July 31, 2011
Isaiah 55: 1-3 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8: 35, 27-39 + Matthew 14: 13-21
The last of the virtues we have reflected upon this weekend is the very focus of this familiar story in Matthew’s Gospel, Justice. It is no incidental detail that brings Matthew to mention that the number 5,000 did not include women and children because they didn’t count. In that society if you didn’t produce something, you did not count. Not much has changed since then in the values of this world; and those values are still seriously challenged by Jesus and His Gospel.
Then just as now, food equals power. It’s always about power. The rich who had control of the land and the distribution of its production were a tiny percent of the population, and those with the power always ate well. The rest got what was left over if there was any. It is the same today. A tiny percent of this world’s population controls the distribution and production of food. Obesity is a pandemic among us. It is a reminder that we have the power; and it raises some questions about what we are doing with it. The virtue of Justice and the three other great virtues will not allow us avoid, water down, or spiritualize the force and message of Matthew’s gospel.
It is too easy for all of us to play the role of the disciples in this incident. If we do, Jesus will not let us off the hook. The apostles think that the hunger of these people is not their problem. They assume that there is plenty of food somewhere and that those people should just go and get some, and Jesus says: “Wait a minute.” Jesus will not allow us to think that this hunger is someone else’s responsibility. Instead of dispersing the crowd letting everyone take care of themselves, he draws them together into community to pool their resources and redistribute them.
This is a new kind of power. I call it, “Eucharistic power.” This power is unlike the power of this world that uses food to control and manipulate people. This power that Jesus reveals is the power of a grateful people who do not think that the needs of others are someone’s responsibility. In a church living and led by people of Virtue, we will hear the challenge of this as a call to conversion and a call to reexamine the gifts we have and how we use them. The action of Jesus which we remember today is not just an act of compassion. In that time just as in our time, this kind of behavior is looked upon by the powerful as being subversive, and the opening verses of today’s Gospel remind us that such subversive actions provoke opposition from the powerful who always have the most to benefit from the unequal distribution of this earth’s produce.
The power that Jesus exercises in this story is not some kind of Divine intervention, some trick he pulled with a few loaves and some fish. He shows a new kind of power, the power of Justice exercised with and in the strength of a community. There are overtones of Eucharist in the story to remind us and root us in the mystery and wonder of what we become when we are fed at this table. It was not just bread and fish he gave to those disciples and therefore gives to us. It was the power of Justice lived and exercised by an apostolic community that hears the message: “Give them something to eat.”
Hunger is our reminder that there is work to do and Justice to be lived. Gently, but clearly Matthew closes the story with the reminder that there were women and children there to be fed too — people who did not count, who did matter to others, who did not produce anything. Contrary to this world’s values and systems, we will count them. They do matter. Their value, their life, their presence in this world does not depend on whether or not they produce. For years of my life I never produced a thing except dirty laundry, a lot of trash, and a heap of bills for my parents to pay, but they fed me anyway. Not because of what I might be or what I might do for them later; but simply because they loved me.
It is a powerful message spoken to us today by Matthew’s Gospel. It is a powerful mandate we given by Jesus as his disciples today. The prudent will not shy away, the temperate will not allow women and children be dismissed as though they are nothing and do not count in this world unless they produce. And as I said yesterday in my talk on the Virtue of Fortitude, “I believe that a lot of people spend their lives hoping that Jesus did not mean exactly what he said. Fortitude is living as if he did.” So Fortitude inspires Justice and moves us to responsibility because Jesus said: “Give them something to eat yourselves.” When we get that right, everyone will have their fill, because there really is always enough of everything we when stay together and bless, break, and give.