There’s no such thing as nothing.

Matthew 14:13-21

In this Sunday’s gospel reading Jesus feeds more than 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, so of course I’ve been thinking about quantum mechanics.  Bear with me here.

There are six accounts in the gospels of Jesus feeding multitudes of people from almost nothing: two accounts in Matthew, two in Mark, one in Luke and one in John.  The stories are similar in most details.  In each one Jesus is moved by compassion for the crowd and uses the very meager resources at hand—five loaves and two fish in some accounts or seven loaves and a few fish in others—to provide so much food that baskets of leftovers are collected afterward.  In the synoptic versions the initial loaves and fishes are something the disciples already have on hand, but in John’s version, the loaves and fish are provided by a young boy who has been watching Jesus from the edge of the crowd.  

This miracle story was clearly an important event in the memory of the early church which may be why there are six versions of it.  Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Jesus really did feed multitudes on multiple occasions.  It would be such a Jesus thing to do.

It’s very tempting to try to find ways to rationally explain the miracles of Jesus, especially the miracle of feeding a multitude with such obviously inadequate resources, but if we go wandering down that rabbit hole we’re bound to miss something important.  Some think that the people in the crowd were so inspired by seeing Jesus and the disciples passing out their measly 5 loaves and two fish that they all decided to share the snacks they had stashed away in their sleeves.  Sure.  That works.  Maybe.  I suppose it would be a small miracle in its own way and certainly a good example of sharing what you have to make sure everyone has something.  But the Gospel writers don’t even hint that that’s what was happening in these accounts.  They seem to think that something much more impressive happened. 

I, for one, have no problem believing that Jesus made food appear where none had been before.  After all, God has been creating something out of nothing since the beginning of . . . everything.  

“Nothing” seems to be God’s favorite material to work with.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  Emptiness is meant to be filled.  And nothing is not nothing—it’s always chock full of potential.  

Here’s what the science says:  In quantum mechanics, absolute nothingness cannot exist because empty space is filled with zero-point energy.  That means that the lowest possible energy state still holds a baseline of irreducible energy and movement that cannot be removed.  Even in a vacuum there are fluctuations of energy because “empty” space is actually filled with active quantum fields.  In other words, “Nothing” is actually full of Something and that Something is Possibilities.  In quantum mechanics, “Nothing” has the potential to be Anything.  Loaves and fishes, for instance.

So, was Jesus manipulating quantum fields to feed the multitude or was something else going on?  We’ll probably never know.  And is there really any point in figuring it out?  I think we lose something if we try too hard to demystify the mystery.  Plus, the whole point of the story is that Jesus found himself surrounded by hungry people so he fed them.  More specifically, he had the disciples feed them.

There are a lot of similarities in the 6 miracle feeding stories, but the context for each one is different, and the context is particularly important in Matthew 14, so let’s go back to the beginning.

When the disciples of John the Baptist came to tell Jesus that John had been murdered by Herod Antipas, Jesus “withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”  It’s easy to imagine that Jesus wanted some privacy for his grief, some time to pray, some time to think about what this meant for the message of the kingdom of heaven that both he and John had been proclaiming.  But when he got to that lonely spot at the end of the lake, instead of a private retreat there was a multitude waiting for him.

When the crowds heard that John had been killed, they went looking for Jesus.  John had been important to them, and if anyone could speak to their fear, their loss, their broken hearts and their shattered hopes, it would be Jesus.  “They followed him on foot from the towns.  When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.”

When Jesus saw the crowd, in spite of his own fatigue and sorrow, he went to work.  He prayed.  He laid hands on the sick.  He hollowed himself out so all the power of the Holy Spirit could flow through him.  

And he let himself feel their hunger.  Spiritual hunger.  Intellectual hunger.  Hunger for a better life.  Hunger for justice.  Hunger for independence. Hunger for healing.  And just plain, old physical hunger for food.  He felt all of it.  From all of them.  A great chasm of hunger from the thousands on the hillside in front of him.

Standing in the vortex of all their hunger he loved them, and his compassion moved him to do the impossible.  He took what he had, five loaves and two fish, which by every worldly measure was obviously insufficient, then he looked up to heaven, and he blessed it.  Eulogesen is the Greek word in Matthew’s text.  It quite literally means that he said good things about it.  “Thank you.  This is good.”  Then he broke the bread and told his disciples, his students, to hand it out to the crowd, trusting that in this God-made, God-blessed world, on that God-blessed hillside with all its God-blessed hunger what they had to share was good, and that by God’s power and presence and grace there would be enough.  More than enough.

