Becoming Disciples: Seven Loaves, a Few Fish, and Twelve Slices of Humble Pie

Robin Bolen Anderson
9 min readJun 27, 2022
A woman’s hands holding half a loaf of bread
A woman’s hands holding half a loaf of bread

a sermon on compassion, solidarity, and following in the way of Jesus

After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the maimed, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.

Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat, and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” The disciples said to him, “Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” Jesus asked them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.” Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled, and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children. After sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan. ~Matthew 15:29–39 NRSVUE

When our boys were little, one of them was a finger-sucker. Whenever he got upset or wanted to fall asleep, he’d pop his two middle fingers into his mouth. From the time he was teeny-tiny, I knew that we’d one day have to break the habit and that we might be in store for a hefty orthodontic bill because of it. However, his twin had no self-soothing mechanisms, so, at the time, I did appreciate that one of them could put himself to sleep.

When they were probably four, the reckoning came. In the dentist’s chair, of course. Our dentist could not only tell that my son was a finger-sucker, he knew which two fingers the kid found tasty. So the dentist gently but firmly told my son it was time to quit. He warned that if the child didn’t stop soon, his finger-sucking would cause significant problems in his mouth.

So we immediately developed a plan of action. I’d read somewhere that it takes 21 days to break a bad habit, so we created a chart of 21 squares. We told the kid he would earn a prize if no one in the family saw him suck his fingers for 21 days. Now, it was okay if he caught himself and stopped, but if anyone else saw him before he stopped himself, the 21 days would start over. From that very moment, the kid never sucked his fingers again.

If only we could all be that determined and all lessons could be that easy to learn! But they’re not, are they? Not only that but some need to be learned repeatedly before they really sink in. Or maybe that’s just me.

Last week our reading was the story of Jesus healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter. When the woman begs Jesus for healing, he brushes her off, seemingly because she’s a Gentile, not Jewish. Jesus goes as far as to get belligerent with the woman telling her that it’s not fair to give the food meant for children to dogs. The Gentile woman confronts Jesus. She demands her dignity, telling him that even dogs eat scraps that fall from the master’s table. And her words stop Jesus in his tracks. He realizes that he has dismissed a person of faith because of assumptions he’s made about her. He tells the woman that her daughter is healed.

Immediately following this story, Jesus goes up to a mountain where he sits down. I imagine Jesus puts himself in a time-out to process what happened. He couldn’t see who this woman was because of his own internal bias, yet she could see exactly who he was. The woman confronted Jesus. Perhaps here on the mountain, he confronts, within himself, what led him to dismiss her in the first place.

As Jesus processes their encounter and his discovery that his mission and message are for more people than he had first realized, great crowds of folks seeking healing flock around him. Jesus begins to heal all who gather around him and those who are laid at his feet. As they witness healing after healing, the crowd is amazed, and Matthew writes that the people begin to praise the God of Israel.

Now, I think that by identifying God this way here, as the God of Israel, Matthew gives us a hint that the crowd is made up of Gentiles. Since we learn this just 3 verses after Jesus has healed the Canaanite woman’s daughter, I wonder if she or if she and her daughter immediately told everyone they saw what Jesus had done for them. Did this Gentile woman and her daughter become evangelists spreading the good news so quickly and to so many that within three short verses, thousands flock to Jesus seeking healing for themselves or their loved ones? If so, they could give Billy Graham a run for his money.

As the story goes, Jesus heals for three days straight before pulling the disciples aside. He says to his students, “I have compassion for all of these people. They’ve been with us for three days and have nothing to eat. I don’t want to send them away hungry because I’m afraid they all might collapse on the road!”

The disciples know what Jesus is hinting at, and they are puzzled. “Where are earth will we find enough food for all of these people? We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, what have you got?” Jesus asks.

They look through their own dwindling food stash. “Seven loaves of bread and few small fish.”

That’s all he needs to know. Jesus tells the crowd to sit down. He takes the bread and fish, gives thanks to God, and starts handing the food to the disciples for them to pass out among the crowd. Everyone eats to their fill, and the disciples collect seven baskets of leftovers, broken pieces of crust and fish.

The story tells us that, from those seven loaves and a few fish, Jesus feeds 4,000 men and all women and children who come with them.

There are several things that we can glean, at this moment, from this miracle.

