The same, yesterday, today and forever

Today in the orthodox Church it is the Sunday of the Feeding of the 5000. Fr Matthew Tate, of Annunciation Orthodox Church, celebrated liturgy with us today, and spoke a little on the gospel. I could say ‘preached’ but Fr Matthew is a ‘traditional’ Orthodox priest: he doesn’t presume to preach, but just speaks the words that the Lord puts in his mouth, standing aside as it were, to let the Word of God speak for Himself.

Feeding the five thousand wasn’t hard for Christ to do, he said, because of course, the Lord and Creator of the universe can do anything. The twelve disciples, on the other hand, were mere men, and they knew it. When they saw how many people had gathered, five thousand men not counting women and children, they were anxious. Even though they knew Jesus was ‘special,’ they still had to inform Him that the crowd was getting too large and they recommended that He send them away.

Feeding five thousand was certainly something they couldn’t do, and they knew it. They knew they weren’t adequate to the task. They knew they didn’t have the resources. All they had was five loaves and two fish, not even enough, really, to feed themselves. Still, Jesus tells them, ‘Feed them yourselves.’

‘Huh? How are we supposed to do that? We don’t have anywhere near enough,’ was the essence of their reply, just as we often respond when the Lord tells us (not asks us) to do something that we consider impossible for us.

Then, just as He helps us, He helped them through their dilemma, through their crisis of faith. He says, in effect, ‘Okay, what have you got? Bring it over here, to Me,’ then He blesses it and gives it back and says, ‘now just do it!’ What the twelve disciples discovered, just as everyone discovers who does what the Lord commands, is that what is impossible for men is not impossible for God, and that He never asks us to do anything that is impossible. This is the proof of the statement ‘all things are possible, if you only believe.’

The important point of this gospel story, says Fr Matthew, is not so much that Christ could feed the 5000, but that the disciples could, and that the return was enough that each of the twelve could collect the remains in a basket.

Did the disciples do this on their own? Were they adequate to the task before them? On both counts, admittedly not. Fr Matthew says, if we feel adequate to the task, we probably aren’t. It’s when we feel inadequate, that we turn to God in faith, and then go forward to fulfill what He asks of us, or rather what He tells us to do.

After speaking briefly but truthfully in this way, Fr Matthew asked us, “Will you indulge me for a couple of minutes? I want to tell you a little story.” When he asks us that way, we know it will be more than a little story. It will be a testimony. I will try my best to retell it…


About eight or ten years ago, Fr Matthew went to Africa on a mission with some other American priests. The Orthodox Church in Kenya is now four generations deep, and growing rapidly, with almost all native clergy, worshipping in English, Swahili, Greek and native tribal languages. The village they were sent to spoke Nandi, and their services were in Swahili and Nandi.

The mission was expected, and the village constructed mud-and-dung huts for the visitors to stay in. They were expected on a given day, but the Africans expected them to be at least a week later, so when they arrived on time, the mud huts were still wet, and smelled… horrible! So bad was the smell in fact that Fr Matthew, for one, couldn’t hardly sleep all night. He finally fell asleep briefly, only to be awakened to see a black face staring at him through a hole in the wall of the hut that served as a window.

‘Father, it is time to start the liturgy. Get up and celebrate the liturgy for us!’ commanded the short Nandi Orthodox priest who served the village. He wanted to have the ‘white father’ celebrate today. Fr Matthew tried to beg out. ‘I’ve only just arrived from a very long air voyage over 7000 miles, and I have jet lag, plus, I didn’t hardly sleep all night. I don’t speak any Swahili, only English. Can I just stand in the altar with you and watch, at least at first?’

The Nandi father would not let him off, and the two dialogued for a long time until, worn out, Fr Matthew gave in, and got up, got vested and went to the church to celebrate the liturgy. The church was very primitive. The altar was a wooden table with one of its four legs broken, so that the whole thing wobbled. The floor of the sanctuary was pounded earth. The metal ceiling radiated heat down on the priests’ and people’s heads in a sweltering 110° F (over 40° C) oven. Fr Matthew was drenched in sweat. He sang the liturgy in English. The native priests and people sang the responses in Swahili and Nandi. Everyone understood each other. Why? Remember, Pentecost!

They came to the consecration of the Eucharist and then, the priests in the altar served each other communion. While this was going on, Fr Matthew looked out through the ikonostasis to see that over 400 people were out there singing Christian folk songs and dancing, pounding their feet into the dirt floor and raising up such a cloud of dust that even in the altar it was beginning to cling to patches of moisture on their vestments.

Since they were in a part of Kenya where bread is not made or eaten, they had to make communion using an uncut loaf of white bread, almost of ‘Wonder Bread’ consistency, that someone had gone to town and bought specially for the purpose. The communion bread, endlessly cubed into small pieces during the proskomidhí and then added to the chalice of wine and hot water, was enough to commune maybe 100 people at most. What was Fr Matthew to do? There were at least 400 people out there.

As communion began, the African order for receiving communion was followed: first men, then women, children and babies.

After Fr Matthew had finished communing the men, he looked into the chalice and saw that he had used about 90% of the contents, and he still had the women, children and babies to commune! He prayed, ‘Father, help me!’ The women kept coming up, and the children, and he kept feeding them with the Bread of Life from the Cup of Salvation and, when he was down to the last morsel of wine-drenched bread, behold, it was the last baby! There would be no need for the priests to finish off the remains of the Cup after the last communicant had been served, not in this church!

This is a modern day example of the truth that is taught in Christ’s feeding of the five thousand, proving that what was true 2000 years ago is true today.

Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
Glory to God!