Readings: Isaiah 55.1-3 / Psalm 144 (cf v16) / Romans 8.35, 37-39 / Matthew 14.13-21
I first met Tita Lina when I was assigned as a young Jesuit to live with her and her family at Navotas for a summer immersion.
Navotas skirts Manila Bay. Many poorer Filipinos like Tita Lina and her family stay there. Many of the adults hold simple jobs. Many of the young go to school hoping for a brighter future. A large number of them work overseas as domestic helpers or construction workers; Tita Lina's daughter is one of them. Most of their homes are built with wooden boards and zinc sheets, often on silts over the waters that are no longer blue and clean. Overhead, power lines snake in between these homes. Needless to say, this situation is a fire hazard; there have been a few electrical fires in which some have lost their homes repeatedly.
I often remember Tita Lina because of her generosity with food. The first time I met her, she served me pancit malabon, a Filipino noodle dish. Throughout my stay with her and her family that summer, she made sure I had plenty to eat daily, even though they were poor. Their meals for me were generously served; their own portions were much less.
As much as I associate Tita Lina with food, so have the gospels depicted Jesus with food. In the gospels, we read of Jesus sharing food with others as often as he is praying, teaching and doing miracles. In John’s Gospel, Jesus identifies himself as the real food we need for eternal life: he says to us, "I am the Bread of Life."
We know the importance of food. It nourishes, comforts and brings pleasure. It fills us up–sometimes, we fill ourselves far too much with it. We also know what happens when we don’t have food, or enough of it. We get cranky and confused. Some might lose our way, become disoriented and lose balance. Yes, food is basic to human existence; it is necessary for human life; and it essential to our wellbeing.
Matthew’s narration of Jesus feeding the many by multiplying and loaves and fishes that is today's gospel story tells another story of food. That with God there will always be lots of food. In fact, so much food that there will always be more than enough left over!
But the real surprise about God’s excessive provision of food is not that it is like food for fine-dining, or for satisfaction at a buffet or for indulgence at a banquet. It isn’t even food for a meal. Rather, it is food to tide one over, food for a day’s journey, food to just get by. The food in our gospel story today is the basic “fill-the-hole-in-your-stomach” kind of food. It is food to take the edge off our daily anxieties. Food to survive each day’s struggle. Food to know we do have just enough and it is good. Food to end the day with gratefully.
But God could not have fed the crowd if Jesus had not been interrupted. Jesus had withdrawn to a lonely place to be by himself after learning that his cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded. He needed time and space to grieve, to remember, to pray. Anyone in pain would want this. But the crowds came to him, following him on foot from their towns. The disciples interrupted him with news about the crowds. And he fed them till they were satisfied.
Does the interruption Jesus experienced resonate with you? Isn’t this disturbance a familiar experience you and I have had as we tried to find time to rest, to have a few minutes alone, to get some space at the end of a busy day, at the close of a tiring week? I believe anyone with a demanding job, family obligations and social responsibilities can identify with Jesus’ experience. Being interrupted is in fact how we live daily: many of us become so involved in what we’re doing that we don’t want to be interrupted or distracted, and so we ignore what and who is nudging us for attention. And nudge us they always will: with phone calls, whatsapp messaging, Facebook posts; with cornering us on the corridor at work or in the Gathering Space after this Mass, or even by buzzing our doorbells, if they are really desperate.
How should we respond as Jesus’ followers to those who interrupt us? The disciples wanted to send the crowd away, to go and buy food for themselves. But Jesus taught them, as he teaches us today, an important insight into life’s interruptions.
“There is no need for them to go away," Jesus said. “Give them some food yourselves.” He must have known that his disciples would scramble when they see that they didn't have enough. But I believe he wanted them to encounter their own poverty as God’s richness in their lives. He wanted them to draw from the little they thought they had so that he could teach them that their poverty was good enough for others.
Five loaves and two fish. By their calculation, not enough to feed the crowds. But in Jesus’ eyes, five loaves and two fish was good enough for him to take, to give thanks, to praise God for them and to break and give them as food that feeds, satisfies and saves the many.
What we judge as human poverty and brokenness is for Jesus good and rich enough to be transformed into God’s abundance. I’d like to suggest that this is the wisdom our gospel story offers us today. Wisdom because it assures us that the little we have is already enough—indeed, it is God’s abundance—to share with each and everyone on our Christian journey.
But we will never appreciate this wisdom until we learn from Jesus about what more interruptions can be: not annoying disturbances, but opportunities for grace. Jesus sought time and space apart for himself. He was interrupted. His response? With grace and care, he found food and fed the hungry. However, this happened, all were satisfied with God’s food that Jesus multiplied to feed their hunger from the disciples’ five loaves and two fish. Today, Jesus shows us that interruptions are indeed occasions to bear witness to the God in our midst.
You and I will always have to manage interruptions; it's part of the rhythm of our everydayness. Our children will constantly ask for attention. Workmates and classmates will, now and again, demand for help. A driver with a flat tire will wave us down. A stranger will ask for directions. Church volunteers will plead for donations. What will you do? How will you respond?
After my summer immersion, Tita Lina responded to the unexpected visits my brother Jesuits and I made with food. No matter how many times we interrupted her, she always made sure that there was food for us. Sometimes, it was rice and chicken adobo; at other times, it was rice and kare-kare. Now and again, there would be dessert like bibingka or ube halaya.
But there was always the abundance of more than food with Tita Lina: there was blessing given and received; there was goodwill shared; there was the possibility of sharing life and faith. Indeed, our interruptions matured into something we never imagined, friendship.
Our gospel story today is indeed about food. But it is also about interruption, about blessing, about goodwill, about possibility. Jesus fed not only to fill hungry bodies but also to enliven their spirits. This is what Tita Lina’s little food became in our lives: the richness of God’s feast friends share as communion. And isn’t this not what you and I will experience shortly when the smallness of each consecrated host we consume transforms us into the glory of the one body of Christ we were created to become?
Indeed, if the promise of a generous response to a bothersome interruption is not about managing life’s challenge but about entering into life’s opportunity to more fully experience God’s goodness, then, shouldn’t you and I pay more attention when we are interrupted the next time in life?
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: from the internet
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