SEND THEM AWAY

The story of Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 ( or 4000 or 10,000 or twenty thousand - depending on how you count) is contained in all four gospels.

In the MATTHEW gospel this story first appears as a counter point to the news of Herod's execution of John the Baptist's.

We children of what European history calls the "enlightenment" -and I include myself here - always want to know

"Is it true?"

"Did it really happen?"

This story appears six times in the four gospels (twice in both of Mark and Matthew). That this story has a historical core in the sense that there was an itinerant, indigent Jewish wisdom/renewal teacher known as Jesus from Galilee who exhibited boundless compassion and responded with whatever was needed to people in need there is little dispute.

The whole of what some scholars call "the Jesus event": the web of events around the birth, life, death, and resurrection is understood by our Christian faith as God's response to humanity's deepest needs.

Biblical scholars are divided on whether there is a "historical core" to this particular story. The four primary perspectives are:

1. A miraculous event of feeding hungry people actually happened in the life of Jesus. This view is advocated not only by conservative and fundamentalist students who attempt to take everything in the Bible as literal history, but also by many of the Jesus Seminar scholars, who tend to understand Jesus as a charismatic figure from whose presence sick people went away healed and hungry people went away filled.
2. Next there is the sacramental explanation of Albert Schweitzer, who argued that Jesus conducted a symbolic meal for multitudes of his followers in the desert in which bits of bread were distributed as a "symbolic end-of-history sacrament" foreshadowing the messianic banquet at the end of time.
3. The rationalistic explanation argues that "what really happened" was a lesson in unselfishness. As Jesus and his closest followers shared the little food they had, others were empowered to share their food, so that there was enough for all.
4. Finally, there is the view that this story is not based on any particular event in the life of Jesus, but was created as a symbolic representation - a metaphor -- of the meaning of the entire "Jesus-event," with overtones of the Eucharist and the end-of-history pictures of fellowship and plenty for all.

Many contemporary Gospel scholars subscribe to this last view, which understands the story as a symbolic expression for the entire gospel rather than a report of a single event.

Who knows? Not I!

I do believe that the story teaches us truth.

It is also important, I think, to remember that in the Matthew gospel this story is directly and immediately juxtaposed to the birthday feast that has been hosted for Herod - surely a powerful symbol of all that the dominant social and cultural order could offer - wealth, power, material comforts - yet Herod brutally beheads the one who seeks God.

I also believe that the story very truthfully depicts the weariness that those who seek to be followers of - not just believers in - Jesus can honestly experience.

All too often we find ourselves meeting one more crisis, one more problem, one more hurting person and something inside says, "ENOUGH" - just make it go away.

Sierra CLUB STORY . . . about Frederick County image of the perfect living environment - we just don't want to see them

A California acquaintance of mine loves to go to Disney Land because "there aren't any poor people there." She thinks the world would be so wonderful and happy if it were just like Disney Land.

"Send the crowds away" doesn't mean the crowds that go to Disney Land or that show up at Columbia mall on Sunday afternoon. We want to send away the crowds of human need. Human need doesn't always come as a crowd. Sometimes we pray a modified form of this prayer about just one person, when a sick child wakes us up for the fifth time in the middle of the night, when we have been to the nursing home and heard the same old complaints for the hundredth time, when the phone rings and the voice on the other end is crying about an abusive marriage, we pray our own prayer about sending the crowds away. Please let it stop - let it be better. Send John away; send Mother away; send Susie away - just let it be over.

Just send them away to the villages round about so that they may find food -- let them solve their own problems - let them take care of themselves.

This is what I heard in the Congress and the President this week as they passed the poverty punishment act - being called welfare reform.

There's a lot to be said for the attitude that says individuals should take care of themselves, being responsible for any children they bring into the world.

Wanting people to solve their own problems is in s0ome ways a lot healthier than wanting to have others be dependent -- being caretakers to generate feelings of superiority, wanting people to be dependent on us, finding meaning for our lives in others' dependence.

So, in some ways, the prayer "send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves" is a healthy prayer.

"Jesus, teach these people to care for themselves."

This prayer - in this story is answered but much differently than the followers imagined, much differently than our politicians have. Ever notice how often that happens -- our prayers get answered differently than we anticipate.

Jesus' answer is, "You give them something to eat."

Now how is that an answer to the prayer, "Send the crowds away so that they may buy food in the villages round about?"

Listen to the story. The disciples complain that they can't feed the crowd. There must be over 5,000 men here plus women and kids. We are talking a stadium full of people.

That's a lot of hot dogs.

Jesus says, "What's in the cooler?"

The disciples say, "Five loaves of bread and two fish."

He tells them, "Bring them here to me," and when the disciples bring them, Jesus does exactly what he does in the upper room: Jesus looks up to heaven, blesses the food, breaks it up and gives it to the disciples. The disciples then give it to the crowd.

Jesus empowers his disciples to work a miracle, this everyday miracle of feeding people. They didn't know it then, but he was answering their prayer to "let someone else take care of this." He was answering their prayer by teaching his followers that they could not only take care of themselves but that in community, in caring for each other and using what was at hand, they had the power to do far more than they ever dreamed.

Dr. Bernie Siegel says many true things about taking charge of one's own life, even when we are ill. Yes, he says, that does involve asking people to help you with your shopping, or driving you to the doctor if you need it. It also means questioning what the doctor is prescribing; thinking through what kind of treatment is right for you; being in charge of your illness instead of letting your illness be in charge of you.

Sometimes our prayer, "Send the crowds away," is even about ourselves. "Send my problem away. Eliminate my needs."

When we say, "We can't," Jesus asks us what we have, what our resources are, what we can share with others. Sometimes our greatest resource is the knowledge that our community has overcome problems in the past. Sometimes the best thing we have to give others is that knowledge. We did it and so can you. We fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.

Gloria Steinem tells about the Confidence Clinic, a group of single mothers and other women who were divorced, widowed, deserted and often on welfare who opened a clinic for women in similar circumstances in rural southwestern Oregon. They couldn't get government funding because they weren't "professionals." They were just women who had been through it and they offered a 12-week program in job skills, legal rights, survival as a single parent, money management and even a clothes bank so that women could dress up appropriately for job interviews. Ninety-eight percent of the women who went through the program who had dropped out of high school earned their diplomas in those 12 weeks. Within a year, most were employed or in training for a specific job or in college.

Jesus solved the problem of human need by empowering the disciples to see the crowds as part of their own community - to see that whatever they had, no matter how limited it seemed in the face of the problem, when shared is multiplied.

They began to see the world differently. Vision, seeing and hearing the world differently is the key to empowerment

In the opening scene of The Wizard of Oz we see Dorothy's life in Kansas all in black-and-white, which was what audiences in 1939 were used to. Then, when the tornado blows her and Toto "somewhere over the rainbow," Dorothy opens the door and everything is in color.

That's what faith does for us when we take stock of who we are, recognize our resources in the face of any need and put ourselves into God's hands and go ahead in faith with what we have. Our eyes are opened to just how powerful we are -- how abundant the resources of God are -how God can truly make a way out of no way.