Isaiah 55:1-5 and Matthew 14:13-21
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| Miracle of the Bread and Fish, Giovanni Lanfranco 1620-1623 PD |
When my Dad was a boy, he was invited to attend a friend’s birthday party.
Now back in those days, being invited to a birthday party was a pretty big occasion.
If you were invited to attend, you would dress in your Sunday best and you were instructed on the importance of manners and birthday protocol.
Please and thank you were emphasized and children were taught how to follow each possible scenario in accordance with the expected etiquette.
No one wanted their child to be the center of gossip in the town for their poor manners or offensive demeanor.
Compliments on a child’s disposition were a rare but a coveted reward at the local beauty parlor, and my father’s mother, Mabel, certainly always had her eye on THAT prize.
After dressing little Jimmy up in his bow tie and suit, then handing him the neatly wrapped gift he would take as a birthday offering, she gave him one final word of instruction.
“Now, Jimmy!” exclaimed Mabel,
“You be sure that when you leave that birthday party, you thank that little boy’s Mother for inviting you to attend such a wonderful event as this, do you understand me?”
“Yes Ma’am” came the only response Mabel ever heard until 1979 when I was born.
Hours later, after little Jimmy returned home for supper, they were sitting around the dinner table and after saying grace they began to pass the meal around the table as the interrogation began.
Each question, regarding little Jimmy’s conduct at the gathering was met with either a nod of approval or a shrug, which was the signal that the action would neither damage nor help the family’s reputation.
Relatively pleased with his report, Mabel asked little Jimmy the final and most important question;
“And when you left the party, did you tell that little boy’s mother ‘Thank you for inviting me to such a wonderful event as this’?”
“Well, actually…” offered Jimmy, those two words that I myself have found as a parent foreshadow a problematic clause.
“…the boy that was leaving in front of me said, ‘Thank you for inviting me into your beautiful home to attend this wonderful party.’
She said ‘Don’t mention it!’ So, when it was my turn to leave… I didn’t.”
~
Believe it or not, “Thank you” is a foreign concept in ancient Hebrew.
In modern Hebrew, a similar but different language from that of Isaiah’s audience, the word “TODA” is used to express thanks.
But in biblical Hebrew, despite the translations we read most of those words are closer to “giving praise” “making an offering” or “making a confession.”
And believe it or not, this has more to do with what the early Jewish community believed as much as the language they spoke.
For instance, the word “Shalom” is often thought to mean “Peace” but what it actually means is far deeper.
It means “May everything be restored to you as God intended it to be.”
As God intended things to be before sin, before suffering, before hate and anger and selfish pride.
So, the phrase “Thank you,” in ancient Hebrew serves no purpose
Because if we are participants in God’s creation, the kindness we share with others is what we were meant to be doing in the first place.
Now, I’m not suggesting we don’t say “thank you,”
But what the Gospel and our reading from Isaiah seem to illustrate today are two banquets of plenty, yet not a single “thank you” seems to be offered up.
And while Isaiah’s banquet appears to be a feast of plenty, hosted in a place reserved for royalty, the Gospel tells of a feast of fish and bread, a meal that was common among the working class peasants of Galilee.
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| The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, Lambert Lombard, 16th Century PD |
There is another piece of this story we lose sight of, due to not only our history, but our own cultural place.
To host anyone in a bedouin middle eastern culture, carries enormous expectations.
When someone knocks on your door, even if such a guest is unexpected, the host will exhaust every pantry and cabinet to ensure that the guest receives the best of what the host has to offer.
If the host were to fail in providing the guest every courtesy, they would suffer a shame similar to that which Mabel hoped to avoid when my father attended that party as a boy.
So, when the disciples come to Jesus they advise him from a place of scarcity, knowing they are in a deserted place without any supplies, pantries, or food stores.
It is safe to assume, that Jesus is off the hook as the host.
The most reasonable option is to send them away, without any encore or last call, just the simple exclamation of “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
But Jesus’ reply to his disciples is almost shockingly forceful when he exclaims, “They need not go away, YOU give them something!”
There have been many claims about why it was so important to Jesus to feed this crowd.
Obviously, his compassion,
the desire to continue his teaching,
another of the famed miracles to ohhh and ahh the crowd, so they recognize him as God made flesh.
But Matthew’s Gospel is far different from Mark and Luke’s accounts.
In both Mark and Luke, Jesus begins this episode by withdrawing to this deserted place to provide respite for the disciples who've just returned to him after all their hard work, just before the crowd finds him.
Matthew’s account of this event isn’t preceded by the return of his own disciples from a hard day's work, but John the Baptist’s disciples.
They’ve just returned from another banquet, not one they were invited to but one they are cleaning up after.
It is the scene of Herod’s birthday celebration, a birthday banquet that included fine foods and wines, much better than the fish and bread being offered by the disciples.
A banquet that included some pretty good dancing, so good, in fact, that it was rewarded with the head of John the Baptist.
When John’s disciples have finished caring for John’s remains, they come to Jesus to share the news.
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| The Feast of Herod, Filippo Lippi 1452-1465 PD |
News of not only John’s death, but news that requires no divine foreknowledge to see how all this is going to end for Jesus.
John’s death signals a clear alarm to all who do not submit to the authorities of the Temple, the authority of Herod, and the authority of Rome.
But I don’t think Jesus sought solace out of fear. That’s not the Christ I’ve come to understand in scripture.
It’s hard to say why he withdrew, but I wonder if he withdrew in order to prepare for the second half of his ministry?
