The Gospel Imperative to Feed the Hungry

The story about Jesus feeding a multitude of people is one of the few stories about Jesus that is found in all four Gospels. This tells us that this story was of great importance for early Christians in describing who Jesus was and what Jesus’ ministry was about. And, while all four tell this story, I am particularly intrigued by John’s rendition in John 6:1-14.

In reading John’s account, one should notice that Jesus goes up on a mountain. This portrays him in Mosaic terms, and because John mentions that the Passover was near, we are to perhaps understand that this feeding story reflects the Exodus story, and specifically the wandering in the wilderness when God provided manna for the people to eat.

But wait, something is different in this story concerning the provisions for nourishment.  In the giving of manna to Israel in the wilderness, it is God who causes the manna to fall from heaven to the people. Manna just falls from heaven. 

But in the story of the feeding of the multitude in John, Jesus asks one of his disciples, Philip, what they were going to do about feeding the people. Yes, John does insert the little comment that Jesus asked Philip this question in order to test him, because, as John tells us, Jesus knew what he was going to do. But why is Jesus testing Philip in this way?  Why does he not just create enough food for the people? Why get the disciples involved in all of this?

What seems most interesting to me is the question Jesus asks Philip: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” It seems like a very leading question to me. Why did Jesus not ask, “Do you think I can miraculously create enough bread to feed these people?”After all, if the people followed him because he had cured many of great illness, would not the disciples, his closest followers, know that he could do most anything? This seems to be a more testing question than asking Philip where to buy food.

Philip’s answer to Jesus’ question is very telling as well: “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” In other words, even if they had a half year’s wages, they could only give each person a small amount of food, perhaps only a mouthful.  Philip seems to suggest to Jesus, “Surely this is not your plan.”

Philip’s answer exposes what he is most concerned about—Money. You can almost hear him say, “This will cost too much, Jesus.” “Even if we had this money Jesus, would we want to spend it on feeing this multitude of people.” “These folks are not our problem.”  Or, as he might say in our American context, “These lazy people need to work for their own food.”

Philip is not the only disciple to fail in this story. Andrew, the only other of the Twelve to be mentioned, comes to Jesus with some bread and fish he has received from a young boy. But in doing so, he looks on the small amount of food with doubt, as if it is nowhere near enough to feed the large crowd.

Which brings us to one other character in the story who is not mentioned by name. This character never speaks, but his actions speak loudly. He is the little boy. Even though he appears to be insignificant, this little boy plays a very important and central role in what Jesus does. Unlike the disciples, this boy shares what he has, possibly all he has. He probably knows that it is very little, but he is willing to share what he has.

In this way, the young boy serves as a model of faithfulness. If he and his gift, so insignificant to the followers of Jesus, can have an impact on feeding the large crowd, then no one can excuse themselves from giving and sharing in generosity in an effort to work toward the end of human hunger.

The problem facing Jesus, the disciples, and this crowd was hunger. We still live in a very hungry world. This story is also about real hunger, something millions in our world, yes even in our neighborhoods face each and every day.

But hunger is a symptom of something that is more deeply troubling: Poverty.  When people live in poverty, they cannot provide for themselves or their family members and this manifests itself in different ways, but particularly in the need for food.

Moreover, we know that hunger leads to sickness, which causes health care costs to rise. Hunger contributes to an inability for children to concentrate in school, thus they fail to learn, which leads to underemployment and unemployment. We could trace poverty and hunger to many of the ills facing our society today. But the question for us is the question Jesus posed to Philip, “How do we feed the hungry?”

We can approach feeding the hungry in two equally important ways.  First, on a personal, we can find ways of sharing what we have with others who are in need of food. We can support food banks that provide food for the hungry. We can serve lunches to children each day, especially during the summer months when they do not get meals at school. We can provide fruits and vegetables to homes that cannot afford to purchase healthier foods. We can give money to international food programs such as Bread for the World or Heifer International. There are many more ways that we can help feed the hungry.

