Losing the Way III:
“Serve the People and Let Them Eat” Proper 12, Year B
2 Samuel 11:1-15; 2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm
14; Psalm 145:10-18; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21
There is no turning back now from the detour from Mark’s Way.
John keeps both parts of Mark’s parable together, but explains their
meaning as interventionist magic, not transformational acts. As
if to once again prove the superiority of Jesus over the ancient Jewish
prophets, we read the story of Elisha feeding 100 men. The food
theme continues with the Psalms. According to Psalm 14: the
evildoers “eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the
Lord.” Psalm 145 praises God: “. . . you give them food in
due season . . .” The writer of the letter to the Pagan
Christians in Ephesus uses the metaphor of the love of Christ that
fills us – assuages our spiritual hunger – so that we “may be filled
with all the fullness of God.” The prayer ends with reference to
the “power at work within us to accomplish abundantly far more than all
we can ask or imagine.” Instead of an object lesson about sharing
God’s realm of distributive justice, the readings for Proper 12 are
about supernatural miracle.
For the writer of John’s Gospel, both the times and the circumstances
were very different from what the writer called Mark knew. The
first Century had turned to the second. Rome was in
decline. Patriarchy was gaining strength, so the role of women
was in transition. Gnosticism – in which the Gospel of John may
have had its roots – was becoming suspect among some of the coalescing
organizations that would eventually become the Christian church.
John was fighting for recognition and legitimacy in the midst of a
Jewish community that rejected the notion that Jesus was the long
looked-for Messiah. John’s Gospel is not a factual story about
Jesus. Instead, it is a mystical interpretation of the stories
told by the synoptic writers – including Luke/Acts – and possibly
informed by the letters of Paul (both authentic and attributed).
John’s version of the loaves and fishes miracle differs in significant
ways from the original parable as told by Mark. The context for
John’s version of Mark’s stories is “about the time for the Jewish
celebration of Passover.” This sets up a ready reference to
unleavened bread, and to the legend of manna, which magically appeared
every morning to supply the exiles returning from Egypt with food for
the journey. Anachronistically, it evokes Christian
Eucharist. Further, it establishes the context for the first of
the declarations that define Jesus’s mythic identity: I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the good shepherd, etc.
Instead of the disciples noticing there is need for bread, (Mark 6:35-36) John’s Jesus asks,
“Where are we going to get enough bread to feed this mob?” Five
Gospels translation. The disciples discuss how much
money it would cost; then Andrew says, “There’s a lad here with five
loaves of barley bread and two fish.” So “Jesus took the loaves”
from the kid and magically multiplied the amount. This is a major
change from Mark’s Jesus: “Give them something to eat
yourselves.” The followers object on economic grounds (as do the
ones in John’s story), but they come up with five loaves and two fish
among their own provisions. Only after his followers have come up
with food to share does Mark’s Jesus bless the bread, break it, and
give it to them to distribute among the crowd.
Then Jesus orders the disciples to “gather up the leftovers so that
nothing goes to waste.” The followers collect 12 baskets of
scraps from the 5 barley loaves. Nothing is said in either story
about what was done with the over-abundance of food. The point of
both the original story and John’s version seems to be that there was
not only enough, there was more than enough. But in Mark’s story,
the abundance comes from the willingness of people to share. In
John’s story, the abundance happens by the direct intervention of
divine miracle. That intervention, it should be noted,
confiscated what was needed from a child in the crowd. John’s
Jesus did not ask the boy if he was willing to give up what he
had. Perhaps the writer assumes a kind of natural altruism in the
innocence of a child. Perhaps he was familiar with the idea that
children are the ones who naturally inhabit God’s kingdom (Mark 10:14). Whatever it
might mean, that detail carries moral and theological implications
about the nature of the realm of God as well as the “body of Christ.”
The next major difference is that in Mark’s original, Jesus sends his
disciples ahead in the boat while he disperses the crowd. After
that, Jesus goes off alone to the mountain to pray. But in John’s
gospel, once the people had seen the miracle, “Jesus perceived that
they were about to come and make him king by force, so he retreated
once again to the mountain by himself.” After he has gone, the
disciples decide to row across the lake to Capernaum. Darkness
has fallen, and a strong wind has come up. Jesus is seen walking
toward the boat over the water. The disciples are
terrified. But just as they decide to take him into the boat,
they are magically transported to the shore, boat and all. Mark
has no such magical transportation. Instead, by the time Jesus
has climbed into the boat, the winds have died down. Mark says
the disciples were dumbfounded. Then he adds parenthetically,
“You see, they hadn’t understood about the loaves; they were being
obstinate.” They did not want to realize their own role in the
transformation of normal life in the Empire to God’s rule.
