300 Acres of Pizza

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Probably a Chipotle barbacoa burrito and a root beer with two slices of lemon.  Or maybe a well-marbled porterhouse steak with a nice glass of red wine (you don’t have to card me, I am of age).  Those are probably my favorite meals.  On a very joyous day in the life of the church, like a holyday or the day of a patron saint, that would be a good meal.

            Every person has his or her own favorite meal.  Maybe it’s a meal cooked by mom.  Maybe it’s fast food.  Maybe it’s whatever is left over in the fridge.  Sometimes it’s just one food.  Maybe it’s more like a top ten…or twenty.  Lots of people like pizza.  According to one website, Americans consumed 3 billion pizzas last year.  That’s billion with a b.  That’s 300 acres, or 57 square miles of pizza.  That’s a lot of eating. 

            There was a lot of eating today in the Gospel passage we heard.  The people ate until they were satisfied, and there were 5,000 men, “not counting women and children.”  They didn’t have pizza.  They didn’t have steak.  They certainly didn’t have a barbacoa burrito.  Loaves and fish were on the menu that day, and that’s what the people ate.  That’s what Jesus fed them.

            Now some people will say that the miracle that happened there is that Jesus got all the people to share with each other, because they felt bad that they had something hidden in their tunics, and all the disciples had were five loaves and two fish.  And certainly, especially in some families, or with college students, sharing is a minor miracle.  But that eisegesis, that reading our modern presuppositions into the Scripture, does not gel with the point that St. Matthew is trying to get across: Jesus fed the people.  Jesus’ concern for them led Him to supply their needs.  We heard in the psalm response: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.”  These people were fed by the hand of the Lord.  God the Father took care of His children. 

            Have you ever seen a child try to cook dinner for itself?  It’s a mess!!  The measurements are never right, they can’t use the oven or the stove, and there are spices and liquids all over the place.  I once tried to make zucchini bread for my mom when she was gone and I was being watched by a baby sitter.  Don’t ask me why, but my baby sitter let me.  I thought that all we needed was shredded zucchini, flour, eggs, and milk.  So I mixed them together in a bread pan and stuck it in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes with my baby sitter’s help (don’t worry, I have come a long way since then in cooking).  When it came out, I stuck a toothpick in it, because that’s what you do when you’re done cooking bread.  I had no idea what it was supposed to do, but I had seen my mother do it countless times, so I did it, too.  And then I cut a piece for myself.  It was gooey on the inside, and it tasted nothing like my mother’s zucchini bread.  None of you are probably surprised.

            When we try to feed ourselves, by ourselves, we ruin it, and we end up hungry.  When we are convinced we have everything under control and we know how to do it best by ourselves (like a child), very little turns out right.  We don’t know how to get the good stuff, and we tend to choose the bad stuff given the choice.  The child in the checkout lane never chooses something healthy.  He or she almost always goes for the candy.  We cannot feed ourselves. 

            But Jesus does not leave us to our own devices to starve.  He loves us too much to do that.  His heart is moved with pity for us, because we cannot provide what we need for ourselves.  Oh sure, we can provide work for ourselves (though even those talents that get us a job come from God), and we can make a living, and provide food and drink and a house and healthcare: the basic necessities of life, if we’re diligent, hardworking, and lucky.  But when we die, and we all will, what then?  We don’t know how to bake salvation.  We’ve tried.  It’s ended badly. 

            Jesus offers us salvation.  He feeds us with the finest wheat.  We do not feed ourselves.  When we try, we’re like the Israelites in the desert who tried to get more manna than we needed, only to see it rot.  We’re like the people from the first reading who spend our money on what is not bread and our wages for what fails to satisfy.  If you want to eat, says the Lord through the Prophet Isaiah, come to me.  You will be satisfied.

           

In Israel, in the city of Tabgha, there is a church called the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish.  And in the floor in front of  the main altar, there is a famous mosaic.  The mosaic is a picture of a basket with two fish and four loaves.  No, they didn’t count incorrectly.  The fifth loaf is on the altar.  We take what we can do: provide the basics.  We give God the bread.  That bread is made up of many grains of wheat crushed and ground to a fine flour.  That’s our life.  We’re not meant only to give God the hosts.  We’re supposed to unite our lives—the parts that are joyful and the parts of us that have been crushed—with the bread.  And in offering that little bit to God, we receive back what we could have never created on our own: the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.  God is so good to us.  He doesn’t let us starve.  He satisfies us with the bread from heaven.  Mere men (both men and women) eat the bread of angels, the panis angelicus.  “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.”