You have heard the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, but perhaps you have not understood what it means. Well, Lars’ posts on liberalism and something my five-year-old said last night has inspired me to think through this story from the perspective of a politically liberal American.
5,000 men (and countless women and children–uncounted because of the deplorable chauvinism in that culture) had followed their teacher around and become hungry. They were natural victims of their devotion to the teacher.
Jesus asked his disciples what food they had brought to feed the masses and found his own disciples hadn’t prepared anything. It was a food shortage. Something must be done about it, or innocent people would suffer.
His disciples noticed a boy with some loaves and fish. They took his food and gave it to the teacher who distributed it to as many as possible.
Now of course he didn’t multiply the food, because that’s impossible. So clearly everyone didn’t actually eat something. It’d be reasonable to assume some of the others had food too, but it was still a crisis for Jesus to handle. The text says everyone was fed, but there wasn’t enough food for everyone to be fed, so there’s a clear message in this for us today.
1. Jesus took the food from those who had it and divided it among those who had nothing. He would tell us to do the same through taxes and charity, which are essentially one and the same. If you have more than you need, and who in America doesn’t, we will take your surplus to provide for those without anything. It’s only fair.
2. Because Jesus gave food to the crowd and declared them fed, they were fed even though there wasn’t enough food to go around. The applications of this point to modern government are obvious. If government offers health care, everyone has health care. If government maintains a military, we are secure by definition. If liberal leaders in government reach out to other nations, we are reconciled and respected. If we pass a civil rights bill, the civil rights battle is over.
Now, be blessed, stay warm, and be well fed.
The Feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle of Christ’s that appears in every one of the Gospels. Clearly it had a deep significance for the early Church.
Not these significances, though. 😉
IIRC, Jesus wasn’t in government. In fact, wasn’t he usually in trouble with the authorities?
Not that facts matter to the “government is God” crowd.
Right. Details like that don’t matter at all. I remember talking to a socialist who accused Christian capitalists of using the Bible to justify greed, pointing to Jesus saying, “He who has will be given more, and he who has not, even what he has will be taken from him.” He said he heard someone teach capitalist exploitation and cite that verse.
I hope I communicated what a ridiculous interpretation that was, but I don’t remember now how the conversation went down.
Then there was that outlandish piece of windbaggery, “Pilate was a governor. Jesus was community organizer.” I’m sure Bill Clinton was quietly muttering, “Hey, folks, don’t say things like that. Remember, I was a governor, and we might want to run another one sometime.” But he would have muttered it quietly, betting on people’s short memories.
There are indeed people who have taken Bible verses out of context to justify greed, tax evasion, and lots of stuff, but as we know from the Gospels, Satan did the same thing.