We've identified over the last three weeks that you need a value system that guides you to respond to hunger by feeding people, and that to feed a large group of people, you need food, and people to get the food to the crowd. This week we look at the fact that you need a method to get the food distributed, and how the context affects what that method is.
Luke's version of this story states that the number of people in the crowd is "about five thousand men" (Matthew adds "plus women and children). So Jesus instructs the disciples on the method they will use: "‘Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each." (Luke 9:14b). Some organization is needed to provide for the most efficient response to the need, so that not only does the food get there, it gets there with certainty that everyone gets something and no one is missed. A random seating arrangement would undoubtedly result in inefficiency, both in terms of how quickly people are served and the likelihood of some being served twice and some not at all.
I referred to a “random seating arrangement”—and that choice of words points out something else about the organizational method. This is crowd of people who have spontaneously gathered outdoors, not in some pre-planned venue. They can’t put people in different rooms; they can’t know how many are at each table if there are no tables.. There is no obvious, predetermined “seating arrangement”. They have to figure it out in the situation they are in—but it still needs to be organized and not completely random. Herman Melville (in the classic “Moby Dick”) wrote “There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method”—which is sometimes my excuse for my messy desk. This is not such an enterprise. They needed to get organized to best meet the need.
We too, in the church, need to organize to meet the mission that is called forth to us. Sometimes it is making use of the facilities we have. Other times it is going out from our building to where the need is. Each takes organization and methods; each takes different organization and methods. We need to think through, and pray through, just what each situation calls for in terms of organization and methods.
And that is the other piece of the organization here. After Jesus has instructed them to seat the people in groups of 50, the Scripture says “And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.” (Luke 9:16) Prayer was part of that organizing; it must be part of ours.
GOSPEL Luke 9:10-17
10 On their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.
12 The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, ‘Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.’ 13 But he said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.’ 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, ‘Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.’ 15 They did so and made them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.