Devotions
Rev Gav
Bread
Matthew 15.29–37
After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.
Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?’ Jesus asked them, ‘How many loaves have you?’ They said, ‘Seven, and a few small fish.’ Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
Reflect
Matthew’s gospel, as with the other gospels, was written retrospectively, and Bible scholars are of two minds as to whether or not the gospel writers imbued the stories with symbolic signs; however, I think they recorded stories that had special significance, including this one about the feeding of the crowd.
Matthew was writing to a predominantly Jewish audience and we know this because he used terms and phrases that Jewish people would readily know and understand. The purpose of his gospel was to narrate the story of the coming of God’s Anointed One — the Messiah or Christ — in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, the stories he included pointed to Jesus being the Messiah and how he was the incarnate God who would die and be resurrected.
If we look at this story in the context of Matthew’s purpose, then several things should jump out at us!
The people were in the desert for three days with nothing to eat and Jesus does not want them to go away hungry. In the Bible, deserts are associated with death and desolation — both literally and figuratively. And where else do we read that people were in a ‘spiritual’ desert for three days before a miracle happened? You guessed it — during the period of Jesus’ death and burial.
The people were fed with seven baskets of bread (note that no number is given for the fish). In the Bible, the number seven is associated with God’s perfection, starting with the seven-day creation accounts, the seven pairs of animals going into the ark for salvation, Naaman washing himself in the river seven times to be cleansed, and so on. In this story, the people are saved by eating seven loaves of bread. Later on in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus takes bread and says, “Take, eat; this is my body,” symbolically connecting himself to the bread to be broken for his followers.
In the story, all were satisfied. In other words, there was enough for everyone, but more than that, there were seven loaves (albeit broken) left over! It is worth thinking about the significance of this. If God is represented by the seven loaves, then yes, God gave of self, but God is no less God afterwards. In other words, God was in no way diminished by Jesus’ act of selfless love and sacrifice on the cross, and we know this because Jesus (symbolised by the bread in the story) was resurrected — alive but bearing the scars of brokenness.
This story in Matthew’s gospel was a blessed miracle, but it was a massive sign pointing towards who Jesus was, to convince the world that he was, indeed, the incarnate God who had come to save the world — and that includes you, and it includes me.
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash
Pray
Holy God
Thank you that
you are the bread of life,
and for feeding me
with spiritual food
that I may not go hungry.
Thank you for
being broken for me,
and today I give myself
in service of you.
and then