From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing to Elisha, the man of God,
twenty barley loaves made from the first fruits,
and fresh grain in the ear.
Elisha said, “Give it to the people to eat.”
But his servant objected,
“How can I set this before a hundred people?”
Elisha insisted, “Give it to the people to eat.”
“For thus says the LORD,
‘They shall eat and there shall be some left over.’”
And when they had eaten, there was some left over,
as the LORD had said.
2nd Kings 4:42-44, first reading for this Sunday
Elisha, successor to Elijah, was the greatest wonder-working prophet in Israel’s history, with Scripture recording over a dozen of his prophetic signs. He lived after the split-up of David and Solomon’s unified, 12-tribe kingdom due to pride and vainglory. (Sin always divides.) Now, “Israel” was the Northern Kingdom of some 10 of the tribes, while Judah and Benjamin, with Jerusalem and the Temple, were the Southern Kingdom, simply called “Judah.” Elisha (and Elijah before him) were the great prophets of the Northern Kingdom.
The kings of “Israel” in the north set up rival, false temples in their territory, for they did not want their tribes going south to worship in Jerusalem. That is why the man in our first reading approaches Elisha with barley loaves made from the first fruits of the harvest. He knows the false temples are not dwelling places of the Lord God, but he also knows it might be worth his life to walk out of Israel and into Judah with an offering. Elisha, however, is the Lord God’s prophet in this territory, so the man makes the appropriate offering to him—clearly, God’s spirit dwells in him. God shows his approval of the offering by multiplying the gift to feed 100 men with some bread left over, fulfilling his promise of abundance.
Some 800 years later, when Jesus begins his public ministry, the situation of the remaining remnant of God’s people is even more dire than in Elisha’s time. Only fragments of the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom exist. The Temple, though destroyed and rebuilt, does not have legitimate leadership from Aaron’s line. Instead of a Davidic king, the people are firmly under the heals of Rome’s client petty tyrants. Plenty of people follow Jesus, or at least follow him around, but he is repeatedly challenged to perform a major, prodigious miracle to back up his unprecedented claims.
That miracle does come, with absolute finality, with his Resurrection. But our Gospel this week is focused on Jesus’ replication of the Elisha’s miracle as preparation for that. And it is a major miracle, indicating that the presence of God is, now, wherever Jesus is. Instead of starting with a Temple-bound first fruits offering, Jesus simply accepts the generously offered lunch of a young boy. He feeds not 100 men with 20 loaves, but 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish. Finally, there is not “some” left over, but exactly 12 wicker basketsful, unmistakably a basket per tribe, lost or not.
We will learn much more about this feeding in our Gospel readings over the next weeks, but the first thing to note is this divine message of coming fulfillment from one of the greatest of the prophets: “they shall come streaming to the Lord’s blessings, the grain…” (Jeremiah 31:12).
For Christians, that “grain” is Communion, the Eucharist, that feeds us. It is the core of our request for “daily bread” in a prayer we all know and which we all pray every single day.
Don’t we?
For further reflection:
God, we believe, creates everything out of nothing, with no pre-existent materials. Imagine what he might do with what is already created? Jesus takes what the little boy brought and feeds thousands. What we cannot do with everything we have, Jesus can make happen with just a fraction of what we offer him to work with.
What could you offer him? Think about this: the offering may seem trivially small to you, but he sees it from a different angle. More than the gift, he is seeking the heart of the giver. Give him all of that you can, in whatever form you can, and he will handle the miracle part.
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