What if the Miracle Isn't the Point?

I'm Rev. Sam LaDue, pastor of University Lutheran Church (UniLu) in Palo Alto, a small, queer-affirming, Stanford-adjacent congregation that takes the Gospel seriously and itself not so seriously. This Sunday I had no manuscript. What I had was David Whyte's poem, a loaf of banana bread with caramel baked into it, a piano, and Matthew 14. The kids and the bread did most of the real spreading of Good News.

---

based on Matthew 14:13-21, for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Loaves and Fishes | David Whyte

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

From The House of Belonging: poems by David Whyte | (Many Rivers Press). Copyright © 1996 by David Whyte

I read that to the adults in the room and let them chew on it, while I headed off to discuss the Gospel for the weekend with the kiddos.

Then I walked over to where the children were, sat down on the floor, and set a big round loaf of banana bread between us — no simple banana bread. I did a bit of a test, and tried baking it with homemade caramel at the bottom of the pan when I tossed it into the oven. I asked the littles if they would help me with the bread, if they many would help me eat it, or at least wanted to try some. I told them I needed help with this snack.

They agreed it looked pretty good. And then I floated an idea: maybe we don't need to worry about the other people in the room. There wasn't a lot, after all. So maybe just us should eat. The adults over there can go get something at coffee hour. They'll be fine. They have the ability to do that, afterall.

The kids paused.

You could feel a little moment of *yes, actually, that sounds fine*...and then the sense that I might be setting them up. Something pulling them back just a bit. (Perhaps, impressive energy reading of the adults in the room influenced this one.) But the eldest in the group came around, and she suggested that maybe, we needed to share.

Yes. Exactly that. Maybe we should share.

So I told them a story. About Jesus and his friends, who had snacks — not too different from this banana bread — and there were a lot of other people around, kind of like all the other people in the room with us. Jesus's friends were hungry, and they wanted their snacks! They also didn't feel like they had enough for everyone. And if we're being honest, they didn't particularly feel like sharing what they had. But Jesus saw things differently, and he told his friends that they had to help feed all those people anyway.

I made sure to say to the eldest who thought we might need to share that Jesus seemed to have the same idea she did. That it wasn't okay to keep it all, that maybe more had to go around to all the other people. (Kids did let me know they were very interested in the gluten free blueberry muffins also on the plate, though...) :) 

Then, as I asked the kids if they'd help me (with mom's assistance, of course) pass out this bread so everyone could have some, I re-directed my commentary to the adults in the room:

Please reflect, as you receive this bread: when in your life have you received something freely at no cost, with no requirement, no strings? When has something just been given to you?

And as the kiddos started doing the work of sharing bread, with their mom's help, I brought myself over to the piano and started singing John Foley's Come to the Water. The words are practically straight out of Isaiah, and they floated around, just moving through the room while the kids shared some fresh baked banana bread on a Sunday morning.

Come to the Water | John B. Foley, SJ
O let all who thirst
Let them come to the water
And let all who have nothing
Let them come to the Lord
Without money, without price
Why should you pay the price
Except for the Lord?

And let all who seek
Let them come to the water
And let all who have nothing
Let them come to the Lord
Without money, without strife
Why should you spend your life
Except for the Lord?

And let all who toil
Let them come to the water
And let all who are weary
Let them come to the Lord
All who labor without rest
How can your soul find rest
Except for the Lord?

And let all the poor
Let them come to the water
Bring the ones who are laden
Bring them all to the Lord
Bring the children without might
Easy the load and light
Come to the Lord

When I saw the bread go back to the altar-- impressively, there were slices left over--I stopped playing.

I asked people to share what came up for them in their reflection time. And they did. Several reflections, honest ones, about moments of unexpected gift, about receiving grace they hadn't earned or asked for.

And then I said something I'd been sitting with all week:

I wonder if we focus on the miracle in this story partly as a way of not having to sit with what it's actually asking of us. Because the miracle is comfortable, in a strange way. The miracle keeps the story safely in the category of divine intervention, not in the category of choice. If Jesus fed five thousand people by multiplying bread, that's something that happens to people. Not something people choose.

But what if we read it differently?

The disciples' instinct was pragmatic: Send them away. They need food, we don't have it, let them go get what they need. That is a completely reasonable, sensible, economically coherent position. It's also exactly how we navigate most of the world. Assess your resources, assess the need, find the gap, make the responsible call.

Jesus says: No. They remain, and you feed them.

The disciples don't dissolve the crowd. They don't pass the responsibility to someone else. They do need Jesus' help. AND- they remain present to the need they're standing inside of. Something happens there in the staying, in the refusal to send people away, that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

I want to be clear that this isn't a critique of any particular community. But, one of the larger conversations happening around churches and church leadership right now is about exactly this choice: whether we cut a check and walk away, or whether we find ways to actually be and remain together with people. Charity has its place, and providing the resources for independent choice also is important. But there is something that happens when you stay—when you don't attempt to manage need from a distance but enter and remain there—that checks simply cannot do.

Afterall, like Whyte seems to point out in his work... information is not​ what feeds the thousand. No matter what we're being told via other mediums.

Loaves and Fishes | David Whyte

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

So much gratitude for the genius of the artists and the poets. They are what make the invisible visible, what makes the unheard hearable...the unfelt feelable. David Whyte, John Foley SJ, and so many more bring us to depths of knowing that even the most epic sermon simply won't convey.