Midweek Faith Lift
October 6, 2021
Loaves and Fishes and More!
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. -- Soren Kierkegaard
With that as our premise, we move into this exploration of the energy and process of unfolding the steps of realizing a miracle that is encrypted in the story of the loaves and fishes as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 14:13-23.
Feeding the Five Thousand
13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17 They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was leftover of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, (NRSV)
There is another instance of this same miracle, Matthew 15:32-39, in which Jesus takes 7 loaves and a few fish and does exactly the same thing, blesses their looks to heaven, and then breaks the bread and gives it to the disciples to give to the crowd and this time he feeds 4000 men, women and children. There are two instances of this story and it also appears in all the other Gospels which signifies its importance.
So what do we make of this? Well, the first and most compelling part of the story to me, taken just at face value is that everyone was fed! No one was turned away, no one had to “qualify” for the meal, no one was deemed unworthy or unacceptable in either instance of this story. Men were not fed first, even though they were the number counted first. If we look at this story metaphysically, the numbers 5 and 7 are particularly important. The number 5 is about our human nature and sense consciousness; we have 5 senses whereby we engage the world and “know” how it is. There are two fish, which indicates a spiritual consciousness of God and human, the I-Thou energy of the Presence of God that is both in us and all around us.
It is in blessing and acknowledging that energy, in looking to heaven, which metaphysically is God-consciousness, that what we perceive with our limited human senses is multiplied. The message is that there is MUCH more than our limited human selves can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. The five loaves combined with the two fish give us 7 which is the number of human completion, which is exactly what happened. The people ate until they were physically satisfied, which was a miracle!
Now throughout the course of human history, rather than emulating this miracle experience of abundance, generosity, and inclusion, we have sought to create barriers, restrictions, sanctions and limitations and conditions we have to meet before we are worthy of being fed. I had a direct experience of this at a Catholic mass in the cathedral in St. Louis last weekend. It was stated clearly in the printed Order of Service that only practicing Catholics, not in a serious sinful state were allowed to receive communion. I had to laugh at the “serious sinful state” idea! This experience was the polar opposite of the example of Jesus in the miracle of the loaves and fishes. And it is the example of Jesus that offers us the true blueprint for a miracle; that offers us hope!
What has manifested in our world over millennia of this rigid and excluding kind of thinking is what the physicists have said: “the Universe forms itself around states of consciousness.” What we see in our world right now is the polar opposite of the expansive, generous consciousness of Jesus in these miracle stories. We see that the Universe has formed itself around a consciousness of greed, power, fear, hate, lack, exclusion, and finally a great sickness, which is no respecter of anything or anyone. We have an abundance of suffering, perhaps so that we can collectively see it, realize what has caused it, and begin to make different choices. When life conditions become untenable, unbearable, that has been a catalyst for change throughout human evolution.
Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? What is mine to do in this time and this place to co-create with the energy of Love to bring about a miracle? Our author refers to this passage as the “Alpha Passage.” It was originally written in Greek, which does not translate easily to English without a loss of meaning, nuance, and understanding. Todd Michael has worked from the original Greek to uncover a much deeper level of meaning to reveal what he describes as the 12 conditions necessary for a miracle. Much like understanding the conditions necessary for a seed to germinate into a fruit-bearing plant, we understand the conditions necessary for a miracle to germinate. The ancient peoples viewed the process of crops growing as a miraculous event and had many gods to which they prayed for a successful harvest.
The opening quotation from Kierkegaard was from The Daily Good.org, Sept. 21, 2021, and an article entitled, “Prayer for Atheists.” It struck me that in these consciousness-shifting times we are living in, the notion of prayer as changing us is a powerful insight that can become a part of this miracle-making which includes everyone, believer and non-believer alike. There was a long period in my life where I had no spiritual practice and I had fired God. However, as I looked back, the energy of God was clearly at work in my life and in all the choices I had made, many of which were nothing short of a miracle.
To help us grasp the significance of understanding the Greek origins of the Gospel writings, Todd Michael references the word logos, which is a Greek concept. The most superficial translation to English gives the meaning of logos as “word” and the gospel of John signifies Jesus as the “Word of God” made flesh. However, there is so much more to this concept of logos. It actually refers to that which gives rise to words, which is thought. It also refers to the “creative cause-and-effect relationship between thoughts and words and to the creative power of thoughts to manifest events and circumstances.” The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle, p. 17.
Logos was a term used by the philosopher Heraclitus more than 600 years before the advent of Christianity. Heraclitus believed that everything that manifested in the Universe was the direct result of interactions between the great opposites: darkness/light, male/female, hot/cold. The way that he understood the word permeated the Greek language and no doubt influenced the writer of the Gospel of John as well. What that means for us is that when we think of Logos as a part of the story of the loaves and fishes as told in Greek, there is an underlying energy that contains the idea of creation as in essence coming from holding the polarities. When I realized that, I had a huge AHA about why we are in our current dilemma.
What we have done by NOT paying real attention to the story of the loaves and fishes is to create the polar opposite of what Jesus was demonstrating. We have created lack, separation, disease, greed, and suffering. However, within that creative energy of Logos, lies the possibility of the opposite, as that is what the essence of Logos means. What that means for us is that out of this current mess, it is possible for the opposite polarity to be manifested, to be realized. How that looks is the creative process that we are called to be a part of as it unfolds. What and how we participate in the unfolding of this miracle is yet to be revealed. Our task, our challenge, our hope is to say yes to taking the journey, and so we pray, asking for prayer to change us at depth!
I want to close today with the poem The Journey by Mary Oliver as it so poignantly describes our condition:
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
~Mary Oliver
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb