This passage from Luke, and the festival we celebrate today, Corpus Christi, has to do with how Jesus is the true food for us as Christians. But we see in Luke’s presentation of this moment in the life of Jesus and his apostles that this true food that Jesus offers is an offering not exclusively for us, but for the world. We celebrate this day to remember and claim how Jesus, even now, feeds us all.

            Jesus feeds us. Jesus is, truly, our meat and drink. That is what is important for us as Christians, as disciples — perhaps especially today. We can see that importance in the space given in Luke’s rendition of this miraculous feeding. In this passage, Jesus performs three acts of ministry: He preaches about the kingdom of God, he heals physical ailments and he feeds a hungry, not-quite-committed crowd.

            In the third of these vitally important ministries, Jesus gives physical food to a crowd that has come to see Jesus for various reasons — some wanting to be healed and some more out of curiosity than anything else. They are a mass of people not yet as committed to him as the 12 apostles and various other disciples were. It is this mundane act of providing dinner that receives the most space and the most attention, from Jesus and from Luke, in the account before us. Preaching the good news of the kingdom? Healing physical diseases? These vitally important ministries are given one sentence — not one sentence each, but one sentence for both of them. What is given the most treatment here is the physical food and drink that Jesus offers.

No retreat

            We come upon Jesus and the Twelve in the midst of what has been an eventful time for them (as recounted in Luke 9:1-10). Jesus had called them together and given them power and authority to cast out demons,

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