“And all ate and were filled,” Matthew tells us, “and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

Jesus fed five thousand men, besides women and children—such a weird way for Matthew to tell us that there were whole families there on that hillside but women and children were not included in the head count.  Jesus fed all those people from five loaves and two fish, but the food that fed them wasn’t the only thing that Jesus created out of almost nothing that day.  He also created a community.  A community of companionship.

Meals were not merely utilitarian in first century Palestine.  Sharing a meal was a way to affirm kinship, friendship and good will. Sharing a meal was also a way to affirm or elevate one’s status in a world where status was important.  To put it plainly, it was a way to show that those gathered together for the meal recognized each other as “acceptable” in a world where all too often some were regarded as “unacceptable” or “unclean.” 

Jesus, had been criticized by some Pharisees for eating with “sinners” and tax collectors, people considered unacceptable in good company.  But in this feast on the hillside at the end of the lake, he included everyone, regardless of their social standing or ritual acceptability.  In that great crowd of all kinds of people, no one was turned away.  No one was excluded.  Everyone was equal in their hunger.  Everyone was equal in being fed.

In the book After Jesus Before Christianity, the authors tell us that meals were the primary social engagement for the early followers of Jesus.  During the first two centuries, the people who were loyal to Jesus commonly organized themselves into something that would look like supper clubs to us.  They would gather once, twice or even several times a week in someone’s home to share a meal, to sing, to pray together and to remember the stories of Jesus. 

In an era when the Church is in decline, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we followed the example of those early Jesus people today.  What would happen if we transformed our pews into long tables and benches and converted our sanctuaries into dining halls then gathered each week to throw open our doors and invite our neighbors in for a hearty meal, some prayer and some singing?   Who knows what kinds of hunger we might feed?  Who knows what kind of emptiness Christ might fill?

In a world where 645 million people will go hungry today^[1]—48 million^[2] of them in our own country—in a world where 45% of all child deaths are caused by hunger or hunger-related illness, these stories of Jesus feeding multitudes serve to remind us that we have a responsibility to feed a hungry world and we’re not doing a very good job of following his example.  

Hunger in our world and in our country is a solvable problem.  The US Department of Agriculture estimates that 120 to 160 billion pounds of food is wasted every year in this country alone—that’s 20 to 40% of the entire US food supply being dumped into landfills while 48 million people go hungry.  

Each of the Miraculous feeding stories begins by telling us that Jesus was moved by compassion for the hungry crowd, and I can’t help but think that maybe that’s the thing we’re missing when it comes to feeding our hungry world.  When grain shipments bound for food-insecure nations are blown up at the dock by the misguided missiles of a needless war, it’s hard to believe that food production is the problem.  When voices in Congress are trying to reduce or eliminate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, it’s hard to believe that inflation of food prices is the main reason people are going hungry.  When 67 counties in our country are food deserts that don’t have a single grocery store because the big grocery corporations decided that a supermarket in those counties would not be profitable, it’s hard to believe that the high rate of food insufficiency in those same 67 counties is because people are uninformed about the importance of healthy nutrition.  When the Orange County Register reports that hunger in supposedly affluent Orange County, California, a county with 58 million-dollar zip codes, is worse now than in the Great Recession of 2008^[3], it’s a sign that something is seriously out of balance in our nation, our culture and our world.

The six gospel accounts of Jesus feeding thousands of hungry people are a clear invitation for us to consider how we are or are not following his example in feeding hungry people today.  Remember, after Jesus blesses the loaves and fish he hands them back to the disciples and says, “You feed them.”

Those of us who come to church come with hungers of our own.  We also come to share a meal— a meal that reminds us that we are in Christ and Christ is in us—a meal that fills us with Christ’s compassion as we taste and see the goodness of the Lord.  We come to share a meal that calls us to trust that in this God-made, God-blessed world, that in this God-blessed place with all its God-blessed hungers what we have is good.  We come to learn again that we can share what we have even when it doesn’t seem to be enough, and that by God’s power and presence there will always be enough.  More than enough. 

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^[1] https://ipes-food.org/un-hunger-report-2026-global-hunger-remains-stubbornly-high-as-another-food-price-crisis-looms

^[2]  https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

^[3] ANDRE MOUCHARD | amouchard@scng.com | Orange County Register

PUBLISHED: July 30, 2026 at 5:21 PM PDT | UPDATED: July 31, 2026 at 6:45 AM PDT