Loaves and Fishes

 

In the story of the Loaves and the Fishes, Jesus has just finished a long day of preaching to the thousands gathered to hear his message. The Disciples notice that the people have gotten hungry and are too far from homes and towns to procure food. There is only a few baskets of bread and fish to feed this multitude, and they are worried about what to do.  Jesus tells them to have some faith and instructs them to start handing out their meager holdings.  Miraculously, the entire crowd is fed with food left over.

The deep message in this story isn’t about Jesus’ miraculous power to feed the multitudes although it can be read that way.  At a mystical level, this is a spiritual teaching about how we might learn to give love and care to the world even when we feel incapable, lack faith, are uncertain that the small thing we are capable of doing can make a difference.  How often do we feel overwhelmed by the struggles in our lives, the sorrow and suffering in the world? In face of such odds, it can feel like anything we might do would be so small and ineffectual that it would be a waste of time to try. 

In this story, Jesus feeds the multitudes through the Disciples’ humble efforts. His love works through them. And they are not doing anything extraordinary which is also part of the lesson.  The multitudes are fed not because of the willful egoic self-glorifying efforts of these students.  It is precisely through their humility, surrender, and faith that God’s love, generative self-giving love, can flow through to them to the people who touched by this generosity might share what meager rations they have with their neighbors.  In this way, a community comes together to feed each other.  This is how God works in the world helping us to create the conditions through which all are fed.

The economics of spirit operates with different principles than the economics of things.  In the giving away of love, care, hope, and compassion, these qualities are multiplied not depleted.  Consider a time in need when you have been treated with kindness and care and how this resonates in your heart in ways that make you want to extend this kind of care to another.

We will never know the final effects of our actions in the world but through this faith journey can come to know how to be a conduit for peace, hope, and justice, however small, that multiplies the light.