps, but in the short run the reverse nearly always happens. In the Third World cuts of the eighties, it took over twenty years of brutal human suffering before the economies began to claw their way back. When people’s incomes and salaries are cut, they begin paying less in income taxes and sales taxes and the government’s deficit actually goes up, not down, resulting in calls for more and more rounds of cuts. It was and is a downward spiral that almost always ends badly. Like in the poor countries stricken by this policy in the eighties and nineties, and countries like Greece today, massive cuts and firings have been the biggest drag on the global economy and the major force dragging on the recession. In Europe the horrific cuts in social services and livelihoods has driven countries like Greece into such poverty that it will take generations before they ever claw their ways back.

Though our contemporary examples are different, they are in many ways similar to the demands imposed on small farmers in ancient Israel by Herod Antipas and large land owners. All of this background is tied closely to the feeding story and is related to why the author of the Gospel of John wanted you to know that this took place close to the hated city of Tiberias. Have you ever wondered why it was that so often when Jesus was in the country side he was swarmed by great crowds of people? Where did they come from? When he is in the towns, you may not see them by the thousands, but there are still hoards flocking after him. Even allowing for some exaggeration from the Gospel writers, it still is an interesting phenomenon. Where did they come from? These stories were for the most part in the middle of the day. Don’t they have jobs?

The answer is “no.” These were people who were driven off of their land by poverty and hunger and oppression by their rulers. They often were not able to pay the demanded tribute and feed themselves at the same time and got desperately into debt and finally lost their farms. Some in fact moved back onto the farms they once owned as indebted workers; many others just became homeless, beggars, prostitutes, thieves, and day laborers. When they heard of Jesus, teaching, healing and feeding in the region or neighborhood they flocked to see him. And when he got out of the boat at the beginning of our story, and the crowds saw him, they clamored for him, wanting to see or experience some of the healing signs that they had heard were taking place through him. 

Another seemingly innocuous comment from John is that all of this took place near the Passover. There is nothing in the story as it stands that otherwise refers to, or relates to, the Passover, so why did he think it was important to mention that here? Part of it was likely because he wants the reader to think of Jesus as a new Moses, who you will recall also delivered bread (manna) from a mountain. But it is also likely that John once again wants us to feel the politically charged atmosphere surrounding this event. In a fairly consistent way, whenever John makes note of an event being close to a Jewish festival, he has Jesus present some kind of controversial teaching that subverts and undermines a traditional teaching that is held by the religious authorities, and the result is often a confrontation with those authorities. While in this instance the religious authorities do not show up until after the feeding story, the provocative, confrontational nature of the feeding is nonetheless clear here as well. 

Here is where the story gets very interesting. When the crowd comes up the hill toward Jesus and his disciples, he leans over to Philip and asks, “Where can we go to buy enough bread to feed these people?” John says that he already knew the answer to that question when he asked it, but he did it anyway to see what Philip would say. And Philip comes up with the straightforward economic reality: No place. Nowhere. It’s impossible. To feed these people, he says, would take six months of wages, and nobody--certainly not the rag tag crowd that followed Jesus--had that kind of money laying around. Even if Judas had not been skimming donations from the till, they still couldn’t do it. In the Greek it says two hundred denarii. A denarius was a Roman coin equal to about one day’s wage for a desperately poor common laborer. Philip is saying it would take two hundred days worth of work to feed these people. His precision is interesting. Why not be more general as numbers often are in the Bible? He is probably making a statement about the impossibility of buying food to live on in an age of stagnating wages and inflationary prices.

As an aside, I also find it interesting that Jesus asked the “where” question, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” But Philip only hears a “how much” question: “How much will it cost to buy bread for these people to eat?” Jesus’ question assumes that they will buy bread, and can buy bread. Philip’s answer makes it clear that he doesn’t think so. He thinks that they can’t buy that much bread, no matter where the bakery is.

Before Jesus could say anything, Andrew, Peter’s brother—also sounding exasperated and futile—says, “Well, we have a boy here who has some fish and bread.” It’s not altogether clear in English, but his choice of words indicates that he also thinks this is a lost cause. The words for “boy” and “fish” are diminutive, that is, a “small boy” and a “small amount of fish.” Also, the use of the term “barley” loaves has a negative connotation to it because only the very poor and the very desperate would lower themselves to tasting this tasteless bread. Translated into more clear English, he’s saying something like, “We’ve got bubkes here, zilch. Nothing. Our resources are tiny. The economy has gone to Hades, and just to illustrate that for you, look at what we got to make a meal out of: a little kid with a couple of fish and some really, really, smelly barley, which taste awful and I’m not going there.”  

So, now what was Jesus thinking? If the account can be accepted, he was looking out onto a sea of faces, all poor and almost all hungry. They represented a wide swath of the economic and social bottom of Israelite society of the day. They were probably far more than 5,000 people, because in those days they only counted men, not women and not children. So a good guess would be at least ten thousand, perhaps as many as twenty. Again, this is if the crowd estimates can be accepted, but by any accounting it was an incredible number of people. 

It’s very likely that what happened was something like this: Jesus took the little boy and he set him in front of the crowd and said, “Hey, hey, all of you. Listen up. Look up here, focus, focus. Okay. Now I know that all of you are very poor. All of you have felt like you have been caught up in the economic crash that drove up the prices of food and drove down your income. We all know that. And all of you are afraid that you don’t have enough even to survive on your own and you’re afraid to spend anything. Now, I’m not going to give you some long lecture about Keynesian economics and how major financial powers need to step in and invest and spend and loan until the smaller folks can get their faith and trust and security back. Rome may get around to something like that one of these days, but who knows. 

Until then, we’re going to try something else; something that might be a model for the government and might work out better for you in the long run; something that might actually bring in the Kingdom that I’ve been talking so much about. I’m going to put this little kid out in front here—with his frankly pretty dismal offering—for all of you to look at. He’s saying he is offering to give us everything he’s got, and I want you to see that. And then I’m going to break up his smelly bread and give thanks to God for it, and then start distributing it to all of you, and then you will…well, I don’t know. Let’s see what happens after that.  

And then, I think, as the bits and pieces of food are handed down the aisle, one person starts to think to himself, “Y’ know, the wife did make me this sandwich and packed me this thermos of coffee, and I probably don’t need all of it, so I’ll break it in half and pass it down with the barley as it comes handed down the aisle to me.” And then the next guy says, “Well, I do have this banana that I forgot to check at the gate when I came in, and I don’t need all of it,” so he breaks it in half and passes it down. And then there’s the guy who picked up the box of Oreos at the Seven Eleven that morning on the way out of town to the rally. And so on, all down the line, until all the loaves and fishes had been passed around and the disciples gathered up the scraps and found twelve baskets full of leftovers and snacks. Amazing how when it comes to the blessings of Jesus there is always enough – thanks be to God - amen