Five Loaves, Two Fish, One Surrendered Life

Introduction

In Matthew 14:13-21, Jesus feeds five thousand people from five loaves and two fishes. Preaching on the feeding of the five thousand, Revd. Paul Cowley MBE — founder of the Second Chance Partnership — argues the true miracle is surrendering to God: giving him what little we have, as the disciples did, and trusting him to multiply it beyond what we could achieve alone.

I don’t know about you, but I find most of the passages, most of the scriptures really exciting when you dig into them. But this story is actually one of my favourite for a few reasons which I’ll try and explain in this short little talk.

I’ve probably spent more time in prison than most criminals. Not because of the crimes I’ve committed, that might be reassuring to some of you, but because I’ve spent over 25 years working with people, and I do believe it’s a privilege working with people and walking alongside those men and women who are leaving prison and trying to rebuild their lives. Not everybody wants to do that, that would be naive of me, but most men and women in prison want to change. They really want to change. And I’ve had the privilege of walking with hundreds, possibly thousands, in those 25 years. For those who don’t know me, and I’m sure there’s quite a few, my name’s Paul Cowley. I’m an ordained Church of England priest. And much of my ministry has been outside of the church walls, working with, well, let’s the scriptures say, the captives, the lost, the lonely, the broken. The ones who we would say are marginalised, or they may say themselves that they’re marginalised.

But whether someone is sitting, I think, in a prison cell, running a business, self-employed, trying to make a living, raising a family, enjoying retirement, whatever it might be, the deepest needs, I think, of every human heart are remarkably similar when you break it down.

We all want to be seen. We all want to be acknowledged, really. We all need hope, and we all need grace. Those are the fundamental things, no matter what you’re doing. And one of the lovely things about the Church of England’s lectionary is what the gospel reading is set today. The three readings that are set today all speak to one another. The Old Testament reading, which we haven’t read out, is from Isaiah. You can look at it later and find it. There’s also a psalm set for today. And finally, the gospel, which Chris read out. Three very different writers, you know, over 800 years of time in between them, yet they’re all telling the same story. That’s what’s remarkable about the Bible. What they’re saying is we have a God that provides for us. Isaiah prepares the table in the scripture set for today. He says this: come all you who are thirsty, come buy and eat without money and without price. I find that wonderful, without money and without price. Don’t worry about any of that stuff, just come and eat and drink and be full. What I find amazing is God doesn’t look or start by looking at our wallet or our bank account. He begins with our hunger, come and be fed, come and drink. He asks, what do you need? And that’s the gospel, the good news.

If someone had met me as a young man, or a young soldier, or maybe even a young priest, and especially later on during some of the darkest chapters of my life, it’s not always been easy, they probably would never have imagined I’d be stood here, standing in front of you, preaching in the church in Switzerland. But that’s exactly what grace does. It doesn’t begin with what we deserve. It begins with what God wants to give us.

Jesus never wastes a crisis, and again you can see it in this story as it starts to unfold. We hear that John the Baptist, a very close friend of Jesus’s, has died, well, actually brutally murdered, if you read the scriptures, and Jesus is upset. He’s grieving the loss of a very close friend, so he wants to get away, he wants to disappear, he wants some time, um, on his own. Yet he welcomes the crowd. In the scripture, he has compassion on them, even in that state himself. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, people always arrive, well they don’t always arrive when it’s convenient. They usually arrive when you don’t want them to arrive, in my understanding. And they usually arrive when they’re desperate, when they’re in need of something, whatever the situation may be. But Jesus never saw these people as an interruption. He never saw anyone really as an interruption. He saw them as opportunities. Opportunities and appointments to do something. And when you read the scriptures, especially the miracles that Jesus performed, there’s always some form of compassion before he does what only he can do. Before Jesus feeds this crowd of thousands of people, he notices them. And the scripture says he has compassion on them, even in this hour where he wants to be on his own. It’s not about him.

Sometimes the greatest miracle isn’t the multiplication of what we see in the scripture, it’s about him noticing the crowd. It says in the scripture, men, but some theologians will say there was five, there was eight, there was nine thousand, including wives, children, babies, a massive crowd to say the least.

My work in prison, I’ve met so many men and women, mostly men, that’s the biggest percentage of those who are in prison, who feel invisible. And you may say, well, that’s their own fault, it’s a crime they committed. But if they’re in prison, they’re serving the sentence that the justice system has issued them, but they feel invisible. One man told me, after a while, nobody even knows you’re alive.

Just imagine that. Nobody’s interested in you at all. Another one said, the punishment isn’t prison. The punishment is believing nobody will ever trust you again. Ever.

And I once asked a young man, in an interview I was doing with him for employment, just tell me a little bit about yourself, and he was stunned, he was silent. I said, no, just talk, just chat while we have a coffee together. And then he looked up at me, and he said, no one has ever asked me that for years. I started to sob. These are these big macho men that you think are in prison, not when you break them down on their own and they realise what they’ve done, and he began to sob.

Jesus always sees the person before the problem. And that’s what we try to do as Christians. We try to see the person before the issue. And then through knowing the person, we try and work out the issues and help them if we can. And in this story, the problem is it’s only five loaves and two fishes, not a lot of stuff to feed that many people. Just imagine how you might feel. I love that line where it says, you feed them. It’s brilliant.

