Fear and Generosity

FOR THE LESSONS FOR THIS SUNDAY (BCP LECTIONARY) http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB/Pentecost/BProp12.html

Jesus has just fed the multitude with the scarcity of his offering and in the process he has reenacted Exodus. This ritual re-enactment of Exodus retrieves the ancient historical memory, the grand transition from slavery and scarcity to freedom and needlessness [The desert experience was not one of abundance, but of needlessness, they had food and water, they had a purpose and with every day of desert walk another slave-man died and a new freedom was birthed] However, Jews of the first century, specially the am-ha-aretz, people of the earth, found themselves without milk, honey or freedom. The situation of the poor was a desperate one, no wonder Jesus was popular, not only he could heal, but also fed multitudes. The poor in Palestine very well could be wondering what happened with the Lord’s promise? Some seem to have everything and most of the people have barely to eat.

The radical difference between the Exodus promise and the situation of need and oppression of the Israel of the first century has to have an impact on the theological thinking of the day. The cause and effect of Jewish thought would place the burden of the broken promise squarely on the people themselves. If they did not prosper, if they did not have their share of the milk and honey was because they were sinners.

Jesus breaks away from cause and effect and restates the theological question on entirely different premises. He is the new Moses who has come to bring a new Kingdom, a new Promised Land, and invites the multitude to sit in groupings (remaking of the tribes?) while partaking of the messianic banquet, so the feeding has to be seen not as a question of practical expediency (they have nothing to eat and neither we have enough to offer to them and the towns are far away ad it is late) but rather the Jesus response to the theological question of the day, are we the way we are, living as slaves and hungry on the promised land because ourselves or our forefathers sinned? The feeding of all is a response in the negative, all were fed transforming scarcity in needlessness.

There is an interesting phrase in today’s portion “they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” which was the word used for pharaoh’s heart during the Exodus story Ex 7,13 and following. It confirms Jesus’s intentionality offering the messianic banquet that have just taken place.

Again the Exodus motif continues here, crossing a body of water, the different mediums, the disciples on a boat buffeted by the sudden gales of lake Galilee, Jesus walking on water. Moses parted the waters, so Elijah did, while Jesus walked over it. Both Moses and Elijah have to part the waters first and then walk on the dry water bed. Jesus on the other hand was above that. He not only walks on water but he joins them on the boat and calms the storm. For Jesus water was no obstacle, while for Moses and Elijah (the two other guys on the Mount of Transfiguration) it was: it needed to be pushed aside for them to walk. There is implicit claim to divinity here which becomes explicit in the adoration scene on Matthew in the expanded version of this same episode (Matthew 14,33).