Looked - honoring the work of God, not his own devices. Saw - the importance of being seen can never be underestimated - who goes unseen in our congregations/communities? Perhaps the church is now in the wilderness- we are getting hungrier and hungrier as are those around us- how will we “feed them” and ourselves with God’s abundance? Think of conflict in church- better to address it than avoid it and return to “niceness” Hard place but important to journey in the wilderness and not to leave or be sent awayīeing sent home = going back to Egypt - might be easier but neither leads to the promised landĪre we willing to walk through the wilderness? To go hungry trusting in God’s provision? Place of searching for God and who we are in response “Such an experience is not unusual for African-Americans.out of nickels and pennies, quarters and dimes.African Americans built education institutions like Wilberforce University, denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, healthcare institutions like Meharry, great houses of prayer like Mother Bethel in Philadelphia, and countless others” Michael Joseph Brown, “Matthew” True to Our Native Land Perhaps an allusion to the early church pooling their resources for greater impact - Acts 2:42 Huge gathering - over 5000 would have been larger than most all of the towns in the entire region 5,000 men plus women and children in one place, angry or bewildered or dispirited over the death of John the baptizer would make a great start to an army that could have stormed Herod’s palace. One reason Herod was holding John in prison and did not put him to death immediately was because he feared the crowd (v.5).Ī revolutionary leader – like a Zealot – could have used this moment to rally troops. However, they, too, may have just been hearing of John’s death and their sojourn may have also been an act of grief or bewilderment or something else desperate enough to end up in the wilderness with no food. Many translations assume that what the crowd heard was that Jesus was out in the deserted place. ![]() The second aorist participle of “having heard” refers to the crowd. Grief is understandable for any number of reasons. Is he going to grieve? To pray? To hide? Any of these answers is possible. The first refers to Jesus having heard the message of John’s death and leaving for a deserted place as a result. The aorist participle “having heard” appears twice here. ![]() Jesus: out of seeming scarcity there is abundanceĭ Mark Davis (Left Behind And Loving It): Herod: out of seeming abundance there was death and scarcity “The perverse image of John’s head on a dish is replaced by the feeding of the five thousand the meal of horror yields to the foreshadowing of the messianic banquet” Amy-Jill Levine, “Matthew”, Women’s Bible Commentary They want to leave and isolate themselves in grief 165)įuneral banquet- this occurs right after they received news of John the Baptist’s death Since it is impossible to determine precisely what experience underlies the story, it is best to bracket out the question of historicity and ask instead what theological meaning the narrative held for Matthew.” (Douglas Hare, Interpretation: Matthew, p. “These are both edifying retellings of the story, but they hardly do justice to the story in the Gospels, which intends to report a supernatural event. The “spiritual hunger was satisfied when each person received a miniscule fragment of the shared food.” (Douglas Hare, Interpretation: Matthew, p. ![]() In the end, the outpouring of sharing of the community produced an abundance. People were so moved by the act of generosity, that they took what they had naturally brought with them and shared. This is a question that we are concerned with, but Matthew and the early church was not. Yeah fun fact!īiblical scholars have suggested that this was part of the early Church’s Eucharistic liturgy (see The Eucharist in the New Testament and the Early Church By Eugene LaVerdiere)Ĭommunion Liturgy based on The Feeding of the Multitudes by Christopher Grundy Fishes? Why not fish? Fishes is correct when referring to more than one species of fish.
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