An event that falls at exactly the halfway point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus must prepare to serve a community that will flock to him with their needs.
Needs to be healed,
A need to find hope,
A need to know that their redemption and salvation was near,
A need, that if Jesus provides for, won't even warrant a “Thank you” for our host,
But rather, under the best of circumstances, silence, as Jesus bleeds and dies on that cross.
And silence truly is the best this crowd will offer, to include his own disciples.
No one will confess on his behalf,
No one will protest the cries to crucify him.
So, I cannot help but wonder if Jesus is bracing himself to host a feast to all those who will declare him and his ministry an enemy of Rome, the Temple, Herod, and even the very ones who he has fed.
Literally, biting the hands that have fed them as those hands are being nailed to a cross.
And yet, he calls out to us, all of us,
Then,
Now,
And always to gather at this banquet, eating what is good, delighting in rich foods, without merit or condition, without money or price, without so much as a “Thank you”.
But this isn’t just a meal being hosted for us, if we are truly followers of the Christ, it is a meal hosted by us.
Jesus does not directly distribute this meal, he distributes the meal THROUGH his disciples.
And this poses a challenge, because we expect a thank you if we are the hosts, don’t we?
Not only do we expect a thank you, but we need to weigh our resources first.
Given a couple loaves of bread and some fish, there is no way we are even going to try and host 5,000 people plus women and children who have not been counted!
We are going to make sure we have plenty first and only then can we even justify hosting others.
But at the very least, we can make sure that these are people like us.
Similar values and mindsets, because after all these people gathered around Jesus are, in fact followers of Christ.
At least while they are being fed.
Yet, this isn’t the case in Isaiah.
Isaiah 55 is a poem written during the conclusion of a second period of Israel’s exilic history.
A period in which the Israelite people have caravanned over 900 miles through the desert to return to Jerusalem from their exile in what is modern day Iraq.
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| The Flight of the Prisoners, James Tissot 1896-1902 PD |
Following a war that has decimated them culturally, socially, and literally.
Returning to a home they have not seen in nearly a century and some of them have only heard about in stories.
Leaving behind a people who have treated them as second class citizens, if they were lucky!
And many of them were far from lucky, because when Jerusalem was invaded and the Temple was destroyed, those considered lucky were the ones who had died on the battlefields at the hands of the Babylonians.
So, Isaiah provides a poem that assures a banquet of the finest foods.
An unconditional feast, without any cost what-so-ever.
A feast that will mark an everlasting covenant as they return to their homeland,
Welcoming them …..
…and all nations?
It’s a tough one to read.
And I would warn you that if you don’t like the way it sounds, don’t read the footnotes either, because when Isaiah claims this is a feast for all nations,
It includes the one that has destroyed their holiest place, the Temple.
It includes the one that has killed their sons and fathers.
It includes the nation that has enslaved their wives and children.
The same nation who banished them from their homes for nearly a century before.
The Persians and Cyrus the Great gave them permission to caravan through one of the most miserable places on earth
only to return home to a place of smoldering ash.
Sound like someone you’d like to ask to “please, pass the butter” at such a banquet?
I never much liked this reading until I experienced it.
During my second year of seminary I took a trip to Israel and Palestine.
Our first night was spent in Bethlehem, a Palestinian controlled town.
We were instructed to travel nowhere alone, but when I first got to my hotel room, I went out on the balcony and heard the call for prayer as I overlooked the city’s skyline.
It had been just over seven years since my combat tour in Iraq and as I looked out over the city, I felt uneasy yet drawn to this city.
I wanted to walk the alleyways and hear Arabic being spoken in the bustling shops as the minarets blasted out the prayers over the loudspeakers.
It was partly nostalgia but it was also partly confronting my own fear, my own anger, my own hate.
I had lost two close friends during my deployment and my battalion had suffered the loss of 46 others.
And although Palestine is not Iraq and its people are not the same either, the similarities in that town brought memories flooding back to me.
As I walked down the street alone, in the darkness, unarmed and scared, I saw a coffee shop that was open after I had walked to the center of the street's traffic circles and was returning to my hotel.
I walked in to find two young men sitting with an older man in the corner while two of the cafe’s baristas were standing behind the counter.
I ordered a coffee that is common in the middle east; Turkish coffee.
It's a sweet concoction of strong coffee with lots of sugar that leaves a thick coating of grounds in the bottom of a plain glass when you’ve finished.
When my coffee was made, the barista patted a plastic chair next to him and invited me to watch soccer on the tv with him.
The seat left my back exposed to the door as well as the men sitting in the corner.
I hesitated but I found myself sitting next to him as we discussed soccer and I finished my cup of coffee.
As I was paying for my coffee I tipped him the price of another cup and he objected as I began to walk out the door.
I told him that he deserved it because it was the best cup of coffee I had ever had, and I love coffee.
I have to be honest, it was good but not the best I had ever drank.
It was my hosts who made that coffee so good.
My time in that cafe and with the people in Bethlehem healed many wounds.
They were all kind to me that night and the next day, Epiphany, when instead of attending worship, I again walked Bethlehem’s city streets.
That night, before I returned to my hotel, I found a Catholic church which had a nativity scene in their open courtyard with a kneeler.
It was the last stop I made when I fell to my knees and I prayed.
I thanked God for that cup of coffee, given to me through the hands of that man.
A cup of coffee that I hope I can share at the table that God will provide for both those I love and those who fear and hate me.
Amen
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