Yet, another way to combat hunger and feed the multitudes often escapes us, for we have so reduced Jesus’ message of love and justice to a person level. We need to understand that hunger and poverty are caused by political and economic circumstances. People do not choose to be hungry. For most, and especially women and children, hunger is caused by the system in which we live that often favors the more fortunate while neglecting those who are poor.

Christians, indeed, all caring human beings have a moral imperative to proclaim to our lawmakers that God demands justice for the poor. We must understand our role in changing systems that contribute to the hunger of people and that continue to entrap people in poverty. We must stand against economic policies that cut programs that help the poor, and we must push for programs that lift the poor out of their plight to find not only nourishment, but also human dignity.

It is not enough to give a little money here and there to feed the hungry. Doing this is right and good; but it only treats the symptoms of poverty and not the underlying causes of hunger and poverty.

Jesus and God’s Economy

It is often said that Jesus had more to say about money than any other subject. From his statements about wealth and possessions, to his parables about agriculture and land, to his calling his followers to invest in treasures in heaven, Jesus’ teachings are replete with the theme of wealth and possessions. We might say that Jesus was, to some extent, an economist.

By saying that Jesus was an economist, I don’t mean that Jesus was an economist in the sense that you and I think of an economist. Jesus did not earn a degree in economics. He was not a major investor in the Roman economy. And, he wrote no book on the issue of financial success. But, he had a great deal to say about economics, and specifically how he envisioned God’s economy.

But what do we mean by God’s economy? Our modern word, “economy”, really has more to do with profits and losses and wages and benefits. It is concerned with trade deficits and budget deficits. It is focused on unemployment and welfare, and a host of other issues. All of these are legitimate concerns in a modern day economy like our own, but this is not exactly what is meant when talking about God’s economy.

Before we move to unpack what we might mean by God’s economy, we need to dispel some fallacies that I think are ingrained our cultural subconscious. First, while the idea is popular among religious conservatives, Jesus was not a capitalist, and his teachings should not be interpreted as being specifically supportive of capitalism.

It is hard to believe that Jesus even would have been a capitalist since he sided with the poor over the rich, and he gave up worldly possessions and called others to do the same. So, when some Christians want to argue that the Bible and Jesus support capitalism as God’s ordained way of doing economics, they are sadly mistaken.

Second, one can be a follower of Christ and be a capitalist or a socialist. Following Jesus is not about one’s concept of the best form of modern day economics, despite those same religious conservatives saying the opposite in recent years. We should never equate any political or economic ideology, such as capitalism or socialism, with being Christian or non-Christian.

Again, this is not to say that Jesus was not concerned with economics, for he clearly was. So, in considering what Jesus said and did that defined God’s economy, perhaps the idea we should dispel the most goes back to the word economy, and what exactly this word means. 

The Greek word from which we get our English word economy is oikonomia. The word means house-law, or perhaps better, house rules or management. It would have been used to talk about a family managing their household. But this would apply to more than simply managing the finances of the home.

If we consider, then, that Jesus was concerned with the economy, that is managing the household, we should ask exactly what this means. We could take it as Jesus talking about individual households and families taking care of their own business and managing their own affairs. But this seems a bit limiting, particularly when Jesus does not appear to be concerned with the financial success of individual families.

What if we consider Jesus to be talking about all of creation as God’s household?  This, at least from my reading of scripture, seems to make sense, and I think the story of creation from Genesis captures this idea wonderfully. We are told that the representatives of humanity were to care for the garden in which God had placed them. They were charged with caring for God’s household, and specifically with caring for each other.

And this, it appears, is how Jesus views God’s economy; an economy that is not so much concerned with profits, but with the welfare of all.

Economic systems that are focused on profits are inherently inconsistent in the effects on the lives of people within a society, for they create the haves and the have-nots. But God’s economy, as envisioned by Jesus, confronts the economies of the world with their inherent inconsistencies toward humanity that caused some to be rich and others to be poor, and judges them as unjust.

What is needed to move our economics in line with God’s economy is more fairness and equality.

When Paul was writing to the Corinthians to ask them to share with those in Jerusalem who were experiencing famine, he based that appeal on what Christ had done for them by becoming poor so that they could become rich. Paul was, of course, speaking of a spiritual richness.

