Matthew 14:13-21

13Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

16Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

17They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

18And he said, “Bring them here to me.”

19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.

21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Sometimes even I am shocked at how political Jesus was.

When I saw that loaves and fishes was our gospel for today, my first thought was, didn’t I just preach on this?  But no, I in fact have not preached on this text in a little while, it’s just a very familiar story of our faith.

Starting in verse 13 – what Jesus had just heard, is that his cousin John the Baptist had just been beheaded by Herod – not Herod the Great who was king at Jesus’ birth, but the next Herod, who was an even more insecure bully of a leader.

The people of Judea were not happy with the Herod family.  

First of all, the Herod’s weren’t even Jewish, they converted to Judaism in order to take power and then they conspired with Rome to overthrow the last Maccabeans – There’s a couple of books in the appendix of some Bibles called first and second Maccabees that tell the story of Hanukkah – where Judea briefly won home rule after the Persians were defeated by the Greeks.  So that’s the geopolitical context of this story!

So most Judeans were really annoyed that the Herods turned over their country to Roman occupation in order to take power.

It was a custom of the Roman Empire to calm unrest and maintain support of the Emperor by handing out the cura annonae – also known as daily bread – a ration of heavily subsidized or free grain or bread that was given to poor male citizens of Rome (not women or children, just men) – mostly those who lived in the City of Rome and other large cities.  The Emperors also built amphitheaters and colosseums to provide entertainment to keep the people happy.

The Poet Juvenal, sarcastically called this practice, “bread and circuses,” used to distract the common people from the injustice and corruption of the Empire.

Here’s where Bread and Circuses connects with the story of the loaves and fishes…

You might think that the Roman Governor of the area would be providing Bread and Circuses to quell the unrest in Judea, but that wasn’t the case.

Partially because there were not many Roman Citizens in Judea, but also because the whole system of Daily Bread was based on Rome moving agricultural land and fishing rights out of the hands of local people and into the cura annonae – which literally translates to “care of the grain” – cura annonae was a giant logistics system that procured food from the provinces of Rome, like Egypt and Judea and shipped it to the big cities, like Rome and Pompeii.  The cura annonae then taxed and tariffed the local foods in the provinces to pay for the system.  Forcing local fishermen to pay for a Roman license to fish the Sea of Galilee and forcing local farmers to sell out to Roman agribusiness.

Sounds rather familiar doesn’t it… 

So bulk of the grain and fish produced in Judea went not to feed the Judeans who fished and farmed it, but was put on Galleys and shipped to Rome.

So here’s Jesus, out in some rural area whose Daily Bread is being exported to Rome so that poor, lower class, Roman men will blame their problems on non-citizens instead of the Emperor…

Here’s Jesus with a bunch of non-citizen farm workers and fishermen and Jesus decides to feed them fish and bread.

The very food that the Emperor is taking from them.

Daaaaaang, Jesus was more political than I thought!

I was Monday years old, when I learned this by reading a commentary by Nichola Torbett and then going farther down the rabbit hole researching cura annonae.

And there’s a part of me that is deeply annoyed that nobody taught me this before.  Not in Sunday School, not in another Pastor’s sermon, not even in Seminary.

But also, 

it totally makes sense that most people have never heard about the context of cura annonae and how it affected Judea’s fish and bread supply.  

And how this connects to Jesus responding to the hungry crowd of rural folks by giving back to them, their bread and fish, out of God’s Abundance — replacing what Rome had taken from them.  Because it is God who provides us with our daily bread, not Empire.

Which causes me to read that line from the Lord’s Prayer – give us this day our daily bread – in a whole new way!

I can see why most people have never heard of this radical political context for the miracle of the loaves and fishes!

Because these kinds of logistics systems have been going on for a long time and are still happening today.

Where the rich resources of colonized places are being systematically redirected into the hands of the rich and powerful without any semblance of fair compensation.

Did you know that the World Bank and World Trade Organization has currently licensed most of the fishing rights in Africa to European food Processors?

https://qz.com/africa/2092998/who-benefits-from-africas-24-billion-marine-fisheries-industry 

https://story.futureoffood.org/beacons/south-africa/ 

https://www.emerald.com/jitlp/article/24/3/290/1277032 

This is why there are Somali Pirates, like the ones portrayed in the 2013 Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips.

Because the cura annonae didn’t end with the fall of Rome – now it’s being used to steal fishing rights in Somalia – which turns former fishermen into pirates.

So we don’t hear about Jesus’ stance on the cura annonae in church because those with wealth and power who own these distribution systems don’t like it when the Church starts talking about justice for the poor.

Because it’s hard to become a Billionaire without exploiting workers and creating poverty.

So let’s just pretend that God only cares about sex, gender and a personal relationship with Jesus.

Because if the church awakens to the fact that God has called us to love our neighbors as ourselves – and that our neighbors – our farm worker neighbors, our Somali fisherman neighbors, our Congoleese neighbors – whose wealth of rare metals that are used to make our cell phones are not being fairly compensated for their labor much less the extraction of their natural resources.

If the church awakens to the fact that it is God’s will that all people should have Daily Bread – that, in fact, God has already provided for all people, including the poorest people in the world – it’s just that Billionaries are stealing the food of the poor.

What trouble might the church cause for these Billionaires? 

I’m going to freely admit that I am still processing this new theological understanding.

I don’t have a nice tidy, because Jesus did this, we should do that, answer for you.

I mean, obviously, Jesus fed people in need and so should we.  

And we do.  

I am so grateful to be a part of a church who just decided to create a food pantry for Haven Dinner while I was on vacation.

I am so grateful that y’all have been active in supporting Family Promise, because that is helping to give housing back to people that the housing cura annonae has purposefully made unaffordable for the sake of hedge fund profits.

I’m so proud and grateful that every single one of you has been working on and praying for and sharing about our Affordable Housing project that is taking our small offering of one, old, falling apart, church building and turning it into about 72-ish units of housing and space for Rahab’s Sisters and ourselves to keep doing life-changing ministry in our community.

So please don’t hear this, new to me, theological discovery and think that we are not doing enough to fight the systems of Bread and Circuses that are purposefully designed to distract people from all the injustices of this world — because I think that we are doing A LOT ALREADY!

My point in sharing this with you now is that I wish somebody would have had the courage to share it with me before now.

And I think that the average church goer is smart enough and courageous enough to wrestle with some pretty challenging theology.  And I think that y’all are pretty above average.

So, perhaps you will be better than I am at figuring out what to do with this new idea.  

So here’s what I learned about God this week.

Let’s see where Spirit takes us!