Loaves and Fishes
In Millions, 7 year old Damian Cunningham comes across a sack of British pounds, and only has a few days to spend it before a transition is made to the Euro, which will render all these pounds as having no value. Desiring to be saintly, as well as conversing with many different saints who appear to him frequently, the arrival of a particular stranger one evening as Damian is filling out as many charity envelopes with cash, is not at all surprising.
Suddenly a big leather sandal stood on the envelopes. There was a huge hairy foot in it. I looked up. Above me was a brown robe with a massive man inside. Round his waist was a belt with seven chunky iron keys dangling from it. I sat up and hit my head on the biggest one. The big man said a swearword. I won’t say which one as it was unenlightening.
Damian identifies him: "St. Peter (d. 64)," to which the Saint swears again, and asks not to be reminded of his death. The Saint advises Damain not put his return address on the charity envelopes, otherwise he’ll be besieged. They discuss keys, and then come to the matter of the money, which Damian has recently discovered has come to him through dishonest means. Then St. Peter tells him a story, which Damian thinks he knows, but St. Peter as a spectator to the event, has an interesting view point.
A little kid came up to him—about your size. His name was—I’ve forgotten. I still see him sometimes. Anyway, he came up with these loaves and sardines and Jesus blessed them and passed them round. He wasn’t trying to do a miracle, he was just one of those people who thought everything would be all right, you know. Anyway, so he passed these sardines, and the first person he passed them on. Know why? Because he had a honey cake and a piece of lamb hidden in his purse. So he passed the fish on and sneaked the honey cake out and made out he’d just taken it off the plate. And the next person, he had a pocket full of dates, so he did the same—sneaked one out, passed the plate on. And so it went on. The truth was, every single bastard one of them had food with them, but they were keeping it to themselves. Hidden away. Everyone of them looking after Number One. And they would have starved where they stood rather than let anyone else see. But as the plate came round with the loaves and fish on, they all got their own food out and started to eat and, as they ate, they started to share and then it began, the biggest picnic in history.
And the plate went all the way round back to Jesus and this kid—I’ll think of his name in a minute—and it still had the fish and the loaves on. And Jesus was a bit taken aback, but when he looked up (he’d been talking all the time) he could see that everyone was eating. So he said, "What happened?" and I just said, "A miracle." Because I didn’t want to bad-mouth anyone in front of him. I was always bad-mouthing people and he hated it and it was turning into a nice evening. And at the time he didn’t say anything, and I thought I’d fooled him, but now I see it was a kind of miracle. The best kind. Because all those people had all they needed. Except something—I don’t know what you’d call it—courage maybe, or grace. And then this little kid. He stood up and suddenly everyone there got bigger.
I was recently humoured by a written conversation that took place before the end of the millennium between retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, and Rowan Williams, who is now the Archbishop of Canterbury. While it was humourous for Williams to identify Spong’s essay as based on an astonishing level of confusion and misinterpretation, of relevance is Spong’s belief that the significance of the Biblical resurrection of Jesus is not in the fact that Jesus bodily rose from the dead (which Spong believes to have no merit) but in the fact that the Christian community rebounded from a cowardly collection of men who abandoned Jesus before his death, to a group willing to die for their faith after his death. It is in this working of the heart and mind, Spong asserts, that a concept of Jesus living on finds it value. Williams responds: "I don’t see why it should be easier for God to act in people’s minds than in their bodies," essentially saying that you should not argue against the historicity of the bodily resurrection because of a predisposition that limits the amount of work the supernatural can do in such manners, and then at the same time suppose that the supernatural does manifest itself in the hearts and minds of people and changes them from within. Certainly the latter is just as miraculous, and moving back to the story of the ‘Loaves and Fishes,’ even though the story does not challenge the account the Gospel authors left, to move individuals to generosity, to courage, to a more graceful way of living, is perhaps the greater miracle than simply producing food out of thin air.
