I recall a day at Trinity College Theological School when, during a Homiletics Class, a mature-aged feminist student preparing for ministry challenged me. She demanded that I account for the disciples counting only the men to the exclusion of women and children in the story of Jesus feeding the Five Thousand.
The question was cleverly crafted because most of the class were students from a graduate intensive course I had taught on postmodern thought between the semesters, with special reference to celebrated feminist thinkers such as Julia Kristeva and the like. So, they were all warm towards the challenge this student raised, and I saw their eyes lighting up, wondering how their professor might tackle this challenge.
I had to think on my feet fast and decided to give a practical answer with some humour in it. I said, “To the contrary, I think the disciples perhaps took count of the women and children first and then took count of the men to double up the figure because men often eat twice as women and children do.”
The whole class burst into laughter, and the penny dropped for everyone that the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand was reported not to be a text for feminist critique. The report also did not intend to exclude the women and children being counted for the feed.
Matthew clearly states that the five thousand were the number of men who were present (Mt.14:21). Even if we are to take the most conservative count, the crowd may have been something like six thousand two hundred people in total.
If my humorous answer were to be challenged on any mathematical formula, I had an answer as a backup, which I must share with you before we hear what God has to teach us through this story today.
That backup answer was this.
I am sure you know that the gospels also tell another story about Jesus feeding 4000 people (Matthew 15:32-39 and Mark 8:1-10). You will be interested to know that most New Testament scholars believe that this was the original story.
This makes a lot of sense because the countryside where Jesus performed this miracle was not a bustling metropolis. The event's location was Bethsaida, a remote fishing village near the Sea of Galilee. Today, archeologists say that around 2000 people may have lived there at the time of Jesus. So, even for 4000 people to be present means people from the nearby villages of Magdala Chorazin and Gennesaret had to come to listen to Jesus. The nearest Chorazin is about kms 11 away, and it is unlikely people from these villages had come on foot that day to see Jesus and stayed on until late.
The scholars say that the account of the story got somewhat exaggerated and, over time, emerged as two stories of Jesus feeding 4000 and then 5000 at a second event. Perhaps this is because there was a gap of about 50 years between the event taking place and the gospel writers reporting it, and like cherished stories in our families about our great-grandparents or the cities in which we live, the story got a bit exaggerated with the addition of another 1000 people.
During biblical times, as a rule, when they came across two or more accounts of one event with discrepancies, they were not investigated or dismissed but accepted as two sacred traditions of the same event.
For example, you know that there are duplicate stories of God creating the world Genesis 1 and 2), the Flood (Genesis 6-9), the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt appears in many places in the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the giving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21) the resurrection of Jesus is reported with many variations by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Enough of biblical exegesis. Let’s get back to finding out what God wants us to hear today through His Word.
Today, let us accept the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. With the same generosity of Jesus’ disciples, if the number of men folk alone was five thousand, let’s say the total, including women folk and children the number would have been about 6,200 (approximately multiplying the original 3000 by 2)
If this event were to happen in Australia today, at best, with $12 per head for a pack of fish and chips, providing an evening meal for 6200 people would have easily cost $83,328 (including 12% GST). The Gospel says that Jesus only had two fish and five loaves, but he fed every one to the full and had twelve baskets of leftovers.
How did this happen? Did this really happen? What is God saying to us today?
I want to share with you the story that helped me understand the miracle of feeding the five thousand with two fish and five loaves. This story is set in the context of my ministry in the UAE (2010-2015).
One of the main ministries of chaplaincy (in the six emirates, excluding the emirate of Abu Dhabi) is the ministry of the expatriate labour force. This labour force is said to be around 7 million. These are the domestic and construction workers, drivers, maids, and the like. All these menial workers are from developing countries of the world. These labourers are housed in what is known as male and female “Labour Camps.”
