The Most Amazing Thing

The most amazing thing happened yesterday!  Let me tell you about it.

Early yesterday morning I was at home helping my parents.  My father is a fisherman here on the north end of the Sea of Galilee.  It is a really abundant area with lots of fish, especially here between Capernaum and Bethsaida a few miles to the east.  Fishermen do very well here, many times catching more than they can haul in.  You know the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberius, well it’s not really a sea.  I don’t know why they call it that.  It is a fresh water lake, and it’s not that large, only 13 miles long and 8 miles wide at the widest point.  Actually sometimes they do call it the Lake of Gennesaret, named for that town on the northwestern shore, but mostly they call it the Sea of Galilee, which is the region we are in.  But it is a good area.  There are lots of fishermen from all the villages around.  Many of them come to Capernaum to sell their catch as it has become such a prominent town.  You know it’s on the road to Antipas.  It used to be a sleepy village but the Roman trade routes cross through there and it really has become a busy center, trading all kinds of meats and spices and, yes, fish.

Anyway, day before yesterday I had helped my father salt and dry some fish.  You know that is the best way to keep fish from spoiling.  It can get pretty warm here even in the springtime, so we eat fish from today’s catch then use salt, dried from the seabed, (we call it sea salt, but I am not sure there is another kind!) to cure and then air dry the fish.  It works pretty well but takes some time.  Sometimes we have a lot of fish hanging out on the racks for a few days.  But they keep a long time when you prepare them like that.  We do make this special kind called muries that is so good they even take it to Rome for banquets.

So my dad and I had prepared the fish the day before, and yesterday I was up early morning helping my mother prepare the barley loaves.  I really wanted wheat loaves for a change but my mother reminded me that we are poor people and all we can afford is  barley loaves, wheat loaves are for the rich.  Ahh, but I remember the couple of times I have had wheat loaves, very delicate, light, and tasty!  Anyway, we are poor so it’s the heavy barley loaves… So mother had ground the meal between our two millstones the day before, then late in the evening had kneaded it in the large stone trough we have.  She had some especially fresh yeast and overnight it rose really well into these round loaves.  We call one ‘a round of bread’ or just ‘a round.’  Obviously when Passover comes next week we won’t put the yeast in, the Torah says we can’t have leavened bread at that time.  Anyway mother had some strong millet and particularly good barley yeast, oh yeah, she added some cumin and cinnamon, along with a bit of honey that I had found in a hollowed out tree.  I helped mother bake the bread in our stone oven, she puts it directly on the embers so it gets a good crust and it cooks nice and slowly.

So after the bread was ready, I set off on my way to Capernaum to visit my cousins there.  As it can be so hot and there is really nowhere to get anything to eat, it is important to carry what you need for the day with you.  Fortunately, as there are several sweet water springs on the way I didn’t have to carry water.  So I had two fish as my meal for the day and five ‘rounds’ or loaves of barley bread.  I really didn’t need that many but my mother suggested I take three extra for my cousins, since she had made it special with the cumin and honey.  You know bread is the main thing we eat.  We treat it with respect as the Torah tells us – never put meat on top of a loaf, never set a pitcher of water on it or put a hot plate next to it.  That’s all in the law.  Holy scripture says we are to treat bread with respect.

So here is the scene — I am walking along and I see lots of people.  Really a large crowd gathering and I start asking what is going on.  Is there an insurrection?  Are the Romans being mean again?  People tell me that this prophet from Nazareth is nearby and people have been coming to him for healing.  I had heard, that just a few days earlier in Capernaum he had healed a paralytic that was lowered through the roof.  Apparently the guy got up and walked away!  There have been a lot of stories about this guy working and teaching in the neighborhood.  Everybody loves him.  They say he is ‘at home’ in Capernaum.  He has apparently been teaching in the western shore of the sea and the hills of lower Galilee.  It is only about 20 miles from Nazareth where he was born, but that’s a lot walking.  So I am getting pretty excited that I might get to see this prophet Jesus.  I come over the crest of the hill I look down and I see a small group of guys talking, about a dozen of them, and pretty quickly the crowd engulfs them and I am swept into the fray as well.

