The Man Who Gave Himself Away

35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." 37 But he answered them, "You give them something to eat." They said to him, "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?" 38 And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see." When they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish."

I remember encountering the other gospel's version of this story as a children's book titled "The boy who gave away his lunch." It focused on the little boy opening up his lunchbox to the crowd. Generosity was the lesson we were supposed to take from this. In this version, that hardly seems to be what the disciple had in mind. First, they were going away because they couldn't be left alone long enough enough to eat. The crowd follows them! They're tired, they're annoyed, and they have every right to be tired and annoyed. Jesus pities the crowd and teaches them. When the sun starts going down, the disciples beg Jesus to send them away on the premise that they must be hungry and there's nowhere to buy any dinner.

"You give them something to eat."

Seriously? They counter this, and Jesus feeds them all with what they have. I suppose if the disciples were hungry themselves, this solved everybody's problem. If they still wanted to be left alone, it definitely didn't. Jesus certainly understood that they were tired. He must have been tired himself. In doing all this, he was teaching them that some things are more important than what we want right now. I'm wondering if someone would like to rewrite that children's book and call it "The man who gave away himself" (and taught others to do the same). There would be time later for solitude. At that moment, they needed his attention.

You gotta wonder what the world would be like if everybody treated people that way.