Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Do you remember how it used to drive you crazy when you were little, and your family sat around the table telling stories after dinner? The same stories, often in the very same words, the very same cadences. At my grandfather’s table, there were two commandments:  “children are to be seen and not heard,” and “thou shalt not leave without asking, ‘may I be excused from the table.’” It was almost a liturgical refrain. “Yes, you may be excused.” Or sometimes “No you may not. Sit here, behave yourself, and listen to your grandmother...” 

You can hear a story a hundred times.  Or tell a story a hundred times. I find myself doing that a lot more as I get older. Yet once in a hundred times of hearing or telling a story, the same story, something jumps out at you. It’s always been there, but you never paid attention to it before.

Today for the hundredth time, we hear the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Five thousand people sit down, and eat their fill, once Jesus blesses and breaks an impossibly small amount of food and passes it along. And there are leftovers. Lots and lots of leftovers.

At the center of that story is a little kid with a knapsack that has his family’s meal in it.  His mom and dad entrusted him with the family’s meager sustenance: five pita breads, a couple of dried fish.  “don’t lose it, be careful; don’t put it down, don’t dawdle. It’s all we’ve got. Stay away from the big kids.”

Being small--for all practical purposes invisible--the kid was able to make his way through the crowd, through the forest of legs and torsos, to get up to the front to see what’s going on. There’s this guy telling stories. About how Elijah fed a hundred with twenty barley loaves.  They storyteller asks his friends how they’re going to feed the throng. And his pals Phil and Andy laugh and say “it’s time to send these folks away; enough for today, they need to find a Safeway or QFC or at least a 7-11, we’ve got nothing to give them.”

And Andy sees the kid who’s looking into his knapsack. He sees the kid count the five flatbreads, unwrap the dry fish. The storyteller looks at Andy, and at the kid, and something happens. The kid gets it, though Andy doesn’t.  The kid shrugs, and hands the food to Jesus, who hands it to his disciples, who hand it to the crowd, and suddenly there was enough for all. More than enough.

Two weeks ago we heard how Jesus send the disciples out two by two, and told them to heal the sick and cast out demons; they come back all pumped up, and Jesus tells them to come away to a quiet place. The crowds hear of his departure, and head out before him, and when they get to the place they’re going, there’s already a throng waiting for them, and Jesus, we heard last week, had mercy on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and began to teach them. And when he realizes that the people are hungry, he asks his friends how they are going to feed them.  

Jesus doesn’t pull manna out of the heavens, or bread out of his sleeve or a rabbit out of his hat; he takes what’s ready to hand, what is offered freely, and transforms it. Jesus needs what the boy has to offer in order to do God’s work, and so he needs what we have to offer today, here, and now, to complete God’s work.  It doesn’t take much: the kid with the knapsack instinctively knew that. But it takes something. Whatever we have to give, however small or insignificant it may seem, is enough when it is placed into the hands of Jesus. 

In order to give, he has to get; in order to get, we have to give. That’s a formula that bears some pondering.

In order to give, he has to get; in order to get, we have to give.

Fr. Tom Lucas S.J.