Transformation

The feeding of the five thousand. Today’s Gospel story is one of those stories from the Bible that probably everyone who knows anything about the Bible knows at least by title. The feeding of the five thousand. It is the only miracle of Jesus’ that is recounted in all four gospels. That tells us how important this story was to the earliest generations of Christians. The miraculous feeding of the five thousand. It is a miracle story. But what is the nature of the miracle? It’s not that five thousand were fed. Large institutions feed more people than that on a regular basis. The US military alone feeds hundreds of thousands of people a day. Large universities feed tens of thousands without any apparent divine intervention. The wonder, the miracle, in the Gospel story is that Jesus fed five thousand men with only five loaves and two fish. So this story is sometimes known as the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. If we define a miracle as something that could not have happened without God’s help, then it certainly is a miracle to feed thousands of people with just five barley loaves and two fish.

And yet… Sometimes the familiarity of a story makes it more difficult for us to step back and look at it with fresh eyes. Have you ever stepped back and asked: Why did Jesus need even five loaves? Why not start from scratch? Why not create a rich and fulfilling feast just through the power of Jesus’ word or touch? Why do all four gospel writers emphasize that the multitudes were fed with five loaves and two fish? Why don’t we have a story of Jesus offering the people food created out of thin air? Wouldn’t that have been an even more impressive miracle?

Yesterday was the Feast of the Annunciation. (And there is a connection here.) All of these special holy days that fall during Lent tend to get lost in the somberness of Lent, but the annunciation always falls on March 25, nine months to the day before Christmas. It commemorates the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary and his announcement that she has been chosen to be the bearer of God’s Son. It is the day of Jesus’ conception in Mary’s womb.

What if Mary had declined the honor? Or, for that matter, why really did God need Mary at all? The Son of God could have just appeared in the world. Drawing upon images from the Hebrew Scriptures that would have been well known in Jesus’ time, I can imagine several possible scenarios. I can imagine Mount Carmel, for example, in Galilee near Nazareth, shrouded in clouds and then with great claps of thunder and lightening and the trembling of the earth, Jesus could have just appeared on the mountaintop, with a voice in the clouds announcing his arrival. Or imagine a young baby being found somewhere along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, no mother anywhere nearby, his origin a mystery. Only as he grew older and claimed his identity and ministry would the mystery of who Jesus was become known.

But it didn’t happen either of these ways. Jesus didn’t just appear; he didn’t just drop in on the world. He truly and fully joined our world. Jesus’ conception may have been mysterious, but the next nine months were as fully human as it’s possible to be. As one of the collects in the Prayer Book says, Jesus shared our human life so that we might share his divine life.

And that’s what all of this is about. All of this has to do with what Jesus came to do. He came to transform and save this world, our world, and us. And it has to do with how Jesus, or how God in Jesus, effected that salvation. And two things are important here. Salvation takes place within the human, material, flesh and blood world that we live in. A human womb, five loaves of barley bread… these are God’s tools for our salvation. And, secondly, we have a role to play. We must offer ourselves, our souls and bodies. Our salvation cannot take place without our participation.

God’s plan, God’s hope is to transform this world. The process of salvation takes place in our world. God is evidently not interested in creating a perfect world. God is interested in bringing blessing, hope, transformation to this imperfect world. This is very good news for us. God could just take all of the defective, sinful human beings like us that walk the earth and replace them with new, spiritually perfect ones. But he doesn’t. God seems to be interested in taking sinful human beings, like you and me, and transforming us into holy citizens of God’s kingdom. God’s desire for human salvation starts with compassion for us. God doesn’t seek to just make new human beings out of nothing. God seeks to bring redemption to sinful human beings. Something for us to remember during Lent.

Throughout Scripture, God’s miracles are acts of transformation, or to use a geologic term, metamorphosis. Acts of metamorphosis, not magic. Never does Jesus pull a rabbit out of a hat, or pull a coin from behind the ear of a child. Jesus is not a performer who performs magic tricks to trick or impress us. Jesus is a transformer, a redeemer. Again and again in the miracle stories of the gospel, Jesus starts with the humble, tangible stuff of human life and then transforms it, metamorphoses it into something holy. Five barley loaves and two fish bring God’s sustenance, somehow, to thousands. A little wine and bread are transformed into the heavenly banquet for us. Sinful human beings like you and I are transformed by Christ’s redemption into the children of God.

Yet there is another important message for us in these stories. We may take great hope in the fact that our transformation is God’s purpose. Yet we also need to be reminded, over and over again, that our salvation, our transformation will not take place unless we participate, unless we offer ourselves to God.

It is hard to imagine any more generous act of self-offering than Mary’s. The story of the annunciation has no meaning at all until Mary says yes; let it be with me according to your word. Mary simply, fully offers all that she is, all of her humanity, to God. God could not have saved the world, this world without her offering. God could have made a new world, but God could not have saved this world without Mary’s offering.

And in today’s gospel we have the young boy who offers the five loaves and the two fish. He is a powerful example to us. It is the boy’s offering of the food that he has that enables Jesus to feed the multitude. Without the boy’s offering, this particular piece of God’s work of salvation couldn’t have taken place.

A child’s offering. A boy with five loaves and two fish, who offered five loaves and two fish to God. Step back and think about what that means. Only a child, perhaps, would offer all that he had just because the opportunity was there, just because Jesus needed it. I can imagine how some of us more mature adults might have acted in this situation. Over five thousand hungry people and one man with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish… The law of supply and demand would make those loaves and fish very valuable. The man might decide to auction them to the highest bidder. The bidding would be fierce. Or a woman carrying those loaves and fish might seek to hoard them; thinking if she gives them up, she will have nothing for tomorrow. Or anyone of us carrying five loaves and two fish might somewhat grudgingly try to calculate how many loaves, if any, we could spare without really missing it in our own lives. Only a child would offer everything. And through that offering, over five thousand (including the boy) received sustenance from heaven.

Jesus came into our world to save us and our world. We are the human beings, the flesh and blood, that God desires to transform. Holiness, the transforming touch of heaven, is offered to us. But only if we offer ourselves to God. God cannot save us and our world unless we offer it to God… all that we have and all that we are.  Amen.