Today's readings: Isaiah 55, 1-3; Romans 8, 35. 37-39; Matthew 14, 13-21.
Over the past few Sundays, the Gospel has spoken about the Kingdom of God in parables and through images. Today's Gospel presents the kingdom as having already been realised. Prophecy, in biblical terms, is not just talk about the future. It is the Word fulfilled, the Word made flesh, it is the transformation of the wilderness into a homeland, inviting the exiles to table.
In the multiplication story which appears in all four Gospels, there are elements that carry symbolic significance: the setting in the wilderness, the similarity of the language to that of the Last Supper, and the 12 baskets full of leftovers. The scenario in Matthew of Jesus feeding the five thousand is described as a "lonely place" and the event occurs late in the day.
This is a scenario that can have many parallels in our situation today. Without sounding too negative, the world is becoming 'a lonely place' for so many people who, in the good old days when we all dreamt of a new political and economic world order, were called 'the marginalised'. Today the marginalised are still very much with us. Indeed, they continue to multiply in spite of all the promises of the last centuries of progress. In practically all the first and second world Western countries, there is an entire 'third world'.
As Church we should be concerned with this scenario just as much as the disciples were genuinely concerned with the people and sought to send them away "to buy themselves some food". Our concern in today's spiritual desert should be in line with what Isaiah says in the first reading and in line with what Jesus does. Isaiah's concern with his world, which very properly can be addressed to our world today, is in the highly significant words: "Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy?"
The business world constantly warns us to be careful where to invest. Yet we invest so much of our money, energy, and resources in "what is not bread" and in what "fails to satisfy".
We have more today, compared with times past, but we are much less satisfied. In the Gospel account, Jesus seems to redirect the disciples' concern with a 'return to sender'. The disciples were genuinely concerned with the people's situation but wanted to place the ultimate responsibility on them.
However, at that moment Jesus 'invests' in the disciples and the Church so that they are able to take on the responsibility of responding to the people's real needs: "There is no need for them to go; give them something to eat yourselves".
The Church cannot stay on the fence. Religion still has a very important public role today. In today's woes, just as much as the Church can be part of the solution, it can also be part of the problem. Suffice for us locally to look around at this time of year at our festa culture which makes of us a spendthrift Church, dishing out trash to people instead of healthy food.
"Seeing the world rightly is not merely a matter of looking, but of a trained capacity to know what to look for and how to articulate what is seen" (Thomas Hibbs).
Jesus had that capacity to understand not just what people wanted but what they really needed. And he responded to that basic need in the midst of the wilderness.
This is what the Eucharist is meant to repeat and to perpetuate in our assemblies. And this is where constantly we, the Church, are miserably failing.
Jesus not just points fingers. In a globalised economy and culture, the downtrodden continue to look up to religion and the Church. I am not sure whether we are up to their real needs and expectations.