One is that the way biblical Greek is structured, that crowd could have been composed of 3,999 women, and, if there was one little baby boy present, the Greek word for “crowd” gets a masculine ending, and we read that there were 4,000 men. Now, that sounds unfair to us, doesn’t it? It’s sexist. Before we brush it off as an archaic way for a society to function, though, we should pause and ask ourselves how that way of being relates to what’s happening to women’s rights and bodily autonomy right now. And we should always ask ourselves who gets centered in the story and why.

Another interesting note is that this is not the only story in Matthew about Jesus feeding the multitudes. In fact, Jesus feeds 5,000 just one chapter before this story of him feeding 4,000. That’s weird for a writer to do, isn’t it? To put two almost identical stories practically back-to-back? There’s always a reason when a writer does something like this.

When Jesus feeds the 5,000, he’s on one side of the Sea of Galilee near Bethsaida, a Jewish region where Jesus has done much of his ministry. Then, he feeds the 4,000 on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, near Decapolis, a heavily Gentile area.

Maybe Matthew shares the story of Jesus feeding 5,000 Jewish people to tell his predominantly Jewish audience that Jesus will provide for them. He’ll meet their needs and with abundance. In the next chapter, Jesus discovers that Gentiles are part of the promise, too, and he heals the Canaanite woman’s daughter. Immediately after that, Jesus enacts the same loaves and fishes miracle to feed a multitude of Gentiles. Matthew even tells both stories almost the same way: Jesus heals. There’s concern that the crowd won’t be able to safely return home due to hunger. Both stories tell us that Jesus has compassion. The disciples hand over their personal stash of food. Jesus blesses it and has the disciples hand it out to the crowd. Everyone eats until they’re satisfied, and there’s an abundance of leftovers.

Jesus has compassion for Jews and Gentiles. He will provide for them both. In fact, he’ll provide to excess. Since Matthew’s audience was primarily Jewish, we can read this as him telling insiders that Jesus is also for outsiders. Who does the Church at-large push to the margins? Who do we set aside? Because Jesus is for those people. Jesus has compassion for them. He will heal and feed them just as he will for those in the center. In fact, those that society pushes to the outside are often the very folks who bring vibrancy and life, embodying good news for the Church, as the Canaanite woman did. We Christians should be careful when deciding who can’t belong. We might be dismissing the best evangelists the Church could hope for.

Lastly, a detail that I find fascinating about these two similar stories is that the second time around, the disciples don’t seem to “get it” any more than they do the first. In neither story do Jesus’ closest followers realize that it’s their responsibility to ensure that hungry people eat. In neither story do they recognize that compassion requires action and solidarity. Otherwise, it’s just pity. Even after Jesus has multiplied loaves and fishes, the disciples see a need and say, “Where will they get food? There’s no stores or restaurants around here.” Not one of them says, “Hey, Jesus, the people need to eat before they pass out. Here’s all we’ve got. You think you can do that thing multiplying thing again?”

Becoming disciples means a lifetime of learning and growing. It means we never fully “get” all that Jesus is about, at least not in this lifetime. There’s always more to know. We can continually be transformed more into the image of Christ. And this process will be cyclical. Some lessons we’ll learn over and over before they sink in. Not only that, but the process of feeling close to God and then distant from God is part of the life of disciples, too. I know the Apostle Paul liked to brag about his humility, but he was on to something when he wrote to fellow believers that we can only see a reflection, that, in this life, we can only know in part, even as we are fully known.

Christians become prideful when we think that we have all the correct answers. We become dangerous when we make ourselves the arbiters of who else can have the right answers and when we try to legislate or demand that everyone live according to our idea of righteousness. In fact, I think it’s impossible to both see ourselves as the righteous ones and to have compassion. It’s compassion that was the core of everything Jesus did.

I know we all have people coming to mind right now: politicians, church leaders, and maybe even family members, who, in their self-righteousness, are causing harm to others. Here’s the thing: We can’t become just like that, only with different ideals. We have to follow the model of Jesus, who learned and grew, changed as his vision of the Kingdom of God expanded, had compassion instead of pity, and got in the trenches with those on the margins. His actions brought healing and wholeness.

This was the way of Jesus. The early church called themselves “followers of the way” for a reason. It is the way of becoming disciples. It will be easy for us to become self-righteous at this moment. But let’s choose the way of Jesus, the radically compassionate path of becoming disciples. Lord knows, the world needs it. We need it. Amen.

~ I preached this sermon at Commonwealth Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia on June 26, 2022, the Sunday after Roe was overturned.

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Robin Bolen Anderson

I'm a progressive Baptist pastor, and, no, that's not an oxymoron.