You Give Them Something to Eat

You Give Them Something to Eat – Today is the second Sunday in Lent, and our Lenten theme is “Table Transformations.” The scripture for today is Luke’s version of the familiar story of the feeding of the 5,000. Carol first gives some examples of parenting, training one’s children, and she says Jesus was constantly training the disciples, and this story is an example. The crowd has gathered to experience the teaching and healing by Jesus, and the text says it is 5,000 men, which means it must have been well more than 5,00 people. The disciples are concerned about those people and how so many can possibly be sustained. Jesus tells those disciples to handle it. They have only a dozen loaves of bread and two fish. Maybe we, too, sometimes feel completely inadequate. But Jesus tells them to have the crowd sit, and then he takes a loaf of bread, lifts and breaks it, and gives thanks and blesses it. In this same way, Christ can take each of us, lift and break us, give thanks and bless us, and we are thus fully equipped to fill the needs of the world around us. It is a process that is repeated in Luke in the Last Supper and again in the Emaus Road dinner. And it is repeated with and for us in each communion service.