Imagine preaching the feeding of the 5000 to a congregation in Ireland during the Potato Famines of the 1840s. What does this Gospel say to a congregation wasting away, knowing that many will die before the next sermon is preached?  Perhaps it will be your last sermon as well.  What word of hope would you bring?  Imagine you are a missionary sent to a refugee camp on the Sudan/Kenya border. Your bible study group is made up of people who have fled the genocidal war in Sudan barely subsisting on UN food rations. An angry young man says that God no longer does such miracles, so he is going to join the rebels and fight back so his people can eat from their own land again.  What would the text lead you to say?

Now imagine a most difficult task. You must speak to a congregation that is well-fed-or maybe even a bit overfed-whose main experience of the food supply is keeping to a diet. They are good people who will donate canned goods for the food pantry and make donations to the Heifer Project and Oxfam. But it is hard for them (and myself) to truly comprehend what it is like to be hungry. Only then could we understand the potential panic of a crowd driven by hunger, or feel the disciples' reluctance and frustration at the problem. It would be interesting to ask if anyone in the congregation had gone without food for 24 or 48 hours, whether voluntarily fasting or they really were hungry.