Pastor's Corner: Feeding our community

I am in love with the story of the loaves and fish. We see this moment with Jesus and the disciples feeding the five thousand, and we look at the miracle that was performed at that moment, asking ourselves, "How can it be?" But when you take a little time to dive into this story you may find a very interesting twist to what we know.

Matthew 14:15:

"That evening the disciples came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves."

So here we see the disciples telling Jesus to send the people home, they are hungry.

Part of me believes that the disciples are tired and hungry themselves. Prior to this moment they had already been ministering all day, then traveled, then find themselves at this point in time where people are starting to complain.

You know they are complaining when it says they should go "buy food for themselves."

This indicates two things:

They have been complaining about eating, and telling the disciples that they should feed them

The disciples are concerned with finances/resources and do not want to give out of their bank.

I love Jesus' response in verse 16: "But Jesus said, 'That isn't necessary – you feed them.' "

The disciples went from trying to turn the crowd away so they did not have to deal with them, to now being told that not only is that not necessary, but that they, the disciples, should also feed them.

Look at the hyphen in the text. This indicates the long pause, and probably the confusion of the disciples. They knew they had an issue, so they went into excuse mode in verse 17:

" 'But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!' " they answered."

You can safely gather that anywhere between 8,000 to 12,000 people were fed that day, and had leftovers, too.

Here is the best part of it all. The miracle took place from the hands of the disciples.

Jesus said to them, "You feed them."

Jesus blessed the food, broke the bread and the disciples administered the food to them.

The same people who were complaining to the disciples and causing them some heartache are now being cared for by the disciples.

Though Jesus blessed the food, the disciples took the baskets and handed everything out to the people. They administered the miracle with every reach into the basket, because they knew more than everyone else that they did not start with enough food, but they found quickly that they had more than enough, including leftovers.

When we allow Jesus to bless the work before us, and we begin to do the work, we become the hands and feet of Jesus, administering the miracle through the work we are doing.

So I ask this question: Are you willing to do the work for your community to see God's grace move through each and every person?