Twelve wicker baskets full

Common themes of food and being fed tie this Sunday’s readings together. Isaiah writes to the Jewish people who had been in exile and now had returned to their land as a colonized people. They found their capitol city, Jerusalem, their temple, and their surrounding towns entirely in ruins, destroyed years earlier by the Babylonians. Questions about how to survive in this devastated and uncultivated land weighed heavy upon the returnees. These verses from the prophet speak to their need and allay their concerns about life-sustaining elements. Inviting their dependence upon God, the prophet offers divine assurance. Food, water, wine, and milk are guaranteed even if they don’t have money to pay. Further, listening to the divine voice again, these people are promised life and a renewed covenant. The response to Psalm 145 invites participation with the prophet in expressing our confidence in a God who provides. “The hand of the Lord feeds us; He answers all our needs.”

The Gospel continues this theme of feeding. First, however, we learn that Jesus has heard of the death of his cousin, John the Baptist. While Matthew’s account does not relate the details of his death, the Gospel of Mark (6:14-29) records John’s imprisonment for his condemnation of King Herod Antipas’ unlawful marriage. Herod’s daughter is rewarded for her dance before the king by requesting John’s head on a platter. Such a horrific account must have been deeply troubling to Jesus. So as Matthew’s Gospel opens, Jesus is withdrawing to a deserted place alone, perhaps needing time to grieve and to come to terms with these terrifying details.  

Of course, the crowds hear of his whereabouts and find him, bringing their sick for his healing and their hungry hearts for his comforting message. When the day’s end nears, Jesus’ disciples want him to send the crowds away to their villages since this is a deserted place with no options for food. Resolving their crises of hunger, both physical and spiritual, Jesus makes food available for those before him. Despite the disciples’ concerns about the size of the crowd and the seemingly inadequate number of loaves and fishes available, “five thousand men” were fed. Jesus miraculously makes available enough for all with twelve wicker baskets of fragments left over.    

The mention of twelve wicker baskets at the end of the account, though only in passing, may be an important detail. Where did the twelve wicker baskets come from?  Jesus not only feeds bodies miraculously in this story but, perhaps, he also nourishes and motivates people’s spiritual selves. Matthew mentions that not only were there five thousand men present but also women and children. Wicker baskets had numerous uses in ancient Roman society. Women often stored wool at home in these baskets or, when traveling away from home, they carried food in them. In that regard, things haven’t changed much over the centuries. Still today, women frequently have food and drink in their hand bags for the children they transport to after-school activities or in backpacks of snacks they take on a long family trip away from home. 

Further, it is worth noting that the disciples had brought food with them – five loaves and two fishes. Like the disciples, the crowds would not have left their villages to journey to a deserted place without food. Jesus not only fed the crowds in many of the Gospel stories, but he also has encouraged them and us to feed the hungry, to feed one another.  Even at the Last Supper, after providing bread and wine to those present, he encouraged those gathered then and us today to continue to do this in remembrance of him.  

We may never know what the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in that place entailed. It may have been both a physical and spiritual unfolding. As the disciples distributed the little food they had, the food just kept multiplying. It also may have been that when the disciples began distributing what little they had brought for themselves and Jesus, others were moved to share what they had brought as well. We do know that when people share what they have in our world, there is enough for everyone and often much left over. Multiplying a few loaves and fish to feed five thousand certainly constitutes a miracle. Yet, inspiring people to share what they have with others might also be considered a rather miraculous change of heart, both in the ancient world and our own. Either way, Jesus provided food for the crowd, and he summons us to do the same for one another.