Most of the workers, if not all of them, had been exploited even before starting work. When the government calls for tenders for labour jobs, employment agents compete and clinch the tenders. Usually, the lowest bidder wins the tenders. For example, the government may tender one hundred posts for cleaners with a salary of A$ 800 a month. An agent may bid for the tender at $ 600 a month and succeed in obtaining the contract. He would then advertise the job in his own country at $ 450 and make $150 per head in the deal. The agent in the country where the position was advertised will advertise the job at $ 400 and earn $ 50 per head. Then, on top of that loot, the local agent would promise the potential appointees to get them to the UAE with visas for $ 300 and sign a contract with them to sacrifice three months' salary to seal the deal. In the case of young women, sexual briberies too could be expected by both agents.
By the time the men or women gets to work, the salary s/he would get in hand would be about $ 250 per month after deductions for utilities. Sometimes, crooked agents who clinch several substantial contracts from employers or the government would take a year’s payments and abscond. When the people arrive at the airport, they are abandoned and become the responsibility of the consulate of the country they had come from to repatriate them back home empty-handed. Those who are successful get housed in a labour camp and start work there under horrific conditions.
One such labour camp is the Sonapur Labour camp for men. There are 200,000 men housed at this camp. About 15 men would be expected to live in one bedroom furnished with bunker beds. Kitchen and toilet facilities are shared between about fifty residents (see the pictures on the screen that I took during my ministry there). The bed is one’s only personal space.
The same is true for women. People are driven to and from work each day, and if lucky, they get to visit home after three years with a return ticket. Many either skip meals or overlook essentials to save enough money to send back home.
The following is a picture of such a room at the Sonapur Labour Camp. It is heart-rending to visit these people and witness their sufferings.
For six months, I stopped going there because the situation in the camps was too confronting for me to witness. Sonarpur itself is a lifeless and dull place. In some Indian dialects, Sonapur means “the city of the sleeping dead.” It is quite an apt tag for the area because in the 1950s, it was a burial and cremation ground used mainly by expatriates. The road to Sonapur leads past an old graveyard and a sprawling garbage dump spewing a pungent odour.
Now, to these people, the chaplaincy had a regular ministry. The chaplaincy appointed a few male and female lay ministers with skills in many native languages to minister to these people. The annual budget for Labour Camp Ministries was Australian $325,000.
Now, to the story, which helped me to understand the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. It happened in February 2012 when the chaplaincy Lay Ministers organised a service of worship for Gujarati men. Gujaratis are from the west coast state of Gujarat in India. I was to preside at the service, but one of the Gujarati Lay Workers, Moses Gandhi, was to preach. (Gandhi is a common surname in Gujarat. Mahathma Gandhi, too, was born in Gujarat).
Moses had no formal theological education but a deep faith and commitment to serving Christ in the labour camps. He was exemplary in his ministry. The only textbooks Moses had were a worn Gujarati Bible and 24 Upper Room Daily Devotions from about the turn of the century. I remember holding them in my hands while de-spined pages fell out. He had collected these devotionals since his conversion to the faith two years before he came to the UAE. He spoke elementary English and was able to get by.
Since the Senior Chaplain was presiding at the service, the other chaplains had asked Moses to rehearse his sermon and run it past me two weeks before the service. The text he had chosen for his sermon was exactly the Gospel Reading of Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand, which we have today.
After seeing the text, I was inquisitive about how Jesus feeding the five thousand could be made relevant to people who lack every basic need in life and go hungry most days. I was apprehensive, too. I asked myself: what would I have to say to people who have families back home lacking basic needs in life and survive on one meal of rice and cooked beans a day? Many of the men were also new Hindu converts. For Hindus, offering food and milk to idols is a daily ritual that they faithfully observe, even if the children were to go hungry and without milk. Also, Sonapur is by no means a retreat in the lush Judean wilderness where we imagine Jesus had fed the five thousand.
Moses recorded the sermon for me. The sermon ran for about 45 minutes. It was fiery and delivered with charisma and passion, but I couldn’t understand a word. Moses visited me to translate and explain what he had said in the recording. He explained it to me in considerably basic English. I had an epiphany, and I was deeply humbled to learn from him the lesson from the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. Through his words, God opened my mind to understand the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand most profoundly. It didn’t really matter to me about the pedantic inquiries of the story, whether it was three or five thousand Jesus fed and whether or not the women and children were left uncounted, possibly because the disciples were chauvinistic.
