In the
immediate "aftermath" of Jesus' miraculous feeding (with limited
resources) of 5000 and then 4000, another scene unfolds - the disciples are
worried about not having enough bread.
They are with the miracle worker who just (presumably) amazed them with
his food multiplication ability. He
gently gives them a math lesson:
And
Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why are you discussing the fact that
you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears
do you not hear? And do you not remember?
When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets
full of broken pieces did you take up?" They said to him,
"Twelve." "And the seven
for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take
up?" And they said to him, "Seven." And he said to them, "Do you not yet
understand?"
5 loaves
- 5000 - 12 baskets left over
7 loaves
- 4000 fed - 7 baskets left over
"Do
you not yet understand?"
What was
it that Jesus was wanting them to understand through this math quiz? Was it simply that he had twice done amazing
feeding miracles - starting with limited resources, feeding many beyond what
those resources would usually feed, having an abundance left over beyond what
was started with? Note that this was
true on both occasions. Or was he trying
to point out something deeper - the principle of faithless diminishing returns
- that in the face of a miracle, faith not actualized leads to a restriction in
the ability of God to perform future miracles; that faith opens the door to the
storehouse of heaven and provides a context and milieu for the power of God to
be evident. Could it be that our lack of
faith in our western materialistic, naturalistic culture and world view has in
some way stayed God's hand and restricted him in the realm of the
supernatural?
God
restricted?!? Remember what happened to
Jesus in the context of unbelief in his home town Nazareth. The people saw their home grown boy and disbelieved
- "isn't this Mary's son - aren't his brothers James, Simon, Judas and
Joses? Isn't he a carpenter?" They were focussing on the natural. They were unwilling to see that, while he was
indeed all those things, he was also the son of the most high God, that he was
in fact God in the flesh and that he had not only already demonstrated his
miraculous power but he had come to their town to do the same. Mark, in his
account, writes that "he could do no mighty work there....." Imagine - the power of lack of faith to
create a milieu in which God in the flesh was restricted in what he could
do! Insisting on nothing more than the
natural gives birth to just that - a life and experience of "nothing more
than the natural." How sad.
I can't
help but think that we in the western world, that we in the western church have
this same Nazareth mentality. As a
result we have reaped what we have sown - our insistence on natural
explanations and natural expectations has blossomed and bloomed into a life of
nothing but the natural. When the
supernatural somehow breaks through we discount, diminish and discredit to the
point where our 5-5000-12 becomes 7-4000-7 and eventually 0-0-0.
A good
friend of mine is having his PET scan this morning to determine the extent of
his newly diagnosed esophageal cancer.
My tendency in this situation is to be, like the disciples, overwhelmed
by the lack of resources or, like the people of Nazareth, myopic in my view of
who Jesus is. But I am choosing today to
believe in the God of the miraculous - the one who multiplies, fulfills and
heals.
