Offering our Few Loaves and Fishes for the Salvation of the World: Homily for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost & Eighth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 1:10-17; Matthew 14:14-22

            It is easy to fall into despair before our own personal problems, the challenges faced by loved ones, and the brokenness of our society and world.  It is tempting to refuse to accept that we remain responsible for offering ourselves to Christ as best we can for healing and transformation in holiness, regardless of what is going on in our lives, families, or world.   We would usually rather avoid accepting that responsibility like the disciples did when the Lord said concerning the thousands of hungry people who had followed Him into the wilderness, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Since it had been obvious to the disciples that they did not have the provisions to feed all those people, they had asked Christ to “send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”  The disciples had only five loaves of bread and two fish, an absurdly small amount of food for a large crowd.  But they still obeyed when “He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’”  The Savior then “blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  And they all ate and were satisfied.  And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.  And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

 

            The Lord revealed His identity as the Messiah by miraculously supplying food for hungry Jews in the desert like manna from heaven in the Old Testament.  The five loaves remind us of the five books of law in the Hebrew Bible, while the two fish recall the two tablets of God’s commandments received by Moses.  From these small amounts of food came such an abundance that twelve basketsful were leftover, which reminds us of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Five thousand men and their families were fed, which again recalls the five Old Testament books of law. The Lord miraculously satisfied the hunger of a multitude in a way that showed He is the Messiah Who fulfills the promises to Abraham, which are now extended to all who respond to Him with humble faith. 

 

Christ taught the disciples and us that we must offer ourselves and our resources to become instruments of His salvation in this world, regardless of our weaknesses and inadequacies.  Adam and Eve did the opposite by disobeying the Lord’s command and indulging their self-centered desires. They thus refused to fulfill their vocations as living icons of God and pursued a path leading only to despair and death.  The Savior offered Himself on the Cross in order to liberate us from such a depraved state through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  We unite ourselves to His offering when we lift up our hearts and offer bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist in the Divine Liturgy.  He has restored and fulfilled the original purpose of food and drink in order to bring us into the eternal communion of love shared by the Persons of the Holy Trinity. He nourishes us with His Body and Blood such that His life becomes ours as participants in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. 

 

When “He looked up to Heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds,” the Savior provided an image of the Eucharist.  The disciples did not know that when they handed over their bread and fish to the Lord on that particular day.  But had they not offered what little food they had collected to Christ, the crowd would have gone hungry.  If no one offers the bread and wine for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, no one is nourished by the Eucharist.  By miraculously satisfying so many with so little, Christ revealed what it means for us to live eucharistically as we offer ourselves and our resources for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for the world.  We must not offer only bread and wine or think that communion with Christ concerns only what we do on Sunday morning.  Far from it, we must live every day as those who share in His life, offering every aspect of our existence in the world for His blessing and fulfillment.  No matter how tiny or inadequate we may think our offerings are, He multiplies them to accomplish His gracious purposes for us, our neighbors, and our world.

 

As we continue to celebrate the Dormition (or “falling asleep”) of the Theotokos, let us marvel at how an obscure Palestinian Jewish girl freely offered herself to become Christ’s virgin mother when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  By offering herself fully in that moment, she became the Theotokos, the first to receive Christ into her life and, upon her death, the first to follow Him—body, soul, and spirit-- into the heavenly kingdom.  No one forced her, even as her Son did not force the disciples and does not force us.  It is tragically possible to continue instead in the way of our first parents, enslaved to sin and the fear of death.  They did not offer themselves in obedience, but became consumers of the creation, using God’s blessings only to satisfy their own desires.   Their self-centered obsession is at the root of our corruption and we must constantly be on guard against returning to the popular path that leads to the despair of the grave.  

 

As the Theotokos’ example shows, we must never despair of the importance or the possibility of offering ourselves to Christ, regardless of the apparent insignificance of our actions or how we have weakened ourselves by our sins.  Her obedience was not limited to a one-time event but continued throughout the course of her life, even as she saw her Son rejected and condemned and stood by the foot of the Cross as He died.  Likewise, the disciples’ offering was not limited to the small amount of food they handed over on one day, for they had already obeyed His command to leave behind their occupations and families in order to follow Christ.  Had they refused to abandon their fishing nets in order to do so, Peter, James, and John would not have been on Mt. Tabor where they beheld the divine glory of the Lord at the Transfiguration.  The only way to participate in Christ’s transfiguration of the human person in holiness and to follow the Theotokos into the eternal life of the Kingdom is to persist in offering ourselves to Him in obedience each day as best we can, no matter how insignificant or difficult the particular offering may seem.  We never know how God will multiply our small offerings to bless the world. We must simply obey and leave the rest in His hands.     

 

            We will gain the spiritual strength to do so only if we are obedient in embracing the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, including keeping a rule of daily prayer, mindfully keeping a close watch on the thoughts of our hearts, and fasting in a way appropriate to our health and life circumstances. We must forgive those who have wronged us, ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, and give generously to help the needy and support the ministries of the Church.  We must repent of our sins as we embrace Christ’s forgiveness in Confession, which we should all do regularly.  And we should receive our Lord’s Body and Blood as often as we can with proper spiritual preparation.

 

That is how we will gain the strength to live eucharistically.  That is how we will be able to obey His command: “You give them something to eat.”  If we refuse to live in communion with the Savior in the small and unremarkable ways that are available to us each day, what will we ever  have to share with others?  How will we gain the spiritual clarity to know how He calls us to serve Him?  We must offer ourselves to Christ daily through the most basic spiritual disciplines in order to become transfigured in holiness.  That is not a calling for a select few, but the Lord’s command to each and every person who bears the divine image and likeness.  In ways beyond our full understanding, the free obedience of an obscure Jewish girl was necessary for the coming of the Messiah.  In her Dormition and translation to heaven, the Lord has given us a radiant sign of our salvation.  We must each bow before the mystery of how her obedience, and ours, plays a unique role in making the world brilliant with the Lord’s holiness and drawing others into the life of the kingdom.  So let us now lay aside all earthly cares, lift up our hearts, offer bread and wine, and commune as guests at the Messianic Banquet.  And then let us live accordingly each day of our lives, as we make the unique offerings that literally no one else can make.