The Dinner Prayer Radicals
On Sunday we heard Matthew’s account of Jesus’s miracle of feeding the five-thousand, recorded in 14:13-21 of his Gospel. Primarily, this occasion serves as another signpost pointing to Jesus’s identity – he is the Messiah. Secondarily, I observed the role the disciples had to play in this miracle, starting with their initial doubt based on the limits of their own resources, culminating in them giving what little they had to Jesus (five loaves and two fish), only for him to give them back in return for them to distribute to others. It’s a beautiful picture of how God invites us to participate in the Gospel mission – we are certainly not the power, but we bring God’s powerful works to those in the world around us. He works in and through us.
Along with those observations, I want to draw your attention again to another detail that we picked out in these verses. When Jesus takes the loaves and fish, he first thanks the Father for them before distributing the food to his disciples. There is nothing exceptional in this act, Jesus had does this many times in his earthly (see here). It is the very ordinary nature of habit that in fact makes it stand out all the more today.
As I was driving in my car last week, I was struck by how much we take for granted. We have built a world of fabricated materials all around us. The houses we live in, the clothes wear, the tools, appliances, and devices we use everyday are all the products of human ingenuity. As one author has pointed out – just look at your pen and consider all that went into making it. It is incredible.
Of course, we also take all this for granted, but that is not really my point here. In the midst of all our construction, all our technical advancements, we have managed to utterly domesticate our perception of the world. We have lost the mystery, the wonder, of how very strange it is that in midst of legions of lifeless galaxies, in this one Milky Way galaxy, there just so happens to be a planet teeming with life. We are not frozen, not burnt to a crisp, not covered by clouds of noxious gasses. Instead, we live in a world that supports life, being mostly polluted and broken only by the life it supports. We miss all of this, our vision banked in by low ceilings and drawn to bright screens. We don’t wonder – we take life itself for granted. When we hear Paul’s description of the world in Romans 1:21, we find that the shoe fits: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
There is something radical these days in giving thanks to God before you eat your meal. It defies the spirit of our age which only wonders, “Why in the world would you do that? Just eat.” In the dinner prayer, we confess that just eating is a miracle itself. It is a miracle that you have breath to live long enough to even require food. It is miracle, a sign of enormous grace, that human life has not perished from the earth, either by natural causes or by our own evil devices. Follow the habit of Christ, our Teacher and Lord, radically defying the narrowed gaze and delusions of human self-sufficiency by lifting praise to the Father. Bless his name, thank him for our daily bread and sustenance.
Rev. Tom Loghry
Tom Loghry is the senior pastor of Rockland Community Church in North, Scituate, RI. He is a graduate of the Berkshire Institute for Christian Studies, Toccoa Falls College (B.S. Pastoral Ministry), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.A. Theology). He is continuing his graduate studies in the area of “Ethics & Society” at GCTS.
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.