But, he also understood that the economy of God was about justice and fairness, and in calling the Corinthians to give up some of their wealth for the benefit of others, Paul said, 

I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, "The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little." (2 Cor. 8:13-15)

Both Jesus and Paul understood that God was concerned with more than the spiritual welfare of people, and Jesus’ message was certainly more about economics than we often admit. But they also understood that God’s economy was about fairness and justice, particularly towards the poor. 

Christians can disagree as to how we create an economy that is more just and fair, but we cannot deny that Jesus was very clear about what constituted God’s vision of a just and fair economy. It was not the greedy accumulation of wealth that left others poor and destitute. It was the viewing of wealth and possessions as that which God graciously gives to some so that they might share with others.

The test of faithfulness to Jesus is always in how we treat the vulnerable of society. Christians who seek to follow Jesus in authentic discipleship should strive for the fulfillment of God’s economy in which the one who has much does not have too much, and the one who has little does not have too little.

Was Jesus a Uniter or a Divider?

When reading the New Testament, one discovers a great emphasis on love and unity. Indeed, the coming of the spirit at Pentecost is just one story that tells us that one of the primary works of the spirit is to unite together people from all walks of life in the community of faith. And, Paul very often speaks of unity.

Yet, such an understanding of this emphasis on unity does not necessarily mean that Jesus himself was always a uniter. I think we often picture Jesus as having a calm and innocent nature, as he speaks of love and peace.

But is this the total portrait of Jesus?  Perhaps if we look closely at the sayings of Jesus, we will find some that describe him as much as a divider as a unitier.

One of the more classic statements in which Jesus clearly draws a line of division is when he says that if any want to be his disciples, they must take up their cross and follow him. This is clearly a statement that, although not inherently divisive, certainly results in divisions as some do take up the call, while many others do not.

But some statements are even more shocking than these. For example, take Luke 12:51: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Such a view of Jesus does not sit well with those of us who would rather think about unity and togetherness, love and peace. The idea that Jesus was divisive, even intentional in his divisiveness, seems to rub against our common views of him.

I find one story from the Gospels particularly creative in portraying the divisiveness of Jesus. It is a story that involves conflict not only between Jesus and the religious opponents, but also between Jesus and his own kin.

Mark tells the story in Mark 3:20-35 in a narrative structure known as the “Markan Sandwich.” The designation describes a literary structure in which one story begins, but that story is interrupted by another story, which is told in full, and then finally the first story concludes. In this particular narrative, Jesus’ conflict with the religious leaders is “sandwiched” between his clash with his own family.

In setting up this structure, Mark is intertwining these two stories in order to show that Jesus equates, at some level, the actions of his birth family with the actions of his critics. Jesus sees both his family and his religious critics standing against him doing the will of God. They also are actively hostile towards him.

We must keep in mind the religious and cultural setting in which Jesus lives. For one thing, in a culture of honor and shame, one was to bring honor to the family name. In the minds of his family, who see Jesus as “out of his mind”, Jesus was bringing great shame onto his family, dishonoring their name among their neighbors.

In terms of the religious setting, instead of bowing to the religious authorities who accuse him of having power by Beelzebub, Jesus works outside the boundaries of religious establishment, thumbing his nose at those who would criticize him. This puts him in conflict with the religious establishment; a conflict that will heat up throughout the story.

And so it seems that both Jesus’ family and the religious leaders think him to be possessed in some sense. His family believes he is insane, which would have been attributed to demon possession, and the religious leaders outright accuse him demon possession.

But what seems interesting is that though his family and the religious authorities come to him with so-called authority, authority they expect him to follow, it seems that Jesus, in response, has drawn a line in the sand, excluding both of these groups from his inner circle.

So, instead of honoring his family by siding with them, and instead of submitting to the authority of the powerful religious establishment in Jerusalem, Jesus has called together those he calls his true family, those who do the will of God. These people, Jesus says, are his family; everyone else is outside.

But what about the parable that Jesus tells in the midst of all of this? What is its meaning?

