Last week, during the early mass, someone came into our church for a few moments, took one of the snack packs from the table near the baptismal font, and left. I saw this because I was up here, behind the table, getting our breakfast ready.
My immediate response was to add one to my headcount for that mass. “It’s fourteen now,” I told myself. And so that goes for a working priest who’s developing a Christian congregation in a mostly secularized urban setting: attendance is one of our lagging indicators, a metric that helps us assess the health and vitality of this congregation. I focus on attendance enough that I’ve been rightly teased about it.
But I like counting people, especially people I love. (And that definitely includes you, beloveds!) I’m from a big family, so I count my nieces and nephews, a daunting twenty-three people. I always try to count people and other creatures who matter. When I had a big aquarium in the kitchen during the pandemic years, I loved counting tropical fish. When I see videos of dog litters on the internet, I count the puppies. “That looks like seven,” I say to myself. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven. Yep. Oh wait, they’re squashing another one — it’s eight!”
But as far as the risen Christ is concerned, headcount seems unimportant. All four Gospels recount the story of the feeding of a multitude. (Matthew and Mark record two stories of dinner for a crowd.) In these six reports of Jesus as the one who feeds hungry humans, someone evidently does do a rough headcount. (“Oh, this looks like around 4,000 people, wouldn’t you say?” I can imagine a disciple musing during the messy distribution of fish and bread, and somebody saying back, “No, I think it’s 5,000, and that’s just the dudes!”). But Jesus himself makes no mention of numbers. He just insists that everyone have something to eat, and goes on to make that happen.
Jesus focuses on the people.
Jesus focuses on their hunger.
I think this is why, last week, after labeling that passing stranger our 8:00am-mass congregant number 14, I spent a little more time reflecting on him, and even praying for him.
This is always good to do — it’s good to reflect on how (and whether) we take care of our neighbors, and how (and whether) our care for them follows the example of Jesus Christ. Especially on Sundays, the day of Resurrection, the day when the one who fed hungry crowds on the hillside was raised from the dead.
Every Sunday, everything we Christians do is an attempt to re-enact the Resurrection, just as the first Christians did in the first household churches, at their Sunday dinner meetings. For Christians, every new week begins with Resurrection, and our forebears taught us that if, in our Sunday rituals, we are imitating the risen Christ, then we should remember that he appeared to them and shared food.
The risen Christ ate fish with his disciples, in their locked room. The risen Christ invited them to sit down for breakfast by the sea. The risen Christ was made known to two Sunday-evening hikers in the breaking of the bread.
The risen Christ taught his followers – before the crucifixion - that whenever they ate and drank together in a particular way, he would be with them.
And so we follow their lead and do this every Sunday. We break the bread, we pour wine into the chalice. We take care that everyone has enough. We look outward, into the pews, to be sure anyone who came here by wheelchair has been fed. Our table ministry also inspires us to set out more food downstairs, festive food, cheering food, cake and savory treats that improve your mood as well as nourish you. And we invite newcomers among us to join the feast. You all warmly welcome them to a round table and engage them in conversation. And if a neighbor comes down the ramp in search of life-saving food, or a blanket, or socks and other clothes, our neighborhood missioners usually notice and come to their aid.
All of this is encouraging to know, because honestly, I felt a little crestfallen when congregant number 14 stepped quickly into our entryway, took a snack pack, and left. It seemed a far cry from the explosion of wondrous bread and fish on the hillside, with all the crowds pressing in, and Jesus and his followers in the center, hurriedly gathering leftovers into baskets. I wished I hadn’t been so far away from our neighbor at that moment, and I appreciated the bitter irony of the fact that I was cut off from him physically because I was preparing our Sunday Eucharistic meal.
After all, this Table is our hillside, the hillside where we meet Jesus, the hillside where we are astonished by the depth of his compassion for the hungry crowd, the hillside where Jesus dispels scarcity anxiety and sets an abundant table bursting with life-saving food. This Table is where we gather a collection of funds, the funds from your own coffers that we use to purchase the snack packs, and the cans and boxes of food that fill our pantry. This Table is where we break bread that strengthens us for mission, a mission of feeding, clothing, and caring for human beings.
All human beings, mind you. There is only one thing we know about the crowd of 4,000 (or is it 5,000, or can we just set aside patriarchy for one second and count all the people, of all ages and genders, in which case we may be talking about some 15,000 people!) — anyway, there is only one thing we know about this crowd: they are all hungry. They aren’t all members of our clan, or our religion, or our political party. They aren’t all documented citizens of our nation. They aren’t all nice and kind, or smart and skillful. They aren’t all hardworking and virtuous. They don’t all have the same abilities or disabilities. Jesus has compassion on them, no matter who they are, and begins preparing the bread and the fish.
And so I wish I had prepared food for someone last week, not because I am Jesus (come on, now), but because we all are called to follow his lead. I wanted to say, I should have said, “Bring the snack packs to me,” and I should have welcomed congregant number 14 into the pews and made sure he got not just the food he anxiously found on our counter, but anything else he needed.
He might have had a job interview the next day: did he need a shirt or a jacket? He might have needed new socks or underwear: I felt so disappointed on a SPiN walk last month when we ran out of underwear moments before someone came up to us who was in desperate need of that one item. And of course he might have needed what almost all of us – I actually think every one of us – needs whenever we come into this room: he might have just needed to be looked in the eyes and greeted by another human being.
Often, we Christians, in our effort to truly understand who Jesus is and what he is continually trying to teach us, imagine that Jesus himself is here in the room not just in the bread and wine, the Body and Blood, but also in the gathered assembly itself. “We who are many one Body,” a minister intones, and then we all say the response: “for we all share in the one bread.” The Body in that call and response is the Body of Christ: we who are many are one Body of Christ. And so we are. This is true.
Saint Augustine, when preaching about the Eucharist, says it this way: “Be, then, what you see, and receive what you are.” That is to say, “Be the bread and wine that you see; receive the bread and wine that you are.” Or said even better: “Be the Body of Christ that you see; receive the Body of Christ that you are.”
And so Christ overtakes the whole hillside, teeming with 15,000+ people, so many people we would drive ourselves crazy trying to get an accurate headcount. They all are drawn up into the Body of Christ. They all savor the fish and bread, and slake their thirst, and feel full, and ready to walk home, rescued from the peril of starvation for another night. And in this feast they become Christ himself: a Body broken for the hungry world; a Blood spilled out for the violent world; a sign of God’s abundant mercy in the cruel human arena.
And so it is that I have found a new label for congregant number 14, who stopped in our building for only a minute or two, and probably felt nervous taking the snack pack. (I think I saw him look up anxiously at one moment, as if we would set food out for anyone else but him, mocking his hunger.) I have found a new identity, a new name, for this neighbor. And I pray that his new name will drive us even more energetically outward from here on the errand of the compassionate chef who founded the feast at this Table.
Congregant number 14 is, of course, the risen Christ himself.
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Preached on the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13A), August 2, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21