Loaves and Fishes

by Jerry Fuller, OMI

• One day an old man living on the street became very ill and was taken to the hospital. The doctors realized that he could not live very long. They tried to find the old man's name, but all the old man would say is, "Son! Son!" In looking through his clothing for identification, they could only find a news clipping about a marine stationed in Korea. The Red Cross located this marine and flew him back to the United States and this hospital.
  As the young man walked into the hospital room, the old man smiled broadly and exclaimed, "Son!! Son!!!" For several hours the young man held the old man's hand until he died peacefully. After that the nurse said to the marine, "We need to know your father's full name." The Marine replied, "He wasn't my father. I never saw the man before in my life."
  Amazed the nurse asked, "Then why did you stay?"
  The Marine answered simply, "Because he needed me." (1)

The compassion this Marine showed mirrors the compassion Jesus showed in feeding the 5000 with a handful of loaves and fishes. Jesus is the center and meaning of this miracle, not the feeding of the crowd. If this miracle doesn't lead us closer to Jesus, it is useless.

The Indian couple in the following example also show they understood the compassion Jesus had in taking little and multiplying it to feed many.

• Thirty years ago, Om Dutta Sharma and his wife Krishna came to New York City from their native India to make a new life for themselves. After a series of menial jobs, Mr. Sharma went to work as a cab driver. Seven years later, he and Krishna had saved enough money to buy his own cab medallion. No longer obligated to give half his fare money to a fleet owner, he soon saw his income triple.
  But what to do with all of this new wealth? Raised a devout Hindu, the Sharmas place little value on earthly possessions. So, they decided to share their good fortune with the village of Doobher Hishanpur and, with $3,000 (a king's ransom in India), they opened the first school for girls in the village-housed in the brick house where Mr. Sharma was raised. The Ram Kali School for Girls, with almost 200 students in grades one through five, is named for Mr. Sharma's mother.
  In New York, the Sharmas are struggling immigrants. But in their Indian village-a place without even a telephone-their incomes, modest by American standards, make them philanthropists. "I'm worthless in New York," says Mr. Sharma, 'but [in India] I am everything."
  Om and Krishna continue to live very frugally in Queens. With his salary as a cab driver and hers as an oncology nurse, they continue to provide the school's funding and the financing for other projects for the village such as a medical and dental clinic. They are also putting their two sons through St. John's University.
  What keeps the Sharmas going? "When we die, this material world is not going with us. What will be with us are the good deeds we leave behind." (2)

Like the boy's offering of his lunch to Jesus in today's Gospel, the Sharmas have managed to create something wonderful with their own small loaves and fishes. Today's gospel and the story of the Sharma family are both "blessings" that teach us that, by giving what little we may possess, we can create community from estrangement, hope from despair, life from barrenness if we embrace the selfless, joyful, giving spirit of the Jesus of the Eucharist. (3)

Sometimes we have to turn to the children to come to understand the miracles that Jesus tenders us.

• Appalled at the wastefulness of their students, two elementary school teachers in Santa Cruz, California, planted a young sapling on the school's campus and named it the Free-Food Tree. Rather than discard their uneaten or unwanted sandwiches, the children were encouraged to place them under the tree so that students who had lost their lunch or could not afford one could help themselves.
  Some children began to bring an extra sandwich from home so that they would have one to put under the Free-food Tree. Eventually, the supply of donated food was sufficient to nourish all the school's hungry youngsters, with enough left over to offer to the homeless who live in the city park near the school.

In addition to learning not to waste their share of this world's goods, the students had their first encounter with hunger and began to understand what they could do to alleviate it.

A valuable lesson indeed, considering the fact that every hour 1,500 of this world's children die of hunger or hunger-related causes.

• Karl Rahner (The Great Church Year, Crossroad, New York: 1994) once explained that the people in today's gospel were drawn to Jesus, driven by a hunger for God. They followed Jesus into the wilderness because they were aware that their own lives were a wilderness; they hungered for the words Jesus spoke. They wanted more than their ordinary lives were able to offer them. But, while they were hungering for God, a physical hunger seized them. Hungering for God, they found themselves hungering for earthly life. Then the situation turned strange.
  Jesus, whom they were following to hear the words of life, gave them earthly bread and fish. When they ate and had their fill, they wanted to make him king (6:15). What was offered as nourishment to sustain them in their search for God became a temptation, prompting them to covet the "free lunch" and to lose sight of its significance. As a result, Jesus fled from them. Rahner suggests that this is a parable of what constantly happens in the lives of individuals, particularly in our technological age.