K.
indeed!
a bit of a strange thought, but why not? i certainly realize the power of the mind, and certainly God can “manipulate” that just as well as performing any act; getting us to experience reality differently, that is.
ps. what a great book! i read it again for fun just a while ago…hehe…
OH and did you know there is another movie out there called “Millions” that is completely different from THE “Millions?” Yes, i found that out, unfortunately…
Comment by stephanie — January 7, 2008 @ 10:27 pm
I love the Movie! Its so cute! But when it comes to that incident with St.Peter, I was kind of disappointed. A good man could persuade a crowd to share what they have. A great man could as well. Many great, charismatic and wonderful men have persuaded people to do many things they had not considered before. And to be so wonderfully spoken, that men, women and children share the food they have brought for themselves is awesome. But its no miracle. Its a kindness. And for those of us who believe Jesus is Lord, that He is the Christ, the Son of God, we know that He performed a miracle. It was beyond what any human man could do or ever has done. He fed the crowds, after He prayed, magnifying what little had been given, and still more was gathered up at the end. It was a miracle of magnificent proportions and shows us the Love of God for the world, and how God alone will provide for all our needs. To make this smaller, and less wonderful is wrong. Kate
Comment by Kate — January 10, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
Yes, I did know that there was another movie called “MILLIONS.” I saw it in a discount bin once, however, if memory serves correct, the cover of the DVD gave really obvious evidence of it not being the same “Millions.’ Too bad that wasn’t enough for you.
Regarding, the second comment some would say that inspiring an individual to change the way they behave is in fact miraculous. I would say it is. The group of men, who formed the leadership of the first Christian communities, went from a cowardly collection of apostles who abandoned Jesus before his death, to a group willing to die for him at a later date. This is a miraculous transformation.
Similarily, while this interpretation of the Loaves and Fish story is different, and definately a less common one, I don’t think it makes smaller that Gospel story, firstly because it compliments the Gospel story only so far as it attempt to explain how everyone was fed, which is something the Gospel story does not do. Just because it doesn’t contradict the Gospel account doesn’t mean its right, but it is interesting.
K.
Comment by K. — January 12, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
i found out about it through the discount bin too…at Superstore…
Comment by stephanie — January 17, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
What about this account of Elijah in 1st Kings 17:12-14? Shall we assume that God couldn’t have done this miracle either?
12 “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD gives rain on the land.’ ”
2nd Kings 4:42-44
42 A man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing the man of God twenty loaves of barley bread baked from the first ripe grain, along with some heads of new grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” Elisha said.
43 “How can I set this before a hundred men?” his servant asked.
But Elisha answered, “Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the LORD says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’ ” 44 Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.
Comment by Anonymous — January 18, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
Hi there Anonymous,
Thanks for dropping by. Citing the story in Elijah, you ask “Shall we assume that God couldn’t have…” and already you are in trouble.
Regarding the story of the Loaves and Fishes, no one here said God “couldn’t” have done this, but rather, in the absense of a Biblical explanation of how all that food appeared, some here have suggested that the greater miracle ccould have been that Jesus inspired people to generosity, rather than simply making food appear out of thin air.
Who knows what really happened, but nobody here suggested God couldn’t have made the food appear out of thin air.
K.
You don’t have to stay Anonymous.
Comment by K. — January 18, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
The point is that God has been literally multiplying oil, bread, loaves and fishes all along. He did it for Elijah, He did it for Elisha and He did it Himself TWICE in the New Testament.
Comment by Anonymous — January 18, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
But in what method has he done so. In the absense of an explanation (all the Gospel say is that he passed around a certain amount of food, and all ate, and there was much left over), some provide one. Some suggest Jesus produced food out of thin air. Others suggest Jesus inspired the men and women there to share what they had with each other. The point is both are interpretations of an event. And they seek to explain the silence of the Gospel author. No one here, I repeat, said God couldn’t do what he wanted. Some simply suggested that rather than producing food out of thin air, something greater was at work, for which God was still responsible.
K.
Comment by K. — January 18, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
i agree, change is indeed a miracle. the reason individuals put emphasis on the physical is because it is easier to measure, it can be solidly seen as “there” or “not there.” The mind is something different, cannot be measured except through secondary evidence, that is, what the person with the mind claims. For most, that is less reliable, and therefore, less “miraculous”
Comment by stephanie — January 18, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
Kelly, thanks for combining my quote from 1st Kings 17:12-14 with 2nd Kings 4:42-44. When Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, He showed that He was (and is) the fulfillment of Elijah and Elisha, indeed, of all the Prophets. Jesus really did the multiplication. However, I do want to comment at length about the idea of miacles in general. In fact, the more we look at natural explanations and natural ways that miracles could have occurred (which is suggested for the loaves and fishes account), the more miraculous the event truly becomes. Let me give a few examples from mathematics and science.
