Here’s an experience most of us have had one time or another. Probably it’s happened at a wedding reception, but it could have been at a restaurant. You’re sitting at the table, and the salad plates have been cleared. The bread basket is coming around, and a waiter appears at your elbow with a plate that is set before you. You look at it, and you see that the dish is not what you ordered. So, before the waiter can get away, you look up politely, and say, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t order the beef, I ordered the fish.” Not to worry. Chances are the person next to you is having a similar conversation, except that he ordered the beef, not the fish. In a trice, the plates are switched and you go on with your meal. Not a big deal.
Now, just hold on to the memory of that very common and un-troubling occurrence. And remember that the meal goes on, and everyone has a good time. The bride and groom dance beautifully, and the night is every bit as much of a blessing as it was supposed to be. It was simply not a big deal that the dish that was brought to you at the outset was not what you ordered. Remember that.
Now I want you to try to remember something that you know from long ago. You were not there, but you have heard about it in church. When the children of Israel were in the desert... after God brought them out of slavery in Egypt, after he led them across the Red Sea, with the Egyptian army nipping at their heels… after the bitter water at Marah was made sweet, and then God led his children to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees… and after the people got hungry, and God told Moses that he would send bread from heaven… because the children of Israel had been complaining… they had been forgetting what it was like to be slaves in Egypt… and they had been starting to convince themselves that they’d been better off back then, as slaves… God did, indeed send down bread from heaven. He sent manna in sufficient quantity to feed all his people.
But do you remember what else God did? Do you remember what else God sent? Yes? God sent quails. That’s right, quails. He told Moses to tell the people that they would have meat at twilight and bread in the morning, and “then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” (Ex. 16:12) I’m told that every spring quails migrate across the Red Sea on the way to Europe. So maybe it was no big deal for God. But to his children, whose journey was only just beginning, you’d think it would be big.
The point of the story, of course, is that God feeds his hungry people. Make it a bigger point: God gives his people what they need. Even bigger: when God’s people are in trouble, God comes to their aid, God brings plenty where there is little, quenches thirst in the desert, fills bellies that are hungry, has mercy in the face of distress, rescues those who are oppressed. God saves! And often, he starts by sending food.
St. Matthew already knew all this, of course, when he set down the story of the feeding of the five thousand. His material may have been new, but his theme was old: God saves, and often he begins by sending food. Jesus had compassion on the crowd that followed him. Not only did he heal the sick, but when it got late and the disciples wanted to send everyone home, Jesus thought that maybe it would be better to send food. “You give them something to eat,” he said to his disciples. They didn’t know yet that it’s not about the food, that the real message is that God sends help, that God saves. But they did get the idea that God sends food, even when it seems like there is no food to be had. God sends healing. God sends blessing. God saves his people when they are in need of saving.
Now, here’s a strange bit of local news. About a week ago, quails appeared in Rittenhouse Square. The quails were brought to my attention when my dogs were cavorting with a group of their friends, and a fellow dog-owner pointed them out: three brownish birds that were clearly not pigeons, foraging in the bushes. None of the dogs took much notice. (So much for Labradors.)
Every day last week, I asked someone else about the quails, trying to find out where they came from. Two theories prevailed: that the quails had escaped from a live poultry market, or that some misguided naturalist had introduced them into the Square.
One day, I saw a young woman sitting on a bench with a quail in her hands. It was larger than a softball. Its wings had been clipped, and it seemed un-troubled to be held by a human. But the woman could not explain how the quail came to be in the Square, she was simply enjoying holding it.
I kept asking around, and the same two theories were offered, but no one seemed to know how they got there.
On Friday afternoon, I saw a young boy, maybe eleven years old, chase a quail and catch it. (Kids these days.)
But it turned out that the boy’s mother was not far away, carrying a cage by a handle. She kept quails in the Northeast, for the eggs, she said, and had heard about the quails in the Square. They are easy prey for anything from squirrels to cats or dogs, she said. She was surprised they had lasted this long, and she had come to rescue them. She had six quails in her cage, and her son had two more in his sights. Who was I to object?
And, so, the mystery of the quails of Rittenhouse Square came to an end without an explanation.
