It’s a Miracle

‍It’s a Miracle

Since the 19th century, some biblical interpreters have suggested that the real miracle of today’s Gospel was that when the people saw Jesus’s trust of God, they were inspired to share more of their food than the five loaves and two fish that the first collection had resulted in. To have shared enough food to feed as many as 5,000 husbands, 5,000 wives and their children plus leftovers certainly seems miraculous, that is, a “mighty work” of God. Not to dismiss that interpretation, but some of Jesus’s enemies accused him of working miracles by the power of demons. So, even his enemies saw Jesus do things for which even they could not find a natural explanation.

It’s not coincidence that this more naturalistic explanation of the miracle was first suggested in the 19th century when God seemed to be getting pushed out of our everyday world, only to miraculously swoop down and occasionally override the mechanical laws of physics and biology. In the 21st century, scientists theorize about how a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could, under the right chain of cause and effect, cascade into a Texas tornado. It’s called chaos theory. So, perhaps we can trust that God the Creator is quite capable of working within God’s creation to do some mighty things.

That mighty work could certainly apply to a mass feeling of faith, hope, and love that could inspire 10,000 men and women to do things they wouldn’t have imagined themselves doing before, assuming that these men and women working for subsistence wages had more than enough to share. We certainly know that they were starving for justice. As was Jesus, the cousin of John the Baptist, who had just been executed by Rome’s lackey, Herod Antipas. Of course, Jesus wanted to get away and grieve. But so did his fellow Jews, all hungering for justice. So, in his gut-wrenching compassion, Jesus healed the sick of those maladies of the day. And, I personally believe, He gave them the food they needed that day. And perhaps, the people were inspired to share some of their own as well.

That something understood as miraculous happened here is also evidenced by the fact that this is the only “mighty work” of Jesus’s that is recorded in all four Gospels. In Mark’s version of the Feeding of the 5,000, which also takes place right after John’s execution, we’re told that in his gut-wrenching compassion, Jesus taught them many things. So, in addition to healing, I also imagine Jesus teaching them.

Perhaps he taught them how to pray as Matthew reports him doing in the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps he taught them how to pray simply, beginning with, “Our Father in heaven.” And when he came to the petition for bread, what he literally said was, “Give us this day our bread for tomorrow.” Presumably, God knows we need more than today’s bread because today’s bread won’t do us any good tomorrow. But tomorrow’s bread won’t do us any good the day after tomorrow, or the day after that ad infinitum. So, the “daily bread” — the bread for tomorrow — must mean something more than the finite bread that only feeds us “this” finite day.

I believe that Jesus teaches us to pray for more than the bread that satisfies only today’s hunger that returns tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (to quote Shakespeare’s Macbeth) until that day when there is no longer a body to be fed. He teaches us to pray for the bread of faith, hope, and love, the bread that endures to the never-ending tomorrow, the tomorrow as infinite as God’s infinite love. That is the bread that will sustain us each day as we share each day’s bread of compassion, and give glory to God for God’s provision of that bread. That is the infinite bread of faith, hope, and love, sustaining us as we seek this day’s bread of peace and justice. And whether from our sharing, or from God’s provision, that is a miracle.

August 2nd, 2026

10th Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 13, Year A

The Rev. David Kendrick