JESUS, HOMEBOYS, LOAVES, AND FISHES

 Jesus Is My Homeboy - Loaves and Fishes - David LaChapelle

Homeboy: noun; Originally used among transplanted African-Americans with Southern roots to refer to and aid in the assimilation of someone who might have directly migrated from a common Southern home town or is otherwise well known to the person using the term.

The epitome of a friend. Somebody you kick it with. A person who always has your back. You can't go through life without a homeboy. It's hard to have more than one, because they're one in a million. (The Urban Dictionary)   The photo above is from the artist and photographer, David LaChapelle. Highly influenced by Michelangelo, as well as present-day artists, LaChapelle desires to make commentary on our interdependence with modern consumer society. His Homeboy series also includes a New York street scene of a prostitute's arrest with Jesus' intervention. Jesus in a tenement kitchen with a modern-dressed,  Mary Magdalene wiping Jesus' feet with her long blonde hair, a Sermon on the streets, Jesus showing the wounds of his hands to everyday persons in a bedroom scene and a Leo Da Vinci-esque Lords Supper with myriad persons of hip-hop culture gathered are other works which LaChapelle said in a 2008 interview for The Art Newspaper TV. " If Jesus were here today, he said, he would be hanging out with the street people and the marginalized:  the poor, the homeless, prostitutes, drug dealers, gangsters, and so on.  And more than that, these people would have been his closest and most faithful band of followers." In our lectionary lesson for this Sunday from the book of Matthew, verses 14:13-21, when the disciples say that the people of the crowd are hungry Jesus tells his disciples to feed them. What is their response?  In the light of a wealthy, consumer oriented society as exemplified in LaChapelle's rendition how does the miracle of the loaves and fishes speak to persons, Materially? Spiritually? How do we participate in the miracle today? Matthew 14:13-21 14:13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14:14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 14:15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 14:16 Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." 14:17 They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." 14:18 And he said, "Bring them here to me." 14:19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 14:20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 14:21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line