But Jesus answered, “It is for you to give them something to eat.” “Are we to go and spend almost a year’s wages on bread,” they asked, “to give them to eat?”
an eternal dialog
between self and soul
bogs us down in frog ponds
with responses never up to
opportunities offeredwe can be loved
for ourselves alone
and loved and loved again
without golden hair
with a failed test or manywe shift personal
to communal when it suits
and the other way around
to take advantage
claiming aggrievement rightsyour or we
leaves loopholes aplenty
to avoid what we have
in favor of what we don’t
so fault is never ours
The contrasting responses continue. Jesus, shepherd, says, “Feed, be hospitable”. A weary Twelve, say, “What! Impossible!”
Again and again it turns out that our best intention for witnessing is trumped by a concern for money and its accumulation for my use.
How easy it is for us to allow our agonized indignancy rise to the surface when we are tired and frustrated. Of course, we seldom admit to such feelings and find a culturally acceptable way to sublimate them. In Roman times and in our own capitalistic times, money becomes the measure of ministry. Its corollary is the neoconservative emphasis upon personal responsibility.
Between the money and claiming people are individually responsible, the Twelve have argued their case. And successfully so.
Myers74 talks about the on-going contrast in this fashion:
The disciples try to solve the problem of hungry masses through ‘market economics’: sending the people to village stores or counting their change. Jesus, on the other hand, teaches self-sufficiency through a practice of sharing available resources.
And LaVerdiere171 thusly:
From the point of view of the disciples, the crowd was an overwhelming problem, but from the point of view of Jesus, it was but a challenge and a wonderful opportunity.
In wilderness retreat hunger is a reality—our own and others. A significant question for us is how we frame what is facing us.