Most people assume the only thing that Alan Greenspan and Jesus have in common is that they are both Jewish. Yet, they also share an uncanny ability to predict the behavior of the marketplace. Such is the case with Jesus in this morning's gospel, where we read "When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, 'Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?' He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do." Here we can see Jesus as a sort of professor of economics at work, for he is not merely asking an idle question about the distribution of goods and services, but is planning on teaching Philip and the other disciples -- and the crowd, too -- about how God's economy really works.

Philip responds with a textbook answer: "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." In this statement, it's almost as if Philip is applying the basic assumptions of capitalism to the situation, for according to one modern -- day economics textbook, "Resources are the things or services used to produce goods, which then can be used to satisfy wants. Economic resources are scarce."¹ Philip is simply pointing out "our resources, both in the way of money and of bread, are scarce."

Not to be outdone by his fellow disciple, Andrew chimes in with "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish." But in the next breath he also gives in to the economy of scarcity when he asks "But what are they among so many people?"

Jesus the economist, however, does not worship at the altar of the god of scarcity. He takes what appear to be the scarce resources at hand and, after giving thanks to his Father, the God of Abundance, begins to hand out the bread and fish. And something wonderful happens: they all eat until they are satisfied. In the midst of a desert of scarcity, Jesus has the people sit down in a place with an abundance of green grass. Abundance is all around them, in fact, but their eyes are blind to it and their hearts are closed to it until Jesus, the economist of abundance, steps into the picture.

Of course, it is easy to say that this miracle is just that -- an aberration, that the natural condition of human beings is to live in a desert of scarcity, not in a grassy place of abundance. But wait. Is that really true? For the thought occurs to me: what if we are surrounded by abundance, but just don't recognize it?

Take, for example, that boy with the five loaves and two fish. Do you think his mother was the only woman in that desert region to have the foresight to pack a hearty lunch for her son? Did everybody else simply traipse off without a care in the world, without water or wineskin, without a crust of bread or that morning's catch of fish? Perhaps caught up in the enthusiasm of chasing after this Jesus fellow, they left all behind, but I personally think that's rather unlikely.

Picture this: you have carefully packed a small lunch of a fish or two, some bread, and a little wine. Suddenly, you find yourself at mealtime surrounded by a horde of hungry, dirty, smelly, grumpy people. Are you going to risk taking out your food when the guy next to you looks like he'd be happy to punch you in the nose and take it away? No, when surrounded by a horde, what do you do? You hoard!

And here we see the dirty little secret of the economics of scarcity, the vicious circle of capitalism: What happens when you believe that resources are scarce? You hoard them. What happens when you hoard resources? They become scarce. But is this the only way? What happens when you believe instead that resources are abundant? You share them. What happens when you share resources? They become abundant.

Among that horde of five thousand, one little boy is too naïve to hoard what he has. He is too naïve to believe that his neighbors might be capable of hurting him and taking away his lunch. He is even naïve enough to offer to share what he has with Jesus' disciples. And once Jesus stands before the crowd, thanking the God of Abundance for the gifts all of them are about to receive, what happens? Suddenly, people begin to feel O.K. about sharing what they have with their neighbors. Suddenly, the crowd is participating in the Economy of God.

Does this mean there was no divine hocus -- pocus, that Jesus did not multiply the loaves and fish out of thin air? I certainly believe Jesus could have done that, and maybe such a divine intervention was necessary to get the ball rolling. But I would expect that Jesus would not have to resort to the supernatural for long. For the point is not the miraculous act of pulling food out of mid-air; any magician could accomplish that feat. But it takes an economist of abundance to do what Jesus did with that crowd.

For notice, too, that John never calls this event a "miracle." In fact, nowhere in John's gospel does he call anything Jesus does a "miracle." Rather, he calls such events "signs." The word sign is particularly appropriate, as it points to the fact that such an in-breaking of the divine into the mundane is intended not to draw attention primarily to itself, but to point as a "signpost" to something beyond itself. In this case, the "sign" of the loaves and fish points beyond itself to God's economy as it is unfolding in the life and ministry of Jesus. It prefigures the eucharistic feast that is inaugurated at the Last Supper, and it is a foretaste of that heavenly banquet where such food -- soul food -- never runs short.

In the case of the multiplication sign (pardon the pun), not only is there an abundance, there's a surplus: "When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, 'Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.' So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets." This number is important in at least two ways: first, twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel; thus it represents the complete community of God's chosen people. It indicates that the crowd is not simply a hoarding horde, but a community, a people, whose responsibility and joy it is to share with one another in the Spirit of God's love manifested in the person of Jesus. Second, on the mundane level, each of the twelve disciples gets a basket of his own, that will feed him the next day and serve to sustain him in the days to come -- days that will be filled not only with more signs of God's economy, but also with bitterness, tears, death, and -- ultimately -- resurrection. The disciples are thus equipped by the surplus of God's economy to carry on the work of evangelism.

As for the crowd, while they of course participate in the abundance of the meal, as soon as it is gone, they immediately take steps to hoard Jesus for themselves. How quickly they revert to the worship of a god of scarcity! They have this attitude of "Quick! We must grab this Jesus fellow and make sure that he will always be around to guarantee a steady supply." Such an attitude is perfectly understandable, given the fact that they are, after all, ruled by despots: by the puppet king Herod and the Emperor's governor, Pontius Pilate. In short, they see an opportunity for regime change that they don't want to pass up; yet Jesus explicitly rejects their power play, and does so (ironically) by making himself scarce. "When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself."

Too often do we worship a god of scarcity, which in its vicious way keeps us from the true God of Abundance. I have no doubt that in the nation's mind as a whole, the single scarcest commodity right now is -- can you guess? [That's right.] Security. As a nation, we feel vulnerable and insecure. And what happens when you feel insecure? You begin to feel anxious. So what do you do? Among your options, the most tempting is to do whatever it takes to make yourself feel secure (even if feeling secure does not actually mean being secure). And so it is no wonder that we find ourselves at war.

As tanks roll across the desert of Iraq, we journey through the desert of Lent. Is there a better future, a sign of God's abundance at the end of the desert? Where is our grassy place, where we may sit and be fed until we are satisfied, where the nations of the world may be filled with the bread from heaven?

I do not feel qualified to comment on whether we are engaged in a "just war" or not. My own impulse is to view all forms of violence as ultimately self-defeating; in war, no one "wins." It is only in peacetime, in the aftermath of a conflict, that people and nations may be rebuilt.

I do feel qualified to claim, however, that as long as we operate out of an economy of scarcity rather than out of an economy of abundance (even if that abundance is only a distant hope, a vision, a goal and not a current condition), we will never get to the sort of true regime change that will bring in the abundant Economy of God.