Jesus didn’t say anything explicitly about economic policy, so as in all things relating to the Bible, there is room for various interpretations. Below, I read the oft quoted passages in the Gospel of Matthew and suggest what they entail for economic policies for us today.
Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand
13 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.
14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
18 “Bring them here to me,” he said.
19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.
20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Interpretation and Discussion
In the above passages, we see two different ways of relating to the crowds that followed Jesus. On one hand, the disciples wanted to “Send the crowds away” to fend for themselves. The disciples, in other words, worked to empower the members of the crowd to do for themselves. On the other hand, we see Jesus’ response to the disciples and to the problem of feeding the crowds. Instead of “Sending the crowds away,” Jesus said that “They do not need to go away.” Jesus placed the responsibility on the disciples: “You give them something to eat.” When the disciples protested that there was not enough food, Jesus joined the disciples and together they fed the crowd.
So, two policy options were put on the table: empower the people to take responsibility and feed themselves or take responsibility for the people and feed them.
In the present-day United States and increasingly around the world (particularly the Western world), we tend to see more of the first policy option than the second. Governments are more likely to put the onus on the individual people to feed themselves and much less likely to take on the responsibility of ensuring that the people are fed.
In some ways, we can see that the policy option urged by the disciples had a conservative economic flavor to it. Jesus, however, urged a more liberal economic policy that provided for those crowds that followed him.
As followers of Jesus, do we empower people to feed themselves—do we “Send the crowd away” to fend for themselves? Or do we combine our efforts and feed the poor ourselves? What policies should we push our governments to carry out? Do we push our governments to relate to the hungry as the disciples urged or do we push our governments to relate to the hungry as Jesus encouraged?
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