The Yahweh Administration

The Yahweh Administration--August 8, 2018

"In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, 'I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way--and some of them have come from a great distance.' His disciples replied, 'How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?' He asked them, 'How many loaves do you have?' They said, 'Seven.' Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. They also had a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away." [Mark 8:1-9]

Does it seem like we have heard this story before?  Does it feel like déjà vu all over again?  Don’t worry—it’s safe to admit it.  This story seems awfully familiar—like we are getting miracle re-runs or re-boots, like the way TV executives try and recycle old sitcom ideas from the 1990s because they have no creative new ideas.  And a lot like watching an episode of one of those rebooted shows on television, this story about a miraculous feeding of 4,000 people feels like it has lost some of the punch it had the first time around.  

We all know the story of the feeding of the five thousand--that is the one miracle, other than the resurrection, that all four New Testament gospels include.  Even for people who haven't been in a church in decades and haven't read a Bible since childhood, chances are, the feeding of the five thousand is one of those stories that sticks in your memory.  And yet here we have what feels like a retread of the same basic plot points... but with only 4,000 people, just two chapters after the miracle that got all the headlines.

After all, when Jesus fed a crowd before (two chapters earlier in Mark 6, for starters), there were more people (the count in that first feeding miracle is 5,000) and there was less food to work with (five loaves as opposed to seven here).  Come on, let’s just say it: this feels, at first blush, like a gospel re-run of a story we have already been through before.

And yet our narrator Mark clearly wants us to see these as two different events, to separate miracles, even if they are remarkably similar (see Mark 6:19-20 on that point, where Jesus has a conversation with his disciples and brings up both of events miraculous feedings and counts them as separate events).  Sure, it might feel a little anticlimactic for us to hear about a feeding of four thousand people if we already have heard a story about Jesus feeding five thousand people with even fewer raw materials. But Mark thinks it is important that we hear this story.  And that’s saying something, since Mark has no problems whatsoever just skimming through events when he wants to (after all, Mark just starts gospel with Jesus stepping into the scene already at thirty years old, without a manger, a shepherd, or a hint of a childhood). So if we already know that Jesus can do this kind of a miracle, why give us the whole nine yards all over again?  

Well, there's the fifty-thousand dollar question. What is the point of these miraculous feeding stories, especially when Jesus does this kind of thing twice?  Once might just be a regarded as a show of power--sort of a way of Jesus (or the Gospel-writers) saying like an infomercial host hawking a kitchen gadget, "Look at all Jesus can do! He heals blind people, he casts out demons, he walks on water, and now, would you believe it, he multiplies loaves!  And he makes julienne fries!"  If we just got one miraculous feeding story, we could treat this as a simple resumé-booster, meant to make Jesus look better. But a second miracle that doesn't have the same numbers, well that almost seems anti-climactic. 

Except... maybe the repetition isn't a weakness, but a point of emphasis.  We who live in an age that seeks after novelty for novelty's sake, we whose smart-phones are already obsolete as soon as we get them home from the store, we who are always chasing after the new and unusual, maybe we have been missing the point.  Maybe the way Jesus keeps hosting miraculously abundant dinner parties is meant to actually say something about the way God runs the universe!  

After all, Jesus' one recurring main theme in all of his teachings, parables, and sayings is what we usually translate as something like "the Kingdom of God," or "the Reign of God," or "the kingdom of heaven" (and I'd like to make a case sometime for translating it, "the Yahweh Administration," but that's for another day).  Jesus talks about what it looks like, and how things work, where God runs the show.  That is not only "up" in some heavenly realm, or "off in the future" in some distant afterlife, but anywhere and everywhere now where God's will is done.  Jesus tips his hand regularly at the start of a story by beginning it with, "The Kingdom of God is like..."  We are used to reading those words before Jesus' stories and so we know to expect that his parables are meant to sketch out what it looks like where God's Reign is unfolding.

But what if Jesus never stopped teaching that same lesson, even when he wasn't speaking?  What if every action of Jesus--every untouchable embraced into healing, every invitation to tax collectors in trees, every foot washed, and yes, every miraculous feeding--what if these were all ongoing ways of fleshing out what it looks like where God reigns? What if the recurring abundance, whether with five thousand or four thousand, five loaves or seven, is a picture of the platform of the Yahweh Administration?  And what if Jesus' compassion that leads him to provide for this crowd of strangers is a display of what God's table always looks like?

This, I believe, is what Jesus is up to.  This isn't a disappointing retread of a rerun miracle--this is Jesus showing that the feeding of the hungry is not a fluke but a central plank of the Yahweh Administration.  This is Jesus saying and showing what matters to him--and thus also what matters to God.  The makeshift table there in the middle of nowhere as baskets of broken loaves and sardines are passed around is a picture of divine abundance that frees us from having to be ruled by fear and scarcity.  This is a lived parable. The table in the desert is a statement from Jesus to all the world that we no longer have to view the people around us as enemies or competition, all grabbing and clutching at the same small pile of resources.  Jesus' repeated feedings are his way of saying, "When you live within the freedom and abundance of the Reign of God, you do not have to keep hoarding or pushing other people away out of fear that they are going to take what you need.  There is enough for all. Look what I do with a handful of loaves after all."  

And from there, it is simply a question of whether we will dare to trust Jesus and the promises he makes about the Yahweh Administration... or whether we will not trust him. Like the panicked crowds scrambling into the banks to get back their money at the start of the Great Depression, this is largely a matter of whether we will live in trust or fear--fear that there will not be enough creates the scarcity.  Trust that there will be enough for all allows us to witness provision for all.  Jesus creates a moment here in this lesser-known miracle to show to us all that the first event with the fish and the loaves was not a one-off or a fluke, but the kind of abundance made possible by the Reign of God.  

The only question now is whether we dare trust and live and work alongside the agenda of the Yahweh Administration, this Reign of God, or whether we will keep insisting that we cannot trust God to provide for all.  What will you and I do with this day?  And dare we open up our clenched fists because we can trust that God makes enough for everybody?

Lord Jesus, give us confidence in your provision, and let us be a part of your unfolding reign over all the universe.  Use what we bring today, whatever it is.  Use all that we are.