From a literary perspective, Jesus’ parable about a house or kingdom that is divided is situated right in the middle of the sandwich. This is vitally important to how Jesus sees both his family and the religious leaders.

The parable offers Jesus an opportunity to clearly define his mission in the world. His actions of casting out demons are not accomplished by his own demon possession. They are his attacks against Satan’s dominion which he intends to plunder, and anyone who stands in the way, like his family or the religious authorities, are standing on the side of evil and are guilty of an unpardonable sin; the sin of blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, the power by which Jesus casts out evil spirits.

Both Jesus’ family and the religious elite were guilty of this sin. His family thought he was mad, and so they tried to stop him. The religious elite accused him of siding with Satan, for he did not meet their religious approval. Both of these groups stood in the path that God had laid before Jesus to do the will of God. Both of these groups sided with the kingdom of Satan.

What Jesus saw in his family and in the religious establishment of his day was symbolic of a status quo that held onto the power structures of tradition, refusing to allow God to transform those power structures into communities of love and justice.

This is the meaning of Jesus plundering Satan’s stronghold. The actions of Jesus in casting out the evil spirits function as parables of Jesus’ attack against the social, economic and political structures of his day. These are the strong man’s houses.

Thus, in rejecting his family, and in rejecting the authority of the religious establishment, Jesus made a stark division between those who stood against God’s will for justice and inclusiveness and those who would follow him through doing the will of God; a will that was epitomized by love, service, and sacrifice.

I deeply believe Jesus was a uniter, one who sought to bring together people from all walks of life. Indeed, by redefining his family as those who do the will of God, Jesus was transforming the concept of family from that which was characterized by blood kin, ethnicity, nationality, or religion to that which was exemplified by living out God’s will.

Yet, at the same time, Jesus’ message was so radical and so demanding that it was, and it remains, quite divisive. Jesus was as much a divider as he was a uniter.

Why Did Jesus Speak in Parables?

Those of us who have read the Gospels, or who are even remotely familiar with the teachings of Jesus, know that he often spoke in parables. Indeed, Jesus tells over 40 parables, many that are very familiar, such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan or the Parable of the Prodigal Son, two parables that are well known even among many non-Christians. 

But why did Jesus speak in parables? This is the question that his closest followers asked him, trying to get a sense of the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ parables, and it is a question that many of us have when looking back at Jesus’ life and ministry. Indeed, when considering the importance Jesus seems to place on his authority as the teacher of God’s will, one wonders why he talked in stories that are riddles that are hard to understand and interpret.

Would it not have been easier, and much clearer to his audience, and certainly to us living two millennium in the future, if Jesus would have been more forthright and straightforward in his speech, offering to his listeners lists of commands that are not difficult to comprehend?   

Could Jesus have not done a better job of teaching his followers exactly what he wanted them to learn if he had not been so mysterious by using parables? For sure, Jesus is clear at times, but when he communicates in parables, his meaning is very often unclear.

           

It is true that there is a sense that Jesus understood his own surroundings and his own culture and people, who lived in an agrarian Palestine, and who understood the cultural norms of the society in which they lived from day to day. The parables, then, are connections to the hearers through relevant allegory. Thus, the parables Jesus tells utilize images and ideas his contemporaries would have understood, and if we look at the parables, we quickly see how earthy many of them are.

So, in a real sense, Jesus was using everyday images and practices to speak about deeper theological and ethical issues.  Some have said Jesus did this to make these ideas easier for his listeners to understand.

But is this correct?

Yes, Jesus does use everyday images and practices in the stories he tells, but his parables do not necessarily make theological and ethical issues easier to understand. In fact, several of Jesus’ parables are confusing.  For example, the one he tells in Mark 4 about the sower who goes out to sow seed is very confusing.

           

Who is the sower? What is the seed? What do the different types of soil mean, if anything? Sure, Jesus explains his parable to the disciples, the only time he ever explains one of his parables, but even his explanation is confusing. We still do not know what the meaning of the parable is. Is it a call for us to be better soil so that we can receive the seed that will grow? If this is so, do we have any control over this? Can soil actually change its own capacity to be more or less fruitful?