The writer of John’s Gospel was given a major clue about the meaning of
Mark’s parable, but – like the disciples that Mark constantly
complaints about – John didn’t get it. As a result, Christians
have a choice about what the stories might mean. The Elves are clear that
interventionist miracle and magic is what it takes to bring about God’s
Kingdom, God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion. There is
no work involved, only “belief” or – for postmodern minds – the
suspension of disbelief.
In 2 Kings chapter 4 there are
actually four miracle stories told about the prophet Elisha. The
Elves emphasize the last one as a kind of foreshadowing of Jesus’s
miracle. But three of the stories in this section concern the
distribution of food. The first has to do with a miraculous
multiplication of oil. Oil was (and still is) a valuable
commodity. In Elisha’s story, the oil is olive oil. Its
miraculous multiplication occurs so that the wife of one of the members
of Elisha’s “company of prophets” can raise enough money to prevent her
sons from being sold into slavery for payment of her dead husband’s
debts. The second story has to do with Elisha’s “company of
prophets” who were nearly poisoned by “wild gourds” mistakenly added to
a stew. It is important to note that “there was a famine in the
land” of Gilgal, where Elisha and his company were living. Elisha
saves the day by throwing some flour into the pot and saying “Serve the
people and let them eat.” The third story – the one for proper 12
– is set at the time of the first harvest. This time somebody
comes from another area where apparently there is no famine. He
brings 20 loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain. The fear is
that there will not be enough, but Elisha gives the same command he did
before: “Give it to the people and let them eat.” This
meager supply turns out to be enough to feed all 100 of Elisha’s troop
of prophets.
Perhaps if the Elves had been clued in to the distributive
justice-compassion that present-day scholars are insisting was Jesus’s
Way, we would have considered the stories from 2 Kings 4 along with
Mark’s radical parable instead of skipping it (and them)
altogether. Like Mark’s parables, Elisha’s miracles are about the
radical distribution of justice, not the magical multiplication of
food. John’s version distracts us from the radicality of God as
illustrated both in Elisha’s actions and Mark’s parable. So long
as we are stuck in John’s supernatural miracle and magic, we will
continue to fail to realize how simple it is to transform human life.
Finally, the non-sequitur in
the readings seems to be the story of David and Bathsheba.
Perhaps the Elves thought that David’s affair illustrates the kind of
sin Psalm 14 is referring to: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘there
is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds. .
.” The Preacher may think s/he can choose which to concentrate
on: sin or interventionist miracle. But this is a false choice.
The tale begins with the words of timeless myth: “In the spring
of the year, the time when kings go out to battle . . . David remained
at Jerusalem.” The ensuing narrative is indeed one of corruption
and abominable deed: greed, lust, betrayal, murder. David
has probably broken all 10 of Moses’ Commandments. But the story
is also a continuation of the Jewish liturgical argument about the
legitimacy of kingship. It offers graphic illustration of the
dangers of imperial power. David has not carried out the will of
God. Justice has fallen with Uriah.
In a story that could be a metaphor for David’s sin, in a time of
famine, Elisha commands his servant to “Put the large pot on, and make
some stew for the company of prophets.” One of the prophets then
goes out to gather herbs. He comes back with a wild gourd, which
turns out to be poisonous. Curious minds might want to know what
that is all about, especially in combination (on deep background?) with
David’s royal sins of adultery, treachery, and murder. Granted, 2 Kings 4:38-41 is
not part of the lectionary (ever). It occurs right before today’s
snippet, where Elisha provides food for 100 men from a small store
brought from a neighboring country. The saving words from Elisha
in both instances are, “serve the people and let them eat.” He
continues, “They shall eat and have some left.” King David has
not served his people. Instead, he has picked his wild
gourd. The consequences will be significant.
To serve the people is to empower them with justice-compassion.
An empowered people lives in abundant life. David forgot about
that. The Church too often has also declined to empower its
people, preferring instead to align with the prevailing Empire.
John’s retelling of Mark’s radical parable gives power not to the
people, but to the intervention of a supernatural god. It ignores
the wisdom found in the letter to the Ephesians, which credits the
power of the Christ “at work within us” through which the spirit of
life “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or
imagine.”
“Serve the people . . . They shall eat and have some left.”
BLOG ARCHIVE