Every day I recite prayers at this altar that are enough to break your heart. Of course, there are the prayers about which you know the whole story: the virus, the unemployed, the deaths, and the daily, endless prayer for peace. And then there are the prayers that you (and often I) know nothing, or only a little, about - names of people we pray for. And the stories behind many of those prayers would break your hearts if you knew them, would break my heart if I knew them all. They’re stories of sickness, and cruelty, and bad luck, and failure, and hunger, and thirst, and injustice, and pain, and suffering. And although we never say our prayers quite this way here at Saint Mark’s, often those prayers amount to a cry: “Dear God, send help! Send healing, send forgiveness, send mercy, send some angel to fix this thing, send a blessing, because we really need it. Send justice, O God. Send peace, please, and send it fast! Send reconciliation. And send a soothing balm to ease the many tensions that are pulling us apart. And, yes, Lord, while you’re at it, send food!”
You can bet that every one of the five thousand people gathered that day with Jesus had a cry like that in her heart. Why do you think they followed him? They needed healing, forgiveness, mercy, something broken to be fixed, or a blessing. They needed justice that had been denied, and, of course they needed peace, reconciliation, and a soothing balm. “Dear God,” they might have prayed, “send help! At the very least, send food?”
I have been thinking about how very acute is the need for God to attend to our prayers, to send help, to save us; how the need for God’s aid (and of course for salvation) seems so immediate at the present moment. Maybe it’s always like this, but I’ve been around for a while, and somehow the need seems greater just now, the urgency seems to have crept up a notch or two. And the prayer comes fast to my heart: “Dear God, send help, at the very least, send food!”
And I saw those quails in Rittenhouse Square. And I thought about how God sent quails to feed his hungry children in the wilderness. And I thought (and I think I actually said this to God), “Oh Lord, yes, I want you to answer my prayers, but I didn’t order the quail.”
And do you know that the children of Israel said more or less the same thing in the wilderness. Oh, yes, Lord, they said, we asked for your help, but we didn’t order the manna. We didn’t order the quail. And don’t you think that those five thousand people probably responded in more or less the same way when the disciples came around with baskets of plenty? “Oh, thanks, but I didn’t order the bread or the fish.”
No, you didn’t, but God is giving it to you anyway. God is feeding you anyway. God is blessing you anyway. God is sending help. Do you want it or not?
I don’t know what a few misplaced quails were doing in Rittenhouse Square last week. But if they can serve in any way as a sign that God is at work to send help and to save us, then I will take it. And why shouldn’t we see a sign in the presence of those quails? Every day I read an article, or a talk to a person about some aspect of our troubles that we could make better, if we were willing to. Or about the hope that is to be found even in times of pain and suffering. Every day I read in the scriptures the promises of God to lead us through our worst moments, across a wilderness of confusion and frustration, and into a Promised Land.
Since I was a child I could have told you how many people Jesus fed, when there was nothing to eat but five loaves and two fish. And I could have told you how many baskets of left-overs there were when he was finished feeding them. No, they didn’t order the bread and the fish. But God gave it to them because they needed something to eat, and he wasn’t about to let them go hungry!
No, I didn’t order the quail. But I surely needed something; I surely needed a sign that God isn’t going to let us all go wanting. I needed a sign that God is working on justice, that God is working on forgiveness, that God is working on reconciliation, that God is working on feeding people who are a lot hungrier than I am, and that God is going to show us some mercy in the midst of a whole lot of trouble!
I didn’t order the quail. But I have prayed, like so many others for all of history “Dear Lord, send help!”
And late in July of 2020, in the middle of Philadelphia, in Rittenhouse Square, God sent quails, maybe as a sign that we will not go wanting, that we will have meat at twilight, just as every morning he gives us bread from heaven, right here at this altar. Every day God blesses us, and leads us closer to our salvation, and there are baskets left over; there is more than enough of God’s grace for everyone. Every day God sends help.
Dear Lord, please don’t stop. We didn’t order the quails, but we’ll take what you’re giving us. Keep sending your help. We need it so badly. Come quickly, and save us!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
2 August 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
Rittenhouse Square