But in an interesting answer to the disciples’ question about the meaning of the parables, Jesus seems to imply, or perhaps is very straightforward as to why he speaks in parables. He says in Mark 4:11-12,

“To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that

‘they may indeed look, but not perceive,
and may indeed listen, but not understand;
so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’”   

In his allusion to Isaiah 6:9, Jesus is clearly stating that his parables are difficult to understand, and they are intended to be difficult to understand. Although he uses images and practices that the people of first century Palestine would have understood, the use of these familiar images does not translate into his audience actually understanding what he is saying. 

So, again, why did Jesus use these parables, which he himself admits are difficult to understand?

Perhaps the answer as to why Jesus used these stories is that he himself was struggling to understand the mystery of God in the world. And, if it is true that Jesus was himself struggling to understand God’s purposes in the world, and was therefore struggling to make his understanding known to those around him who came to hear what he had to say about God, then we might say that the parables connect us with Jesus’ own imagination as he thought about God and God’s rule in the world.

If this is correct, then the parables are not declarations of fixed truths, but are rather journeys of the mind that Jesus invites us to take both as a community of faith, but also as individual pilgrims seeking God. These journeys of the mind, and indeed of the heart, are never ending quests for God. Perhaps this is why the parables have many various meanings, and why they, for the most part, are open-ended and ambiguous.

And this also may be why Jesus tells his disciples that he speaks in parables so that those who hear might think they understand, but they do not. He wants his hearers to struggle with the images and the actions within a parable not to find an easy answer so that they can go on their way. No, Jesus’ use of the parable is to invite those willing to invest in the struggle to take the journey with him, and to struggle to seek God.

But, in their elusiveness, Jesus’ parables describe the kingdom of God itself as elusive. If the parables about the kingdom are difficult to comprehend, how much more so is the kingdom difficult to comprehend? 

Just when we might think we have it all figured out, we are confronted with a new understanding of the kingdom of God that we never expected. This is why Jesus commands us to “Seek first the kingdom of God.” This is no one time seeking as if searching for an object we can see and touch, and once we find it we can stop seeking.  No seeking the kingdom of God is a continual seeking; an eternal searching for God’s kingdom that cannot be measured or adequately described by human language.

And so, Jesus uses parables to speak about the kingdom of God because these stories lend themselves to open-ended elusiveness that lead us to more seeking, more searching, and more questioning.  And, because these stories lead us to further seeking, searching, and questioning, they draw us slowly out of our lives of safety, security, and comfort, to imagine the reality of God.

The parables lead us from the world we know, where we feel safe and comfortable, to imagine a world we do not know, one in which God’s kingdom has come and God’s will is done, just as he taught his followers to pray.

Jesus tells parables to draw us into the stories, not as observers, but as participants. We are meant to find ourselves in these stories as part of our journey to discover who we are in light of God’s rule and how we respond to that rule.

In this sense, Jesus’ parables invite us to imagine a God beyond our descriptions and our qualifications, to contemplate our own lives in God’s rule, and to imagine a world different from our own. And, if we are willing to participate in the journey of the parables, wrestling with hearing and understanding, we may experience more deeply the God about whom Jesus spoke through these little stories called parables.

What Can the World Teach Christians about Justice?

I have been contemplating the words from Jesus’ prayer in John 17 in which he asks God that his followers remain in the world, but that they be not of the world. There is, of course, an inherent tension in these words; a tension that has troubled Christians for centuries. What is the role of Christians in society?

There are some Christians who view the relationship the church should have with the world as one of separation, isolation, and abandonment. Inherent in this approach is an understanding of the world as evil, and culture as the tool of evil. In this view, human societies are lost to sin and have no hope of redemption as societies. Heaven is the reality of God’s will for humans, and thus we ought to separate ourselves from the culture in which we live.

Another approach is one in which Christians engage culture, but only for the purpose of being intolerant and judgmental. Those who take this approach seek to use power, especially political power, to force what they believe to be Christian ideals onto the culture. Indeed, these types of groups force Christianity itself on to culture.

But are these faithful responses we ought to have to culture? Do any of these correspond to the ideas expressed by the teachings of Jesus? I would say no.

