My sermon this week looked at a very familiar story—Jesus feeding over five thousand people with a sack lunch—and what new things I noticed in it.
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One of the (many) books I have on my shelf is one called The Art of Noticing by a man named Rob Walker, and it is exactly what the title says: it is a book about learning how to notice things, how to pay better attention. Most of the book is filled with exercises designed to help you notice what you might not have seen before, and often those exercises have to do with paying attention to the things that you see and do over and over.
One exercise says to take the same walk every day for at least a week. Go down the same streets, make the same turns, but focus on something different each time. Look at the differences in the barks on the trees, and then notice the cracks in the sidewalks, or the front doors of the houses you pass.
That particular exercise fascinates me because of how often I see something and I think, “I’ve walked by that place and I’ve never noticed that before.” When was a youth minister in Texas I walked into our church sanctuary one day while the organist was practicing. She had been at the church for over twenty years at that time; the sanctuary was only a decade old. She motioned for me to come over and she pointed to the large stained glass window in front of her.
“What do you see?” she asked.
I stared at the window for a couple of minutes, knowing I was supposed to notice something unusual. Finally, in the top bar that ran across the window, I saw a roll of painter’s tape sitting on its side.
She smiled and said, “That’s been there since the first Sunday we moved into this room and I’m the only one who has ever noticed it.”
Well, my experience with this week’s scripture was a little looking at that window. I have both heard and preached a number of sermons on what we have come to call the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It is the only story of Jesus’ life that shows up in all four gospels, outside of those events leading up to his crucifixion, which means it shows up in every lectionary cycle, which means you’ve probably heard a bunch of sermons, too.
In the years since my father died, I have read it mostly as a grief story, or I should say a story that takes place in the wake of grief. Right before Jesus fed the crowd, John the Baptist was beheaded. Jesus kept trying to get away by himself and the crowd kept following to the point that they needed to be fed. Jesus was caught in the tension between the death of someone he dearly loved and the needs of those around him. From that angle, the story has been a meaningful one for me.
Mark tells about John’s death in the verses right before the ones we read this morning, but he doesn’t say anything about anyone telling Jesus what had happened. Instead, he says the disciples returned from their paired-up journeys with stories to tell. Jesus invited them to get out of town for a little rest and relaxation, so they took a boat across the Sea of Galilee.
The ”sea” was small enough that the crowd following them could run around the edge and meet them on the other side, which they did, but that meant they were all on the other side of the lake from the more inhabited parts, out in the middle of a field. Jesus was enjoying the chance to teach them because he could tell they were kind of lost trying to figure out how to deal with life—like a sheep without a shepherd, Mark said.
The disciples were more concerned with it being dinner time and they didn’t know where the food was going to come from, much less how they were going to pay for it, and they made that known to Jesus. He asked what food they could find and they came up with five loaves and two fish. (No little boy in Mark’s version.) And then comes the part I had not noticed before.
Jesus told them to tell the people to recline like they were getting ready for dinner, that is dinner inside. To act like they were settling in at the dinner table. Except they were in the middle of a field of green grass—which is the second thing that struck me: they weren’t out in the desert; they were in a rich pasture. And then he told them to get in groups of fifty or a hundred. The Greek word there has to do with being at an outside party or banquet.
All the language abounds with hospitality in response to the disciples’ sense of scarcity. They were holding five loaves of bread and a couple of fish and Jesus was saying, “Tell everyone to get ready for a big garden party.”
What Mark described in a couple of sentences had to have taken a while. The disciples moved through the crowd telling the people to group up because the party was about to start. I wonder if that is what set the miracle in motion. Jesus blessed the food he had and the disciples started handing it out, but after noticing all the different ways Jesus talked about hospitality, I wonder if folks began pulling out what they had to share and the party really started. Whatever happened, everybody ate well and they even had leftovers. I have always noticed that part because I was raised to notice meal time.
Right before my family moved back to the States from Africa permanently, my mother said, “Our lives are about to change dramatically. What is it about what we do as a family that you would most want to keep when we get to America?”
My brother and I both said, “Having dinner together.”
My mother made a big deal out of any meal. If we were having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she would take the time to scoop the stuff out of the jars and into a serving bowl and invite us all to the table. Even a quick snack could be made memorable.
When we got to Houston and my brother and I immersed ourselves in American high school life, my mother worked around schedules so we all sat down to eat together. In my twenties, when I felt distant, even estranged, from my parents the leftovers of those meals were the memories that kept me connected, even when I didn’t know how to say so.
Eventually, we found our way back to each other and the stories around the table continued.
One of the ways to notice the words we say at the Communion table—“As often as you do this, remember me”—is that Jesus wasn’t just talking about the sacrament but meant anytime we gather to share food we put ourselves back together in Jesus’ name. We are invited to hear Jesus’ words of invitation and anticipation—act like it’s about to be a banquet—whether we are sharing Communion, eating lunch at Luce’s, enjoying our snacks at Coffee Hour, or heating up leftovers.
Remember that the disciples had just come back from their travels where Jesus had sent them out and told them to stay where they were welcomed and to move on if they were not. And now they stood in the middle of a green field watching Jesus tell five thousand people they had a place at the table, even when it looked like there wasn’t enough to go around.
There’s always enough love to go around.
I hope we keep noticing that—and joining the party—over and over again. Amen.
Peace,
Milton
