A Reflection from The Rev. David Hoster
Dear People of St. James’,
St. James’ is bringing the New Testament to life in our parish hall. Welcome Table’s Neighbor 2 Neighbor has risen to the challenge of helping feed east Austin in our distressed economic times. Founders’ Hall, off limits to our usual mass gatherings, has become the place where loaves and fishes feed the masses – from which approximately 10,000 lbs of food goes out weekly to the doorsteps of households with seniors facing food scarcity.
A few years ago, I preached a stewardship sermon at St. James’ using the feeding of the five thousand to encourage our generosity. Today, I think the same interpretation of that story illuminates what Welcome Table is accomplishing. Jesus worked a miracle that day, but it’s not the miracle you think. The same is true today.
Jesus didn’t snap his fingers and magically turn a few loaves and fish into enough to feed five thousand people. Most of the people on that hillside knew they would be in for a long day, and some had come a distance to be there. Many of them had brought food with them.
Human nature being what it is, however, they would not be inclined to share. How would they know how many others had brought food concealed beneath their robes? If the people around them got hungry enough and figured out that they had food, things could get ugly. So, as they listened to Jesus, they all got hungrier and hungrier, waiting until it was over, and they could get away to a safe place and get something to eat.
They hadn’t figured on Jesus. Jesus preached all day, likely repeating all the things he had said in the Sermon on the Mount. He pictured a way of human beings living together without the usual barriers of mistrust, enmity, jealousy and exploitation. He made a stirring case and gave them a lot to think about, but in the end, it was just words. Something had to happen to connect their heads with their hearts.
So, Jesus’ disciples reminded him that they were hungry. So was everybody. What would he do about that? Jesus gathered up all the food they’d brought to feed himself and his disciples—barely enough for the thirteen of them—and gave it away. He backed up his words with actions that everybody could see.
In the face of perilous hunger, such generosity changed human nature. Out came all the food, and it turned out there was more than enough for everybody. That was the real miracle—breaking open these people’s natural mistrust and engaging their generosity.
We know something today that those people Jesus spoke to that day didn’t know. We know that there’s more than enough food for everybody. Yet, like those people, we don’t know how to get it to the hungry. We are trapped by the laws of our economy.
I’m a priest and not an economist, but I suspect we’re trapped in systems of supply and demand, price point and purchasing power, food separated from consumers by the expense of shipping and the price of goods. Some worry that food and goods not properly paid for, but given for free, will corrupt its recipients. And, who will salary the farm workers or the stevedores or the truck drivers or the grocery store clerks if the food isn’t properly paid for at the point of sale? The problem of hunger in our times is a problem of distribution, not of scarcity.
In ordinary times, churches, charities and governments find ways to shake some food loose from the distribution chain, but in 2020 the economic fallout from Covid’s shutdown has brought us to a biblical moment. Like Jesus, we’ve come to the end of the day in east Austin, and somebody has turned to us, as the disciples did to Jesus, and asked, “Who will feed these people?”
We’ve been listening to the Sermon on the Mount for years and years. We have seen Jesus give away everything he had on the cross for us. Now we are seeing lives equally in danger of being sacrificed right on our doorstep. St. James’ is working a miracle like Jesus did—a miracle of generosity, a miracle of opening doors, a life-sustaining miracle. St. James’ is overcoming the economic laws that separate the hungry from the food they need.
It is a wonder to see.
The Rev. David Hoster
