The real miracle at the feeding of 5000

All week as I read and reread the lectionary lesson from John on the feeding of the 5000, I kept focusing on the 12 baskets left over.

There are all kinds of miracles going on in the story.  Often people want to focus on just one. They want to point to the miracle of being able to feed so many people with so little. That is what a real miracle is about isn't it? Doing what is impossible?

Yes of course.  Other people who want to deny the actual miracles of Jesus will turn the story into a 'stone soup' kind of tale. The little boy took out his picnic basket with the loves and the fishes and everyone else took out theirs, too, and they all shared and there was plenty.

I am not sure which would be a bigger miracle. 

You can put me down as one who has witnessed real miracles from Jesus, and I do believe that Jesus could and can do the miraculous. 

But I am still back to the baskets left over.

The real miracle here is that there was any left over.  Not because Jesus couldn't make more than enough from whatever is there, but because people have a tendency to hoard.

Remember in the desert?  God provided manna and told them to take only enough for the day?  And they gathered up the leftovers and it rotted?

That is how people usually act when presented by miraculous abundance.

So the real miracle to me was that the people were satisfied.  And so they didn't need to hoard.

The real miracle that happens out of all the physical miracles that Jesus did and continues to do in this world is that lives are changed and people are different.  They respond to the abundant generosity of God and learn to share.

John calls the miracles signs.  Signs that point to faith.  Not just a philosophical acknowledgment that God is who God is (creator of the universe) and Jesus is who Jesus is (God), but faith in the sense of trust.  And in that faith we start to understand the scrambling to get more or make sure I have mine, but a sense of ours.  And a sense of being a part of the miracle and therefore a part of the generosity.

The bread came straight from the hands of Jesus and it changed the people who ate it.  And every Sunday we receive from Jesus and we too are changed.  Changed into givers.  Changed into Jesus.

Lord, We give you thanks for the abundance with which you provide and the hearts that you change.  Amen

Copyright © 2006, The Rev. Dana Reardon. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Email her at mspastor@aol.com.



The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI.  A lifelong Lutheran, she came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric intensive care.  She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before becoming a New Englander.  She is still trying to understand the accent.  While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship Team.  That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more, what makes for generosity. She has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of life she learned from them.