Being followers of Jesus means many things for us, but in the context of the question we are asking, it means that though we may be different in the way we understand God from those around us, and we may see the world differently than many in our culture do, and we may have different ideas about what makes a moral society, we can be faithful to our own calling as God’s people by working with others to seek the common good of all. Indeed, I would argue that seeking the common good is exactly what authenticates our faith to the world.

But, I have also come to understand that there is a need for us to recapture the practice of humility within the Christian tradition. There is no doubt that the Christian church has had many centuries of power over the western world, but I think what we are seeing among some Christians in our own political context is appalling. These Christian groups that are seeking power and seeking to push our culture toward a theocracy do not represent the Jesus that is represented in our sacred text; the Jesus who came in humility and service, not in power and might.

Jesus calls us to embrace that same humility and to reflect that humility not only through our actions towards those around us and our embrace all people, but also in our admitting that though we deeply believe in our God and in the teachings of our faith, we do not have all the answers, and we can be dead wrong about things; things about which the very world we think we ought to escape may be very right.

For example, take the Civil Rights Movement in the south and the failure of many white Christians in the south to embrace this movement, citing their religion as the basis for their bigotry. It was the changes in our culture that lead to correct changes in those churches as many of them, but of course, not all of them, moved from being racist congregations to embracing African Americans as full and fellow believers. Once changes in our culture were being made that recognized the rights of all races, then many of those Christians who were against the Civil Rights Movement began to rethink their own theological understanding and rethink their reading of scripture.

Or, take the women’s movement. During a time when women were fighting for equal rights, and when women began to take on important roles in the larger society, the church resisted this, and many denominations refused to allow women to be ordained or to serve as ministers. Some still do. But, as women began to take on these important roles in society, some denominations changed their policies and teachings about women ordination. Again, the progression that was taking place in the larger society caused Christians to rethink their readings of scripture and to reevaluate their theological teachings about role of women in the church.

And, more recently, the push for equality for gays and lesbians in our culture has led a few denominations to at least debate the issue, whereas years before, this issue would not have been on the table. Some denominations have even taken progressive steps on this issue, and polls show that more and more Christians are supporting the rights for same sex marriage. These transformations began outside the church, but Christians who desire justice and fairness have found support for their new positions in their own traditions and in the re-reading of scripture.

What I am trying to say in these examples is that these changes that have brought more justice and equality to these groups of people, though still having far to go, were changes that happened within the culture; within the world some Christians believe we are to stand against.

Does this mean that we are abandoning scripture as the authority for all church doctrine and policies, and replacing it with what the world believes to be moral? I would say no.

Scripture still holds primacy of place for normative Christian faith and practice, and serves as the foundational authority for the church in its existence in the world. But scripture must be interpreted in light of reason and experience. Scripture is what the human biblical author believed to be the revelation of God to his specific historical situation. Yet, scripture lives on through its interpretation in future generations, who must rely on reason and experience to formulate meaning for the church in each specific context.

This means that although the text of scripture continually serves as a basis of authority for the church’s faith and practice, each generation and locality of the church must find its own interpretations that are in conversation with scripture, but that are open to reason and experience. In this way, the Bible remains valid as a source of Christian faith and practice, but the literal interpretation of the Bible now has a rational filter through which the text can be sifted so that it remains relevant to an ever changing world.

And thus, as we read scripture and as we think about church teachings and doctrines, we should be reminded that those outside our Christian faith have a lot to teach us Christians who can be so myopic and narrow-minded in our views to the extent that we care little for the rights of others; rights that we have. In this way, the world serves not as a dangerous place for Christians, but as a place in which Christians can, along with all others, seek the truth that sets us free.

The central command of Jesus to us is not to be morally superior to others in our beliefs, nor to separate ourselves from this world, nor to stand in judgment of the world. The central command of Jesus to us is to love; to love God, to love our neighbors, and to love our enemies. If we practice this love with great authenticity, then the issues we face that at first seem questionable to us because of our faith, may become more acceptable if we see the people involved through eyes of love, fairness and justice.