A Fishy Story

You know, I can’t go into a market or a restaurant anywhere near where I teach without some kid, or some parent coming up to me and talking to me. It’s part of the price you pay for that little bit of notoriety, albeit very local. I have a friend who used to live a couple of blocks from the school where she taught and every time she was out in the front yard doing the garden she found herself giving impromptu parent conferences right there in her front of her house. She moved. It must be very difficult for those people who are really famous. That’s one of the reasons that John Lennon used to love New York. He used to be able to walk down the streets and go places and not be recognized, or so he thought.

Jesus used to have the same problem. Last week I told you how he sent out his twelve friends around the countryside to teach and to minister to people. They went out traveling, trusting to God to take care of them and to the locals for their sustenance. They stayed where they were accepted and moved on when they weren’t. And when they came back, the wanted to sit down with Jesus and tell him all about what they had been doing, and he was anxious to hear. So he suggested that they all go off somewhere where they could be by themselves and just chat. But pretty soon, people started coming around, because Jesus had acquired a certain amount of fame at this point having cast out enough demons to form a congress and healing enough people to put an HBO out of business. So then Jesus said let’s get in the boat and get the hell out of here, and so they did, and they found a nice little secluded spot where they could chat.

Jesus had had a tough little time lately. He had gone to his hometown of Nazareth and preached in the synagogue, only to have to people throw him out and chase him out of town. They were so hard on him there that he was unable to work any miracles in the area except for healing a few sickies. Then he sent his friends away to go spread the word and while they were gone, Herod goes and at the behest of his daughter, executes Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. So it had not been an easy time for him. And now, he couldn’t even sit down and have a meal with his homies without being pestered by a bunch of people wanting to hear the secret of life, or to have the odd withered hand made whole.

Jesus and his friends set off in the boat, but apparently the crowds were able to see where they were going because when the boat pulled up to the shore there were huge crowds of people waiting there. According to the story, there were at least five thousand men (because they didn’t bother counting the women and kids). According to the Gospel According to Mark (which, you may notice, I’ve been writing about for the past few weeks), Jesus was moved with pity for the crowds who came to hear his message. It says he saw them as sheep in search of a shepherd. And you know, I’ve been there in my life. There have been times when I so wanted somebody to just tell me what the hell I should do because so far, I hadn’t been doing such a great job. I can so totally understand how these people must have felt, but that’s neither here nor there. What counts is that there were a shitload of people there waiting to hear all about this new message Jesus had for them. So Jesus felt that he had to speak to them, and so he did. He taught them for quite a while. But then it got late.

The twelve disciples looked at each other and a couple of them came up to Jesus and suggested that he send them off now, so the crowds could go off to the local villages and get themselves something to eat. I’m pretty sure the disciples must have been speaking for themselves also, because they had yet to eat either and must have been thrilled to death when Jesus decided to start teaching there on the shore. But Jesus did not send the crowds away. He simply looked at the disciples and said, “Give them some food yourselves.”

There must have been times when those twelve guys thought that Jesus was simply nuts. Can you imagine standing there trying to reason with Jesus and he tells you to feed these what must have been close to ten to twelve thousand people yourself. They said, “What? Are we supposed to go out and spend the better part of a year’s wages on food to feed these people?” Interestingly enough, Jesus doesn’t argue with them, nor does he tear them a new asshole, either. He just asks them what food they have. They, themselves don’t have any food. But (and this is according to John) this little boy comes up and offers them his lunch of five loaves of bread and two fish. According to the story, Jesus has the twelve organize the crowd into little groups on the grass. He then takes the two fish and the loaves and proceeds to bless them and gives them to the disciples to distribute among the crowd. And, according to the story, everybody ate and was satisfied. On top of that, there were something like twelve baskets of leftovers.

Now I’m not going to try to tell you that the story happened exactly this way. Although, if you can accept that he got up out of a tomb and walked away, multiplying some loaves and fish shouldn’t be too hard. Nevertheless, this is one of the few stories from the life of Jesus that is actually mentioned in all four of the gospels. As you know, the gospels were all written some little time after Jesus was crucified. Mark is the oldest, followed by Matthew, then Luke, then John. But before any of them came a gospel which is known only as the “Q” document. There is no existing copy of this lost gospel, but we can be pretty sure it existed, because the other gospel writers seem to quote it. And the fact that it is mentioned in all four gospels means to me that this was considered a very important story. And whether it actually happened as written or not really isn’t the point. What matters is what the story teaches.

It’s interesting to note that when the twelve come to Jesus expecting him to solve the problem, Jesus tells them to solve it themselves. The disciples point out a problem to Jesus that still exists to this day. The people have nothing to eat. There are still plenty of people with nothing to eat. But Jesus doesn’t just up and feed them. He doesn’t make it rain manna from heaven which, according to Moses, is what God did in the wilderness for the children of Israel when they were wandering around lost. He looks them dead in the eye and says, “You feed them.” And then up comes this little child and offers unselfishly what little he has, which most of the more sane among us would no doubt of considered crazy. Can you imagine? You’re trying to feed ten thousand people and some little brat comes up and says, “I have two fish you can have.” You’d have thought he was retarded. But what Jesus does, is to take this humble offering and magnify it.

Now I have no doubt that what really happened is that once people saw this kid offering to share his food, then people started to bring out the food they had brought themselves. I mean, after all, they had come out to the wilderness to spend all day listening to this teacher. I’m sure some of them, probably a lot of them, had brought something to eat with them. We went out whale watching the other day on a two hour cruise and one person had brought an entire cooler full of sandwiches and soft drinks. There must have been quite a bit of food there. Pretty soon people started to share what they had brought and after all the sharing was done there was a bunch of food left over. And in my mind, getting these five thousand families to share their food with one another is a miracle in itself. That is truly the spirit of God alive and at work in the human spirit.

And that’s our lesson for life, children. At least, that’s what I get out of it. Don’t expect God to solve all our problems.  We have to do it.  S/He gave us everything we need.  Do good for people, and no matter how small it is, or how ineffectual you think it might be, God, or the Tao, or Allah, or whatever, will take what good you do and magnify and make it grow, like the ripples in a pond until that act of kindness touches everything in the universe. Sadly enough, that is also true for the evil we do. It spreads as well. That’s why every day, every moment, we have a choice. We can spread the light and love and forgiveness of the creative spirit, or we can spread darkness and fear. The choice is ours. But if we choose to spread love and beauty and kindness, there is no limit to the paradise we could create. And when we have learned to do that, then we will have found our way back, back into the garden.