Now we are on a large gently sloping hillside that goes down to the seashore.There are some gently rolling hills there but mostly it kind of looks like a natural amphitheater.  It is really pretty and green, lots of springtime grass and a lovely view of the sea.  The water is so calm.  And you can see the hills of the Golan to the left.  That Golan area, those hills, almost a bluff, have a lot of height.  But we are on this lovely hillside.  And I get pushed into the middle of the crowd and find myself right next to this guy Jesus!  I am hanging onto my fishes and loaves.  He seems to be chiding his buddies about getting some food to feed the big crowd.  One guy they call Philip replies they would need a months’ wages to feed such a crowd.  Then this other guy, Andrew, sees me and  comes over and asks if he may have my two fish and five heavy barley loaves.  Then the famous prophet Jesus takes over….  He seems so nice!

It’s pretty amazing.  The crowd is quite chaotic, and He commands all of us to sit down, which is good because I am short and can’t see over the crowd.  So we sit down, women and children separated from the men, as always.  Everybody gets quiet and still  And I hand him the loaves and fish.  I really wished that I had something more to offer like cucumbers or onions or lentils like we would have for a nice meal, but all I have is the basics, bread and fish, but you can live on those alone.  So Jesus, being the prophet and teacher that he is, respects our custom that food is a holy thing and to be honored and begins to pray with his arms up.  That is our traditional way of praying.  You know he might just feed us being out in the open and all, but he is probably remembering what the rabbis teach us ‘a meal without prayer is a meal accursed!’  Then he starts breaking the bread, you know the law says that bread is to be broken, not cut.  He probably didn’t have a knife anyway.  We, sitting on the ground, are snickering that only the first few are going to get anything to eat.  But incredibly he keeps breaking the bread and breaking the bread and breaking the bread.  And Peter is handing out pieces of fish.  And they just go on and on and on.  There must be five thousand people here, and we all get something, actually enough.

And now we are done with the meal and Jesus says, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’  You know we are forbidden to throw away any food.  Torah says that any crumbs ‘as large as an olive’ are to be gathered up.  So I and some of the other boys start gathering up the crumbs and we wind up with twelve baskets full.  We set one of the baskets at the feet of each of his disciples.  The way Jesus does multiplication he probably could have fed each of the twelve tribes of Israel with each of those baskets.  That’s what happened!….

You know, I have been trying to figure out what this was about, but maybe that’s the message.  He took five loaves and two fish and fed about five thousand people. Yet there were still twelve baskets left over.  Food for everybody from Jesus?  You know it was a good meal and satisfying, we didn’t have melons or figs or pomegranates or dates as a sweet at the end of the meal like we usually do but we didn’t seem to need them.  We were satisfied.  How much do we really need?  Jesus made it seem pretty simple.

Oh yeah, there is one other thing.  The crowds pressed in on him afterward and as it was getting dark he slipped away.  Where is he?  Where did he go?  What happened we were saying….

Then there was a strong western wind that started blowing and the sea got really rough and a big storm came up.  His disciples had already set off for Capernaum to the west apparently without him.  But the winds were blowing against them.  No way to row into that oncoming gale.  We were concerned about them.  And so this morning, I slept under rocky crag out of the storm, I met a boy just coming back from Capernaum, he had walked most of the night, and he told me that the boat with twelve guys and the prophet had arrived shortly after sunset, just after the storm settled down, and that they went and stayed at Peter’s house.  I was worried they might have drowned.  They must have really been rowing hard.  No, that’s impossible.  You can’t row that hard against a storm.  Impossible.

Well, feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fish is impossible.  And making a paralytic walk is impossible.  Or maybe it isn’t.  This is Jesus.  What a guy.  I suspect this story will be told for a very long time.  Jesus.  So calm and pleasant and peaceful.  There was something incredible, amazing, mysterious, and tranquil about being near him.  A presence.  Being around him, there was a peace that I just don’t understand.  Great guy.  I hope you get to meet him.  It might make a really big difference in your life…

Amen.