EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Isaiah 55: 1-3; Romans 8: 35, 37-39; Matthew 14: 13-21

(Rev. Dr. Francis Perry Azah)

The contemporaries of the prophet Isaiah, and those of Jesus, were familiar with the daily struggle of earning enough food for themselves and their families; the very idea of plentiful, free food was, in itself, a feast for the mind. But, in addition to providing for their physical appetites, the Lord was also offering to satisfy the spiritual hungers of his people. Perhaps in this regard modern believers can best understand the significance of these readings. In one way or another, all of today’s readings emphasize that it is God who willingly provides what we are really searching for. Isaiah is trying to convince his people of God’s Provident goodness.

The prophet does not understand why they still search in vain and useless ways, spending “money on what cannot nourish and your wages on what fails to satisfy” (v.2). We are to listen to God and go his way. Isaiah seemed to recognize that using symbols of food and drink would capture the people's imagination. He wanted them to hear God’s invitation to come to him, to recommit their hearts and minds to him. Isaiah believed that such a restored relationship with God would satisfy their deepest needs and yearnings; their spiritual needs. They only had to listen and to say yes.

St. Matthew’s Gospel recalls the feeding of the five thousand, an episode common to all four Gospels. John the Baptist’s martyrdom must have had a tremendous impact on Jesus, even though the Evangelist's concise style does not show it. The story is succinct, beginning with Jesus putting his disciples to the test by telling them to feed the vast crowd after he had ministered to them. He takes all of what they have, five barley loaves and two fish, and, miraculously, through the hands of his disciples, distributes this food to the people. Jesus’ gestures of taking the bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it are described with the same verbs St. Matthew uses to describe Jesus' actions at the Last Supper.

St. Paul in the second reading speaks differently about the same dependence of the human spirit on God, as we depend on food for bodily nourishment. The experience of God’s love is so great that nothing (except our deviating will) is capable of displacing it, not even “anguish or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword” (v.35). St. Paul says that not even death itself can dim the light of God’s love. Tremendous words for a tremendous reality, if we only knew.

In our gospel today we meditate on the awe-inspiring power of God to use littleness to achieve greatness. So, as he stepped ashore, he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them and healed their sick. When evening came, the disciples went to him asking him to send the crowd away; but Jesus told them to feed the people themselves. There is a startling contrast here between the great size of the crowd and the small number of the Apostles, twelve men, and very ordinary men they were too by the world's standards – fishermen, tax-collectors - nothing much to work on there. But Jesus used five loaves and two fish to feed them, really. How did he do it? The Apostles must have been shocked when Jesus said these words.

They must have wondered at him and thought, ‘He can't be serious. He knows as well as we do that five loaves and two fish wouldn't even make an appetizer. How can he expect us to do something for these people?’ That was the magic word, wasn't it? That's what frightened these followers of Jesus as they stood there before this gigantic problem, that he should dare suggest that they should, that they could, do something themselves. So now we have been brought to the sharp point of this gospel - to the real point of what it means to be a Christian in today's world – to what it means to be a true follower of Jesus and rely totally on his power. He has brought his Apostles and all of us to the heart of the Christian challenge.

The crowds have received more than a free meal; it is a free meal pointing them to a fullness of life sustained by a food beyond their capacity to purchase. This was the burden of Jesus' entire mission - to lead them (and us) beyond the material to the spiritual - where true life is to be found. Isaiah, in the first reading, cries out with the very words of God, imbued with a desperate longing for our response: "Oh, come to the water, all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come!" Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy?

This impassioned invitation from the Lord himself is searching for ears capable of hearing and valuing it; for men and women, and children, who have somehow learned to pierce the extravagant brightness of this world's offerings and have glimpsed the eternal beauty and joy of the world beyond. Money and wages can buy food for this life; but for eternal life we must draw close to the Lord. When the crowds have gone, Jesus sends the disciples across the lake to the other side, and he himself goes up into the hills to pray. He shows us the source of the strength and the integration of his inner, psychological life. Jesus lets absolutely nothing stand in the way of his prayer; not even a busy day, not a tragedy, not the acclaim of a crowd, not even his death on a cross. Jesus, in fact, died praying.