With his heavy Gujarati accent, he said, "Father, Jesus feeding the five thousand is the most beautiful story Jesus’ four friends—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—have told us in the Bible." When I prayed and asked God to help me give a message to share with my people in the camp, God said, "The story of my son feeding the five thousand." Then, I read the same story in the four gospels and learnt what God wanted me to say.
Jesus’ first friend, Matthew (by which he meant the Gospel of Matthew) tells us that Jesus is the long-expected Messiah who has come to us. He tells everyone that in Jesus, all our hopes are fulfilled, even when we experience the world of suffering.
Jesus’ friend Mark (meaning the Gospel of Mark) had the hard task of waking everyone up to recognise Jesus, who has come from God. Only when Mark rings the wake-up bell (a Gujarati slang to mean when awakened from daydreaming or slumber), people recognised Jesus. Only then did the people say Jesus is the Son of God and that he was doing great things in their lives. At first, they thought the stars were smiling down on them, but really, it was Jesus who was blessing them.
Jesus’ friend Luke (meaning the Gospel of Luke) tells us that Jesus shares God’s blessings and goodness with everyone, not only his own people. He shared God’s blessings, even with the outcasts and the poor.
Jesus’ friend John (meaning the Gospel of John) tells people not to worry about not having one thing or another. He says to the people: the Jesus who is with you is the Creator of the world (meaning the Word through whom God created the world). If only you ask him, he can bless you with your needs. The Creator of the universe can feed not only five thousand but all the people in the world.
I was deeply moved by Moses' words. Only then did the penny drop for me. I recognised that all four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) present the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand to explain to us the ways God provides us with his blessings.
The four evangelists explain this to us from four perspectives. Matthew invites us to acknowledge the Messiah is here. Mark invites us to recognise that God in Jesus was present to us to meet our needs. Luke tells us that, in Jesus, God is generous to all His children. John tells us that the Creator of the world does create and provide everything we need (not want). This is how God feeds us daily, especially at times of scarcity, whether it might be the lack of food, livelihood, basic needs, or faith.
When we see God providing and feeding us in these ways, we are challenged to choose one of two ways to live. In Albert Einstein’s words, we can live as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is a miracle.
A week later, after Moses had checked his sermon with me, we attended the worship service at the men’s camp at Sonarpur. About five hundred men were attending the service. As it is the custom of Indians attending religious ceremonies, all the men were dressed in white. Moses delivered his powerful sermon. Many men were reduced to tears -- me included. At the end of the sermon, he even gave an “altar call” (inviting those who wish to make a new spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ to come forward publicly). Some eighty Hindu men sitting in the congregation came forward and gave their lives to Jesus.
About eight months later, I attended the same Gujarati worship service with Moses and discovered that his congregation had grown to about nine hundred men. Their living conditions and employment situations had not changed significantly, but their faith in God, His goodness, and generosity toward them and their families back home had grown exponentially. They were telling stories to me in Gujarat, which Moses occasionally translated to me. They were describing one kind or another miracle that had transformed their lives.
One explained that he and thirty-nine of his mates had saved extra money for two months in a row and later discovered that it was because their rice and lentil sacks had not emptied. The men who had taken turns to cook had assumed someone had been topping the bags up. I was taken to their room and showed the two bags. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: two Kg 20 bags were only half empty after having been used for two months daily to feed forty men.
Another said that a month ago, their employer—not the crooked agent—had paid him and his workmates a bonus at Eid. Eid is the festival that marks the end of Ramadan, the fasting period for Muslims. The bonus was twice their actual salary. He said the employer was a cruel and greedy local, and it was unbelievable that he was moved to make such a generous gift. They were blessed to receive the bonus and could provide for their families more than ever.
The Lord, who fed the five thousand, feeds us even today. God is ever generous to us. Recognise and acknowledge Him, our Creator, and you will know that all along, it has been Him who has provided for all your needs and will continue to do so!
The Lord be with you.
And also with you. Amen
Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, you see how your children hunger for food, and fellowship and faith. Help us to meet one another’s needs of body mind and spirit, in the love of Christ our Saviour. Amen. (NZ Prayer Book)
