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The real miracle today would be for the feeble scraps of our sermons on the text to truly feed and satisfy the hungry who have gathered.
As I have said before, the key thing with any "miracle" story is to NOT get distracted by the special effects. The text does not explain how these things happen; nor should the sermon. But the text does explain why these things happen and invites us to be open to mystery and wonder, the strange and the impossible possible.
I would suggest taking a day or two just to feel one's way into the full meaning of verse 13:
When Jesus heard the news about John
"The news about John" is that he has been beheaded; killed as the result of jealousy and a foolish promise. And who is John to Jesus? Scholars suggest that John was Jesus' spiritual teacher / mentor. That before beginning his own public ministry, Jesus had been a follower of John.
According to Matthew, Jesus had just been rejected by his own town, Nazareth (Matthew 13:53-58); then John is executed (Matthew 14:1-12); and then
Jesus left and went in and went to a lonely place by himself.
Good News Bible
So we begin this text with Jesus rejected and grieving.
But when his boat arrives at the lonely place, he finds a large crowd has followed him on the shore. Jesus' heart is filled with compassion, with pity for them.
It is important to note that the crowds behaviour is an act of trust and risk on their part. They too have left behind their homes and trekked out into the wilderness.
What follows invites us to remember other wildernesses, and another "miraculous" feeding: Moses and the manna (Exodus 16).
What follows invites us to remember our own wildernesses, our own places of chaos, when our own insufficiencies may have been blessed, broken, and given away. And yet it was precisely in risking that impossible insufficiency that there was enough. Indeed, more than enough.
How many is 5,000 men, plus women and children?
This is not a trick question.
Bruce Malina comments that:
A crowd of five thousand males would have been larger than the entire population of all but a handful of the very largest urban settlements. Matthew's image is that of a whole city in Jesus' entourage, whom Jesus nourishes out of compassion.
Malina, page 81.
Rejection, grief, compassion, risk, trust, impossible insufficiency, enough and more than enough.
David Ewart,
www.davidewart.ca
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