The disciples saw scarcity, lack of resource, panic, the crowd. They’re going to get grumpy and angry. Jesus saw possibility. That’s what I love about him.

And after three years now of leading and founding the Second Chance Initiative with Iceland Foods, which I was asked to do, to set up something so Iceland Foods could help men and women, the owner, Sir Malcolm Walker, said to me, could we do something with the 1500 stores of 20,000 staff? I want to do something to help men and women when they leave prison to find employment. And we founded the Second Chance Initiative with Iceland Foods. And it’s gone really well. In fact, Iceland Foods now is the biggest employer of men and women leaving prison in the country. But I felt a calling, really. I felt God asking me to do something more. And I was at my limit doing what I was doing. I felt he was saying, we need to grow this. So we took a chance and we founded the Second Chance Partnership. And the vision for the partnership is really simple, is to help employers across the UK do what Iceland have done and reap the benefit from it and navigate the risk and help these men and women who generally want to be helped to find employment, and it’s starting to work and it’s starting to grow around the UK. Not always an easy task, trying to persuade businesses to get involved in this work. They’re scared. And when we were starting this, I say, we, there was only me at the beginning, people naturally asked, how are you going to do that? It’s a massive task. You’ve done it with Iceland, but how are you going to get other businesses to come on board? And I would say, I’m not entirely sure, actually, but I’m going to have a crack, and I’m going to pray, and I’m going to ask some friends who I’m close to to pray for me, and we’re going to see what happens.

I just simply believe that if we placed what I had started into God’s hands, then with this scripture, he could multiply that, whether it’s loaves and fish or whether it’s employment for men and women or whether it’s whatever. I just believed if I could give him that, then he would multiply it. I hoped and prayed. And today, the Second Chance Partnership, it’s a privilege to work with businesses across the country. We’ve got three or four big national businesses that have come on board. We need more, but it’s starting, helping to rebuild lives, restore families, help regain dignity through meaningful employment.

We’ve offered over 800 jobs to men and women leaving prison. And not a massive number, but it’s getting there. It’s starting. And looking back, the miracle didn’t begin when everything came together and it was sorted, that was sure. It began when I trusted and panicked and gave him what we had and said, it’s up to you. If you want to do this, then I’m with you. If you don’t, then we’ll stay as we are. Five loaves, two fishes. And I think this story really is about surrender. It’s not about the bread and the fish. It’s not about the people. It’s about surrender. The bread multiplied in Jesus’ hands, not the disciples’. They gave the bread to him. Give it to me, he says, short sentences. So in that, for me, that means we bring him our fears. We bring him our disappointments. We bring him our relationships, our health, our financial burdens, our future, whatever it is. Here, take it. Help me with it. Multiply it if you can, or do whatever you can. Corrie ten Boom once said, never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

The other reading set for today, apart from Isaiah and Matthew, is Psalm 145, and that says this: the eyes of all look to you, you open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living things.

800 years and they all fit in perfectly.

I wonder what are your eyes fixed on today?

Is it your circumstances, which it might rightly be? Is it your health? Is it your bank account, what you’re looking at? Is it the news, which is hard to listen to? Is it your fears, your work? Look, whatever it is you’re doing, what have you fixed your eyes on?

Or are they fixed on the one who opens his hands with all those issues and says, give it to me.

Surrender it, let go of it, take your fingers off it and give it to me.

The crowd came to him with empty stomachs. They’d been there all day in the heat. Disciples came with, I don’t know, an empty confidence. They didn’t quite believe what could happen or what might happen even though they’d been with him for so long. All they could find were five loaves and two fishes, and they saw the impossible. Yet when those ordinary gifts were placed into the hands of Jesus, well, the story speaks for itself, they became more than enough. And I think I’ve discovered over the years that God can do far more with open hands than with clenched fists. I’ve tried the latter, it doesn’t really work. And the miracle didn’t begin with Jesus breaking the bread. It began when someone was willing to let go of it, surrender it, and give it to him, which is not always easy. Perhaps a picture that joins all three readings together is we open our hearts in surrender. God opens his hands in blessing. Seems quite simple when you just read it out. One final thought before we pray. Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, feeling that you don’t have enough in whatever it might be, I don’t know, too little strength, too little faith, too little confidence in to crack on with the day or what you’ve got to do, too little money in the bank account to make ends meet, you’re too old, you’re too young, whatever it might be.

In my reading of the scriptures over the years, Jesus has never once looked at someone and said, there’s not enough here for me to work with.

He simply says, give it to me. And he says that because that’s the hardest thing for us to surrender, whatever it might be, especially for someone like me. Ex-military. I can fix it. I’ll sort it. I don’t need any help. I’ll crack on. I’m all right.

Give it to me.

And perhaps that’s what he’s asking you to place into his hands. The five loaves, two fishes, one surrendered life. And in the hands of Jesus, that’s all is enough.

One little thing from this scripture, it says that there were 12 baskets left. It’s funny that there was 12 disciples, so they all got a basket each. And as they were walking home with that basket, I wonder what they were saying when they thought there wouldn’t be enough provision.

Five loaves, two fish, one surrendered life in the hands of Jesus. That’s always enough.

Amen.