Listen, That You May Live

I suspect the Jesus in Matthew 14:13-21 has memorized these opening words from Isaiah 55: "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

In our consumer driven economy that can only thrive with people who covet, acquire and consume more and more stuff, much if not most of which ends up at some thrift shop or the local landfill, the prophet some 600 years before Jesus asks what is perhaps the pivotal question for all of us attempting to seriously pursue the life of the Spirit: Why do we insist on fattening the offshore bank accounts of those who claim to have a monopoly on the bread supply and labor for that will never satisfy?

There a lot going on in this little snippet of prophetic poetry: what you really thirst for and are hungry for can be had “without money and without price;” why do we labor for that which will never satisfy?; come to the waters and escape like the ancestors did at the Red Sea, or as all of Judea who bathed in the River Jordan with Wilderness John?

Speaking of whom, Jesus momentarily cuts short his journey to Jerusalem. After a long chapter of enigmatic parables, he learns that Wilderness John has lost his head at Herod’s Birthday party and now he, Jesus,  needs to get away from it all, so he heads for the hills – with 5,000 men and an additional unspecified number of women and children trailing him and his disciples! It turns out there is no rest for are weary and thsoe frightened by the Empire. And realistically, if you are in a boat on that lake we call the Sea of Galilee, anyone and everyone anywhere near the perimeter of the lake can see where you are headed. And they do, and they follow.

Jesus being Jesus of the Love Ethic we have heard was exemplified by Representative John Lewis, has compassion on the crowd and goes about healing people – which in itself is dangerous since also located on the shores of the Galilee Lake is a Healing Spa which was big business at the time – it’s hot springs were reputed to heal all your ills, and people came from all over the ancient world to spend their shekels lavishly at the spa and at the local hotels and restaurants. Who, those business people no doubt were asking themselves, is this bumpkin doing it all for free right out in the open? Does he not understand how the economy works?

The disciples try to tell him it’s late, the people are hungry, so let’s send them out into the towns and city to get a bite to eat. “Feed them yourselves!” Jesus says. “They don’t need to get hustled for whatever little money, if any, they have.” The disciples reply, “Uh, we only have five loaves of bread and two fish!” This is where I imagine Jesus thinks to himself, “Have you not read, marked and inwardly digested Isaiah chapter 55? “Come eat…without money…without price!”

But instead he sighs and says, “Bring that to me, and the rest of you get the crowds to sit down on the grass.” Like his Father in heaven way back in Genesis, Jesus is always bringing order out of chaos, abundance out of scarcity.

Now the results are so over-the-top that we tend to miss what really is going on. Everyone eats until they are stuffed, and there are twelve baskets of leftovers! One for each disciple, or one for each tribe of Israel. We see the symbolism. And we think this is a miracle about feeding 5,000+ people with so little bread. So much so that we miss what’s really going on: a lesson in Kingdom Living and Kingdom Economics – so different, as in Isaiah 55, from the way those who monopolize goods, access and power like Pharaoh and Caesar. Rather, it is what Jesus does that matters and is the lesson for Kingdom Living.

The short-hand version is: Take, Bless, Break and Give. He takes what little they have. He blesses it, offers to the one who is behind the alternative bread supply. He breaks the loaves open. And he gives it away. Do we see what’s going on here? Is it clear?

It’s about taking what little we have, blessing it, offering it up to God, breaking it, and giving it away. Jesus’s actions declare, “Whatever we have is yours,” to a crowd who no doubt also understand the danger of Caesar’s Rome which through its stooge Herod Antipas has beheaded Wilderness John who had baptized most of them, and whose father, the other Herod, had slaughtered all of Jesus’ baby cousins way back at the beginning of the story while Jesus and Mary and Joseph hid in Egypt, of all places! Egypt! Where Pharaoh had perfected hoarding and monopolizing all the food in the region such that their ancestors, Jacob and the tribes of his twelve sons had to succumb to becoming slaves in Egypt to avoid starvation - just as the crowd with Jesus were now slaves of Caesar in their homeland. Israel was no longer home. Yet, here is this Jesus giving it all away – both healing and bread just being given away. As if to say, what would happen if all of us with whatever little we have would begin to take, bless, break and give it all away as well? What would that be like? If I can do it, says Jesus, under threat from the Empire like Wilderness John, I believe we can all do it together. There is a way out of all this.

Evelyn Underhill, an Anglican churchwoman, observed, “…most of us remain enslaved, bonded, to three verbs: “to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.” [Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life p 20]

In chapter 13 Jesus had said that those who have will get more, and those who have little will have it taken away. Now in chapter 14 he demonstrates that in his Father’s Kingdom those who have little will truly get more when we adopt the behaviors of the Kingdom of Living. Everyone will get enough with lots of leftovers! In Acts chapter two we learn this is how they lived!

Take, Bless, Break and Give. Some say this is about the Eucharist. Maybe, maybe not, other than the acts of the priest in the Eucharist are there to remind us how we are to live as citizens of another Kingdom, that of the alternative bread supplier of Isaiah 55.  Isaiah goes on to say, “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.” Listen, so that you may live.

And this is why I believe Jesus is intimately familiar with Isaiah’s poetry, most especially passages like that in chapter 55. He embodies Isaiah’s vision. He lives it as an invitation to all who watch and listen. What will it take for us to take it as seriously as Jesus does? Or, do we wish to be spend our lives plagued by the prophet’s question: Why do we spend our money for that which is not bread, and our labor for that which does not and never will satisfy? Amen.