John 6: 5 – 15 & 2 Kings 4: 42 – 44     

I’m sure that, like me, you noticed a lot of similarities between the two stories about what happened when Elisha was enabled by the Lord to feed a large crowd, and what happened when Jesus did the same.

In both stories, an abundance of food came out of the smallest of resources, not just enough to scrape a morsel together for each person there, but more than enough for everyone, so much that there was food left over.

Both stories agree that, despite the apparent impracticality and hopelessness of the situation in question – lots of people and not enough food – the Lord provides more than enough for everyone.

Both stories celebrate the capacity of God to deliver more, because God’s power goes beyond expectation. John tells how Jesus gave thanks for even the smallest gesture given in faith, that small amount of food, that little boy’s lunch, and increased it beyond the bounds of possibility.

Anyway, enough for a moment about the similarities! Perhaps, like me, you’ve done ‘spot the difference’ puzzles. It’s not always easy to see the differences. Sometimes two or three jump out at you, but then they get more difficult to spot. But as soon as someone points out a difference to you it becomes blindingly obvious, and you wonder why you never spotted it before!

Often the differences between stories in the Bible are fascinating lines of enquiry which show us something unexpected and fresh about God as revealed by Jesus. And there are a few differences between these 2 food distribution miracles. But the one that interests me most is what happens after all the bread and fish has been eaten.

The miracle feeding of a crowd by Elisha would have been a well-known story to those who experienced Jesus’ sign and those who heard about it later, because it’s part of the Hebrew Scripture, so the differences between the 2 events would have been very noticeable to them.

The difference I want us to focus on relates to what happened to the leftover food. The writer of 2 Kings tells us nothing about the leftovers, but John tells us exactly what happened to the leftover food. Jesus instructed the disciples to ‘gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost’.

And the disciples did just that, between them collecting 12 baskets full of leftovers; the bits nobody wants, fragments, broken bits, bones, crumbs, the bits we can’t stomach, were all gathered up.

All that’s worthless in our eyes is so valuable to God that it’s to be gathered up to him.

John’s account of this event is a microcosm of the ‘good news’, all packaged neatly into one story (and we could spend a long time examining every detail). But the good news I want you to commit to memory (and perhaps even share with others) is that with Jesus, the mass feeding event didn’t stop with the evidence of God’s abundant provision, as it did in the account of Elisha’s feeding event, it continued as the fragments were gathered up so that nothing was lost – because to God nothing and nobody is worthless, everything and everyone is valuable and precious in God’s sight.

The story of Jesus feeding the crowd must have had a central place in the story telling tradition for 1st century Christians, because it appears in all four Gospels.

It’s important to remember that parchment was an expensive commodity when John wrote his account of Jesus’ ministry, so anything committed to parchment must have been considered important enough to justify the expense, and therefore it’s worth our attention.

Perhaps what was so important to John was that gathering up of the fragments. There’s more information about ‘gathering up the baskets of leftovers’ in John’s account, than any of the other accounts (read the others and compare and contrast them). Collecting up all the fragments wasn’t just a Jesus-led ‘Keep Palestine Tidy’ campaign (though it does remind us that we should care for the environment) Jesus’ request to gather up the fragments serves as a message in metaphor about the importance and significance Jesus placed, throughout his whole ministry, on caring about what happens to the broken, the fragmented, the discarded and overlooked, the worthless, the lost.

Jesus was adamant that nothing should be lost, rather like the care shown in his story about the shepherd for the lost sheep, here’s another insight into what God says about our value through Jesus’ actions.

So, here’s a message for us!  Whenever we feel fragmented, broken, discarded, overlooked and worthless, as we sometimes all do, Jesus wants to gather us up, like those baskets full of food, so that we will not be lost in God’s eternal presence with us.

This is good news for all humankind – that Jesus, and therefore God, cares enough to gather in everything that by human standards is broken, fragmented, discarded, overlooked and worthless.

Jesus asked his disciples to ‘Gather up the fragments so that nothing may be lost’. So, as Jesus’ representatives and co-workers, Jesus asks us to do the same for a broken and fragmented world, gathering up those people God has given to our care, in our families and community and the wider world, because all are valuable to God and precious to him.

Rev Janine    
Image: “Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes” by artist Bénédite de la Roncière,