Proper 13 (usually 9th Sunday after Pentecost)
Year A
Readers: Narrator, Jesus, Disciple 1, Disciple 2
Supplies: 5 bread rolls, two paper ‘fish’, lots of baskets, any costume items. Signboards for characters can prove helpful.
Ready-to-download and print:
Matthew 14.13-21 – feeding the crowd – drama PDF
Matthew 14.13-21 – feeding the crowd – drama WORD
Script
Narrator: Today’s reading is from Matthew’s account of the Good News. It relates the story in which Jesus has compassion on a hungry crowd. It goes like this:
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. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd. And he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
When it was evening, the disciples came to Jesus had the following conversation:
Disciple 1: 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.
Jesus: They need not go away. You give them something to eat.
Disciple 2 (or 1): We have only five small loaves and two fish.
Jesus: Bring them here to me.
[looking up – as if at the crowd] Rest your feet. Find a spot and be seated on the grass.
[Lift the loaves and fish, perhaps in a basket, and look up, as if to heaven.]
Holy One, bless these five loaves of bread and two cooked fish, that they may be shared amongst all who are here today.
[Tear the loaf in pieces, and the fish. Place the pieces in other baskets/plates. Distribute the baskets/plates to the Disciples.]
Narrator: After Jesus blessed and broke the five loaves and the two fish,
and gave them to the disciples, the disciples gave them to the crowds. All ate and were filled.
Disciple 1: Everyone is fed. Let us take up what is left over of the broken pieces.
Disciple 2: There are still twelve baskets full! And all have eaten, about five thousand men, and women and children, too!
Narrator: Here ends the reading. May God bless our hearing with understanding.
