Consuming Jews and Gentiles

Pastor Rich Lusk made the point in a recent sermon that Jesus’ miraculous feedings of 5000 and 4000 have everything to do with Jew-Gentile issues. Jesus feeds the 5000 in Jewish territory, and the numbers 5 and 12 are linked with Israel – the first the number of Israel’s military formation coming out of Egypt the second the number of tribes. Jesus feeds 4000 in Gentile territory, and the number 4 and the number 7 are global numbers, pointing to the peoples, nations, tribes, and tongues of the Gentiles.

The menu is also Jew-Gentile: Bread from grain grown on the land (Israel) and fish from the sea (Gentiles). Both multitudes receive both types of food. Which is to say: The Jewish crowd of 5000 eats Jewish and Gentile food, and so does the Gentile 4000. We can put it more provocatively: Jesus forms a new people by feeding Jew and Gentile first to Jews, and then to Gentiles. There’s an order here, as always: First the Jew, then the Greek. Jews consumed Gentile fish before the Gentiles eat Jewish bread. But the ultimate result is mutual consumption. 

What does that mean? Eating is incorporation; we take food into our bodies and the food becomes body. Jews incorporate Gentiles, and then Gentiles incorporate Jews. And we’re talking about people, not about food. Jews are made into the new people by welcoming the Gentiles in, rather than keeping them at a distance. Then Gentiles grow and are nourished by the welcome of Jews.

We can extend this to culture. Judaism could grow up only by eating Gentilism, only by absorbing the best of what the Gentiles had to offer and make that part of the body of Judaism. Judaism grows up by becoming more Gentile. On the other hand, Gentiles could grow to maturity only by absorbing Judaism. As long as Jews set up impenetrable boundaries to fellowship with Gentiles, they remained in infancy; and vice versa. 

Both have to develop discriminating tastes. Gentile culture can be poison; and Jews had developed their own forms of poison. Jews are supposed to reject idols and refuse idolatrous feasts. Still, each has to incorporate the best of the other.

To be specific: Judaism incorporates the language, customs, and some of the ideas and aspirations of Greco-Roman culture, and is transformed in the process. As the gospel spreads, Greco-Roman civilization absorbs a Jewish gospel and is reconfigured in the process. In short, the miracle feedings provide a paradigm for thinking about issues of cultural influence from Gentile to Jew and back again.

Jesus makes a new people not only by feeding both Jew and Gentile, but by feeding them to each other.