When the diameter of a circle is one (e.g., one inch, one mile, one light year - it doesn’t matter), then its circumference is the famous : 3.14157926535….. The decimal places to which can be taken is infinite. It never stops. And if Pi were the merest fraction different, then there would be no sun, no moon, no stars, no planets, nothing - NONE of this physical universe would exist. The Laws of Physics depend on being exactly what it is.
Let us take a different number - . “The mathematical constant e is the unique real number such that the value of the derivative (slope of the tangent line) of f(x) = ex at the point x = 0 is exactly 1. The function ex so defined is called the exponential function, and its inverse is the natural logarithm, or logarithm to base e.” This number - - explains radioactive decay, the change in effluent flowrate when a tank isolation valve is opened to empty it of water, the charge and discharge of electrons across capacitor plates, etc. The number of decimal places that can be taken to (like ) repeats forever.
Now let us look at Planck’s Constant. It is always equal to the energy that a quantum (or photon) of light has divided by the frequency of that quantum. It is another special number: 6.6260689633 X (10 to the minus 34) joules-seconds. When it is divided by two times it produces Dirac’s Constant.
Now in physics, for every particle of matter that exists, you can know its velocity to 100% certainty, but not its position, or vice versa: you can know its position to 100% certainty but not its velocity. that’s because when you measure one, you disturb the other. The smallest difference between the two can never be less than Planck’s Constant. Additionally, the smallest unit of time can never be smaller than that defined by Planck’s Constant. If Planck’s Constant were any different than exactly what it is, there would be no light, no matter, no time, no space - NOTHING.
Let’s take a trek over to particles. A neutron has a mass of 1.0008665 amu (atomic mass units) and a proton 1.0007225 amu. A neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark, and a proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark. An up quark has a charge of +2/3 and a down quark has a charge of -1/3. They give the proton and neutron their respective positive and negative charges. They are held together by gluons which mediate the strong nuclear force. Each proton and each neutron has got to contain THREE quarks - two quarks and four quarks will never hold together; only THREE will do. If ANY facet of this little explanation (even the mass) were even fractionally different, then there would be no matter, no energy, no stars, no planets, no Earth, no humans.
Now let’s look at relativity. The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly 186282 miles per second. No particle that has mass can go at or above light speed. This is because of the Lorentz Fitzgerald transformation. In simple terms, as a body of matter speeds up towards light speed, it gains mass and the time it experiences decreases. At exactly light speed, its mass is infinite and the time duration it experiences is zero - almost as though it morphs right out of this universe. This is because time is at right angles to us. Imagine placing three pencils at 90 degrees to each. You have length, width and height (or depth). Now try placing a fourth pencil at 90 degrees to the other three. You can’t because that’s the fourth dimension through which we travel - the arrow of time always goes forward, never backwards. Yet time is indeed at 90 degrees to the other three axes, and this difference has a constant called light speed. If light speed were even fractionally different, there would be no space and no time.
When the Big Bang occurred, equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created. Yet our universe is mostly matter with virtually no anti-matter. This is because of the loss of symmetry with the time reversed decay of the K meson (I think). Because of that one little thing, our universe did not annihilate itself when it was created.
I could go on and on and on. To me, all these things are truly miraculous. Why does it take 3 quarks to make a proton or neutron (just as there are three persons in the Trinity)? Why is the universe matter and not anti-matter? Why does the universe have a speed limit? Why can we know how fast a particle is travelling, but not where it is, or vice versa?
Every time I hear of some natural explanation for the miracles of the Bible, I just pick up my math book, as it were, and marvel at numbers such as , and Planck’s Constant. If God can make , then He sure as heck can multiply loaves and fishes.
We have a miracle-working God. We should get on our hands and knees before the Throne of Grace in gratitude, because it’s the small little numbers that hold the entire fabric of our being together - numbers that God fore-ordained (is that a word?) before the foundation of the world.
Comment by Anonymous — January 19, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
Anonymous, all this is very interesting, but it doesn’t address the response that has already been given to you.
Nobody said God couldn’t produce loaves and fishes out of thin air, nobody suggested that a naturalistic explanation is to be preferred. Some have merely suggested that the possibility that Jesus motivated people to have a change of heart is just as, if not more so, miraculous.
K.
Comment by K. — January 22, 2008 @ 1:09 pm