By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Several years ago, I led a women’s retreat focused on the feeding miracles in the Bible. One of our activities was to bake bread together. We gathered in a large church kitchen and, with each ingredient that we added to make the dough, we paused to tell a story about the spiritual significance of that item: water symbolizing new life, salt being a reminder of our unique giftedness, flour connecting us to a parable about the kingdom of God and a woman’s reckless generosity, and so on.
We used the time that it took for the dough to rise to share some of our common experiences as women, and to discuss how our gender shaped our relationship with God and with food, among other things. We prayed while we kneaded the dough, allowing all of our senses to be involved in the task, as the earthy smell of yeast filled us with feelings of hunger and anticipation.
When the bread was almost ready we began to celebrate a Eucharist together, pausing to sing as the freshly-baked bread came out of the oven and cooled. One of the little loaves we had baked was used for Communion that day, while the rest went home with the retreat participants.
Today marks the beginning of a five-week stretch of Gospel stories about bread. Today’s main story, the feeding of the 5000, actually occurs in all four of the Gospels. But this extended discourse about bread, about being bread, only happens in the Gospel of John. And while sometimes the truth of the matter is that bread is just bread—yes, much like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar—in the case of John’s Gospel, all of this talk about bread isn’t really very much about bread at all. Rather it’s about Jesus and about how putting Jesus at the center of your life changes things, sometimes in quite unexpected ways.
You might have noticed that today’s Gospel passage mentions signs at a couple of key points. In verse 2 we hear, “A large crowd kept following him because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.” Later, after he feeds that large crowd with meager supplies, and has twelve baskets of scraps left over to boot, the people recognize that another sign has occurred. At the risk of stating the obvious, signs always point to something. That’s what gives them their power, their meaning. When you are almost out of gas and you see a sign for a service station, the relief you feel is not caused by the sign but by what it represents. Ultimately, it’s not the sign you want, but the full tank of gas.
In much the same way, the miracles of healing and feeding are signs. We tend to forget that, because healing and feeding are such tangible forms of goodness and grace; we all know how life can be made better by them. But the Gospel writer consistently nudges us to move our focus from the signs to the signified—that is, from the miracles to Jesus.
Signs also need interpreting. The crowd in the Gospel sees Jesus as the new Moses, the one who provides manna in the wilderness to a bunch of hungry people. But they also want to make him a king, which shows that their interpretations of the signs they have witnessed is still a little off. Jesus is a lot like Moses, but he didn’t feed all these people just so they could put him in charge and let them off the hook. Perhaps the crowd jumps to the wrong conclusion because they seek security and comfort, while Jesus is ushering in a new reality, a beloved community instead of just another kingdom. But it doesn’t help that signs can have multiple meanings, and sometimes we pick the wrong one.
Meanwhile, Jesus is also a kind of a sign—a sign pointing beyond himself, to God. Think about what happens just a few verses after the feeding miracle, when the disciples find themselves in a small boat on a rough sea. First, Jesus performs yet another miracle, another sign, walking on water as if it were dry land. And then he interprets it all by saying, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
These signs are revelations, showing us who Jesus is. And Jesus is a revelation, showing us who God is. Ever since God revealed Godself to Moses in the burning bush, God has been understood as the great “I am.” There is no clearer way for Jesus to align himself with God than to echo, “It is I.” And if we still don’t get the point, Jesus tells us not to be afraid. That is what messengers of God always says when God is near—be not afraid.
At that moment we see where all these signs have been pointing—to Jesus, yes, but to Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God. Ultimately God is the one who feeds the hungry, who heals the sick, and who has authority over the waters of the deep. Jesus knows this, and wants us to know it, too.
I hope that as we have been working through how signs function in this famous Gospel story we have been reminded that sacraments are also signs—outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace. Just as that miraculous feeding of the 5000 was not primarily about the bread or the fish, or even about filling hungry bellies, the Eucharist is not primarily about bread or wine, or even about scratching a spiritual itch. It is about transforming us, through grace, from individuals to a beloved community, from lone spiritual seekers to the Body of Christ. It should change everything that comes after, in our whole lives and the way we are in the world.
It is like that retreat I led all those years ago. I could not teach other people to bake bread until I knew how to do it myself. But once I had that skill and shared it in community, it was transformed. I now bake bread not simply to feed my family’s physical hunger, but to feed something inside of me that needs to be both nurtured and shared. That community of women, the stories and songs and rituals we shared, is with me every time I bake bread.
In much the same way, we need to receive the sacrament of Communion in order to share true communion, true community, with others. The act of receiving Communion, whether it happens once a year or every day, should always be moving us beyond ourselves, beyond even our local church community. It is pointing us to Jesus, and through Jesus to a God-centered life. It is reminding us not to be afraid. It is transforming us from the inside out, and by God’s grace it can do this whether we are receiving it physically in person or spiritually from afar. To paraphrase Richard Hooker, the miraculous thing about the Eucharist is not that bread becomes the Body of Christ—it’s that we do.