God enables us to develop the technology so that we can have our earthly bread and multiply it so as to feed the great multitudes that live in the many wildernesses of this world. Technological advances should give us more time to seek for God's bread and to satisfy our hunger for eternity. But we, like the people in today's gospel, are tempted by the miracle and want to make God the king of our technology; or worse, technology becomes our God. And so God withdraws from us, not willing to become a part of our scheme.

Today's readings remind us of the balance that must be struck. If we have been blessed with an abundance of earthly bread or with the technical capabilities to produce such an abundance, then these gifts are for sharing with the hungry. When physical hungers are satisfied, then we are free to attend to the deeper hungers: for love, mercy, forgiveness, companionship, peace and fulfillment. In satisfying these hungers for one another, we realize and sharpen our hunger for God, who is always ready to satisfy the hungry heart. (4)

When the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, was asked what the answer was facing our modern problems, he said one word: COMPASSION!

What is this "compassion" that addresses the individual needs of our neighbor and is willing to bring about systemic change as well? It involves a gut experience by which we truly "feel with" others, identifying with their sorrows and joy. We put ourselves in their place and then, moved by their suffering, we do something. Compassion is faith in action.

A major problem that obstructs Christian compassion is insensitivity. We become numb to the pain of others, be they human beings or animals. We no longer put ourselves in their position and develop an autonomy that leads to harshness and hard-heartedness. Such callousness rends the fabric of the Body of Christ.

So often in the scriptures Jesus is moved with pity as he encounters the leper, the blind man, the paralytic. Jesus feels deeply what transpires both in the body and soul of those who cross his path. And he responds in acts of self-giving, healing, forgiveness. (5)

• I confess [says Pastor William Willimon] that I think most of us show up at church to get help making it through the week, to obtain a sense of inner peace, to receive guidance in making difficult decisions that are before us.
  Yet note that this story, which at first seems to be about us, before it is done is a story about Jesus. We come to church thinking mostly about ourselves, but then the Scripture talks mostly about God.
  That's why I think this story is told to us. When will we ever learn? Christianity, following Jesus, is not merely another helpful means of helping us get what we want. Rather, following Jesus is the means whereby God gets what God wants. Jesus cannot be enlisted as another helpful therapeutic device to enable us to get what we want before we meet Jesus. The gospel implies that we do not know what we want, what we need before we meet Jesus. (6)
• "The difficult part of understanding this story for us in the developed world is that for the most part we don't know what it means to lack basic necessities, such as bread. For example, right now on our planet, the world 's wealthiest 16% of the population uses 80% of the natural resources. The United States alone consumes about 25 tons of raw materials per year for every man, woman, and child. While America makes up only 4% of the world's population, it consumes ¼ of the world's energy. Our problem seems to be not that we have too little, but that we have too much." (7)

We said the miracle today is not the multiplication of food, but that people come to see Jesus as Messiah and Savior. When we help feed the world, we, too, will come to see Jesus.

References

1. Tom Miller, "The compassion of God," Lectionary Homiletics 12 (8): 34 (Lectionary Homiletics, Inc., 13540 East Boundary Road, Building 2. Suite 105, Midlothian, VA 23112) July 2000.
2. The New York Times, Sunday, January 23, 2000; People Magazine, November 15, 1999.
3. "A cabbie's 'loaves and fishes,'" Connections, 17th Sunday of the year, July 2000.
4. Patricia Datchuk Sanchez, "Hungering for bread-and for God," Celebration 29 (7): 321 (Celebration, 115 East Armour Boulevard, Kansas City, MO 64111-1203), July 2000.
5. Fr. Joseph Nolan, "This thing called compassion," Good News 27 (7): 267 (Good News, Liturgical Publications Inc., 2875 South James Drive, New Berlin, WI 53151)
6. William Willimon, "Proclaiming the text," Pulpit Resource 28 (3): 21 (Logos Productions Inc., 6160 Carmen Ave. East, Inver Grove Heights MN 55076-4422) July, August, Sept. 2000.
7. "Illustrating text and theme," Lectionaid 8 (3): 48 (LectionAid, Inc., P.O. Box 19229, Boulder, CO 80308-2229. J. Nichols Adams, publisher) June, July, August 2000.

(Comments to Jerry at padre@tri-lakes.net. Jerry's book, Stories For All Seasons, is available at a discount through the Homiletic Resource Center.)