Five barley loaves and two small fishes
“But what are they among so many?” The story of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness along with the story of the Canaanite woman who seeks the healing of her daughter “grievously vexed with a devil” are important teachings for us. For we, too, are in the wilderness. The question is about what is learned in the wilderness. These stories in the Christian scriptures recall the Exodus in the Hebrew scriptures.
Wisdom, Thomas Aquinas observes, is spiritual refreshment. Wisdom takes three forms. There is the wisdom that belongs to teachings of the ancient philosophers. There is the wisdom that belongs to the Law of Moses. But both those forms of wisdom are limited and incomplete, partial truths, we might say. Why? Because of sin and evil. Thus creation, though good, is not perfect and the Law, though good, is not perfect. Indeed, the Law, as Paul observes, is sin in the sense that it convicts us of what we would like to be but are not. Something more is needed, namely, grace. In the Christian understanding, Christ is “the power and the wisdom of God.” Both these stories show us that power and wisdom and in intriguing ways. Both are about what is learned in the wilderness, itself a powerful metaphor for the human condition.
How do we deal with the realities of suffering and evil? Wilderness is imagined in a number of different ways: as a kind of pristine paradise of nature but sometimes without the presence of humans, as a refuge and a retreat from the “madding crowd” of the city, as the urban jungle of contemporary life, or as a “wasteland,” to use T.S. Eliot’s famous image for his poem, The Waste Land. He saw our modern world as a desolating wilderness of destruction and emptiness following the devastations of the First World War. Dante, in the early 14th century, says that he awoke to find himself in a selva obscura, a selva selvaggia, a dark and savage wood. And yet he says that there he discovered “a great good”. There are things to be learned in the wilderness. That is the point of the Exodus for Israel that provides the larger context that informs the stories read in Chapel this week. It is really about what can be learned in the wilderness journey of our lives. Wisdom is spiritual refreshment.
What is learned sustains us. What is learned is wisdom, a way of understanding, that allows us to face the realities of sin and evil within and without ourselves. Those who are twice-born, the American philosopher William James suggests, assert the essential goodness of being in the very face of suffering and evil. The wilderness metaphor belongs to self-reflection. In the one story, Christ feeds the multitude. Out of so little comes so much, more than enough to feed the crowd. It is an important part of what will become the Passion of Christ. Here he makes so much out of our so little, five barley loaves and two small fishes. They are understood symbolically, as the Fathers and the Medieval theologians say, of the Law, the first five books of Moses, and, perhaps, the other two parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Prophets and the Writings. Both point to Christ as the fulfillment of the Scriptures. So much from so little. We live as the Canaanite woman understands even like “little dogs” who “eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”
Her story is also about what is learned in the wilderness. It is about the testing of the disciples and the testing of her faith in perseverance. She has an insight into God about the healing power and wisdom of God in Christ. She has come out of the coasts of Tyre and Sidon and into the wilderness seeking Christ for the healing of her daughter who is possessed with a demon, troubled in her mind, we might say. She won’t be put off by the disciples who think that Jesus is just for the few and not for all.
The real journey of the Exodus as her story shows is for all who wrestle with God. For that is what it means to be a true Israelite. There is all the difference in the world between wrestling against God and wrestling with God. Her story is about the latter. Her desire for the good of another, her daughter, leads to the break-through moment of the truth which she has grasped in Christ. The image is lovely. Even the little dogs eat of the crumbs. Just so in the wilderness, twelve baskets of crumbs, of fragments from the five barley loaves, are taken up. One for each of the twelve tribes of Israel but even more for the twelve apostles of the Church. In other words we are fed in the wilderness by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. Wisdom is our real refreshment and the healing of our broken hearts and minds.
These stories belong to the preparations for the passover, for the Passion of Christ. Here so much is made out of so little and we are fed even from the crumbs. It is more than enough. But in the Passion, Christ makes something out of the very nothingness of sin and evil. Wisdom is found not in a kind of escape from the world but in the midst of suffering and evil. Only God makes so much out of our so little. Only God makes something out of nothing. To learn this is to have learned a great good.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy