Scripture text: Matthew 14:13-33
I make a pretty open secret about how much of a nerd I am. I was the kid sitting in the lunch room at school surrounded by charts and graphs that somehow, in the complexity of Dungeons and Dragons, represented an elf or a wizard or a knight in shining armor. I was the kid who could name the ten brightest stars in the night sky in order (not anymore). I was the kid who know the fictitious corporations that manufactured the X-wing and the TIE fighter in the Star Wars universe. No wonder I never had dates in high school.
Well, some things have changed, but much hasn’t. I’m still a nerd at heart. I’m still the guy that will still occasionally quote some icon of nerd-dom in my sermons. There’s a reason for that and that’s because truth can sometimes be found in the most unlikely of places. Life is full of surprises, full of the unexpected, and often times the great literature of my youth reflects that.
The Lord of the Rings has been one of my go-to texts for this sort of thing and there’s also a good reason for that. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author, was a very devoted Roman Catholic and his faith seeps into the story just about everywhere. The heroes of the tale are the diminutive hobbits, fantasy people who stand barely waist high on a normal human. They are small, often overlooked, and not taken to great deeds of strength and glory. Which is the point. Tolkien understood that it is often from the least that great things come. That was a lesson he learned from his faith.
And one of the texts that teaches that lesson is our Gospel lesson tonight. The crowds have gathered in vast numbers and Jesus, as is his wont, has taken to teaching them his wisdom. The lesson is not a short one and the hour grows late. This triggers a crisis. Matthew fastidiously reports that this crowd numbers over 5000 people (Only the men are “counted,” as was typical of ancient patriarchy. The crowd is likely much larger.) Regardless, the disciples have only their own meager fare, barely enough to feed themselves, let alone the immense number of people who have come to see Jesus.
Jesus, for his part, is not worried. When the disciples come to him to demand that he dismiss the crowds to the surrounding villages to find food, Jesus turns the tables on them by telling them to host the crowd themselves. That triggers a panic. “We don’t have enough.” You can just imagine Jesus shaking his head, taking hold of the five loaves and two fish, and grumbling something about “Oh, ye, of little faith.”
And then the miracle happens.
Christian author Michael Card calls Matthew’s depiction of this famous story as an “unmiraculous miracle” and there’s a lot of truth to that. There is no magic here. No spectacle. No fanfare. There’s no “watch this” gotcha moment. Jesus simply takes the meager food the disciples have and by divine mystery makes it enough to feed the immense crowd. From the least comes something great.
This dynamic continues in the second part of our lesson tonight. The crowd is satisfied with their meal, Jesus dismisses them, and then sends the disciples on ahead of him in a boat while he seeks a private moment to pray and recharge. Partway through the night, Jesus rejoins the disciples who are halfway across the Sea of Galilee struggling against the wind.
As before, reality as we typically understand it is little hindrance to Jesus. He walks across the water to the disciples boat, who being semi-rational human beings are unable to comprehend what they are seeing. They panic for the second time in these two stories, believing Jesus some manner of phantasm (I did say “semi-rational”).
However, once Jesus reassures them, something else remarkable happens. Peter, perhaps because he has learned at least in part the lesson of the loaves, ask to come out to Jesus on the water. Now consider this for a moment. This is Peter, a fisherman. He’s a disciple of Jesus, but as his boisterous and often misguided commentary towards Jesus’ statements indicate, he’s still got a lot to learn. No straight A student this guy.
But that’s also part of the point.
Jesus commands Peter to come and out onto the water he goes. Peter, the loud-mouthed knuckle-headed disciple, walks on water himself. From the least comes something great.
Jesus teaches time and again that just because something seems insignificant to our eyes does not mean it is so to God. He is the one who declares that it is the “meek” who will inherit the earth. He is the one who claims that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. He is the one who welcomes children and claims the kingdom belongs to ones like them. And here in back-to-back episodes, he makes a tiny meal feed thousands and grants a bumbling but enthusiastic disciple to do the impossible.
Elsewhere in the Scriptures, it is claimed that “nothing will be impossible with God.” Here, in these two miracles we see how true that is.
Never underestimate what God can do. Faith is, at its core, trust that God can do what he says and will do what he says. When Jesus says to the disciples, “give me your food” the assumption is that it will somehow be enough and sure enough, it is. When Jesus says to Peter “come” the assumption is that he will not let Peter sink and even when Peter does just that, Jesus is there to take hold of him and to keep him slipping below the waves.
So, when Jesus says from the cross that he forgives us, what does it mean? When Jesus says that he will give us life and give it abundantly, what does it mean? From the world’s perspective, we’re not much. Just a small number of ordinary folk gathered together in worship on a Sunday night. But to God, we are a miracle waiting to happen. From the least comes something great. Amen.
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