Afrique fete

August 3, 2008

Genesis 32:22-3,  Romans 9:1-5,  Matthew 14:13-21

It’s both an honor and a pleasure to celebrate this Sunday in honor of our African Parishioners, and at the same time to celebrate the heritage of Francophone Africa.  We are also here today in order to pray for our brother and sister Christians who live in Africa.  It is a wonderful occasion to find out more about that astonishing continent.  Some people are surprised to learn that it is three times bigger than the United States of America, that it is made up of fifty-three very different countries, and that its population amounts to more than seven hundred million people.  The congregation of Saint Esprit counts among its members those who are citizens of a dozen of those countries.  There are also those who are not African by origin, but who were born there or spent a considerable period of their lives living there – including two members of our Vestry.

I suppose there is something appropriate about the Gospel Reading for Africa Sunday being the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.   At first sight, the story is about satisfying the physical hunger of those who had followed Jesus into the desert.  The story is certainly topical.  The world is facing a food crisis; and the effects of this crisis on the continent of Africa are grave. We only need to think of Darfur, Zimbabwe and Malawi to realize this.  30 million people are facing starvation in Africa, due to regional droughts, political tensions and the decimating hand of the HIV virus.  If only the solution to this dire state of affairs was as simple as Jesus’ breaking of the bread and sharing of the fishes!

But there are deeper themes to this story than the satisfaction of physical hunger.  The story begins as Jesus flees from Herod after the political assassination of John the Baptist. King Herod saw John as a threat, and wanted to intimidate or to kill him.  Jesus finds it opportune to ‘withdraw to a quiet place’ (Mat. 14:13) I know I am speaking to a congregation where some have had to make a similar decision. You have left your countries, like Jesus did, and went to a place where he would be out of danger and at peace enough to pray.   Matthew describes the luxurious party that Herod threw, where Salome required the head of John the Baptist on a plate.  He then goes on to tell of the compassionate party Jesus throws in the wilderness, where five thousand people are fed with a simple meal of bread and fish. This shocking juxtaposition finds many parallels in our contemporary world, where the rich eat in peace while the poor starve outside their gates.  Perhaps there is small comfort in the old saying: “It is better to eat bread in peace than to eat cake in fear”.

The story also reveals the complexities of the relationships that exist between leaders and the common people; whether those leaders be politicians or pastors.  Africa, like every other continent on the earth, is full of examples of the best and worst of these relationships.  Jesus looks at the crowd and has a huge compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. That is just how ordinary people feel in many parts of the world.  Jesus – the political exile – has compassion on that crowd, and he heals the sick even though he had gone to that quiet place in order to be at peace.  

But who is responsible for feeding this crowd?  Who is responsible for feeding the hungry of the world?  The Millennium Development Goals were designed to try to respond to that very question.  In Matthew’s story, the gathered crowd thought the leaders were responsible.  The disciples thought that Jesus was responsible.  And Jesus himself tells the disciples, “They need not go away.  You give them something to eat.”  (Mat 14:15-16)  How is the crisis solved?  It is not a matter of obsessing about who is responsible. It is about bringing whatever resources we have to God.  We are called to give what we have in faith, hope and love, in obedience to the call of the compassionate savior.  That is true discipleship.  That is how you can feed five thousand people.  We are all called to participate – not to stand on the sidelines wringing our hands.

This story goes from perilous scarcity to astonishing abundance. There were twelve baskets left over.  So what happened to the leftovers?  The response to that question is a challenge to those of us who live in America.  Many would be horrified at the amount of food that we throw away; all of this in a society where we accumulate as much as we can, where we hoard and protect our material goods.  This miracle shows us the way to a world where economic justice will eventually reign, where we can rejoice in an economy of shared abundance for all. 

The Revd. Nigel Massey