Pentecost 12, Year A
Matthew 14:13–21
13Now 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. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When 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." 16Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." 17They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." 18And he said, "Bring them here to me." 19Then 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. 20And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Three years ago a new question was added to the
annual report for campus ministry
in the section which specifically deals with pastoral care. The question was, “How many of the following pastoral acts
related to campus ministry did you perform in the past year?”
there then followed three categories:
a) Marriages
b) Funerals/Memorial Services
c) Miracles
“Hmm,” I remember thinking,
“I didn’t realize we were supposed to keep track,
I must have missed that section in the parish register”
I wrote in “365”
hoping that an average of one a day was neither too few
or too many to be believable.
A campus ministry setting is a likely place of analysis
when it comes to assessing miracles.
I remember my own frustrations as an aquatic biology major
at the University of Montana, where it seemed like all we did
was try to prove previous discoveries were incorrect.
How many of you spend your days researching
the cause, effect, and results of things which
had they been even imagined in Christ’s time
would have been considered miraculous indeed.
Every day we all witness miracles.
We see miracles of nature, benefit from miracles of modern medicine,
hear miracles of musical composition, experience miracles of human interaction,
and yes, we see miracles of divine intervention,
things which can only be satisfactorily resolved
by admitting our own humanness
in the face of someone greater than ourselves.
People seem to be really divided on the issue of miracles,
some people will only consider an event a miracle
if it exceeds human ability and comprehension.
“It’s not appropriate to analyze a miracle,
it’s simply a matter of faith.”
was they way one person felt at Tuesday night’s Bible Study
Some of us are not satisfied, however,
until we can uncover a more rational explanation
for whatever miracle is part of a story .
Take today’s gospel for example.
Jesus is deeply affected by the news of his cousin, John the Baptist’s death,
probably all the more so because of the circumstances surrounding John’s death
coming at the hands of people serving idols of fear, jealousy, and cowardice.
Jesus tries to make time to process what has happened.
Remember, there are Hebrew rituals for grief and mourning
requiring those who have lost a loved one
to remove themselves from their day-to-day lives
and take time to find spiritual and emotional healing.
Instead, a crowd follows. Many of them were John’s disciples
looking to Jesus for consolation and leadership.
I’d like to believe that others may have been looking to console Christ,
as much as to be consoled.
Jesus is moved by their need.
He works through and despite his own grief
by becoming available for others.
The crowd is huge,
there are 5,000 men, and, some estimate another 30,000 women and children
for most men in Jesus time traveled with their wives, mothers, and children.
Jesus healed their sick.
We’ve all probably seen faith healers on TV,
where the afflicted come forward at the appointed time,
hands are laid on, prayers are prayed, and sometimes we see
the unexpected and the unexplainable occur.
Crutches and wheelchairs are abandoned with joy
God is praised and new life is celebrated-
I wonder if that afternoon with Jesus was like that,
or, did Jesus walk through the crowds, with people coming to him
sharing their burdens of pain and suffering,
Jesus listening, nodding in agreement and understanding,
reaching out and touching, embracing the rejected and the shunned,
restoring them to health, acceptance, and to community,
because you know,
the blind, the lame, the people with skin conditions,
those afflicted with mental illness, missing extremities,
or most anything which made them physically or emotionally different
were kept on the fringes of society.
The day wears on with Jesus talking to more and more people,
meanwhile, the disciples wonder when this will all be over,
they want Jesus to be with them,
they want their chance to minister to him.
I find it curious that Matthew does not tell us
Jesus and his disciples had pity on the crowd
and together they cured their sick.
No, it doesn’t say that at all,
could they have forgotten their commission,
when Jesus gave them “authority over unclean spirits,
to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness” (Matthew 10:1)
Now, here’s why I think there was some kind of “disconnect” that day
between the disciples and the crowd:
Not only do they want to send the crowd away to fend for themselves
but they fail to see the crowd for all it’s diversity and possibility,
they view the people Jesus has ministered to as one great lump of need,
they fail to see the gifts the crowd brings to the table.
Three short weeks ago, Tricia Neale and I were planning the closing eucharist
for the synod’s LYO servant trip in Florida.
It was going to be held on the White Street Pier in Key West,
which juts out 300 yards into the Atlantic Ocean.
The plan was to pass out lit candles at the entrance to the pier
and then to process out to the end singing “Come All You People”
where we would gather around bread and wine,
hear stories about God’s love for us
and God’s presence in our day to day lives
we would share a meal feasting on God’s abundance
and we would be sent back to our families and our homes
as new people, people transformed by our experience as servants
and those whose lives we touched.
During the service, I was distracted by the things which didn’t go as planned,
we didn’t account for youthful enthusiasm,
instead of a stately candlelight procession reminiscent of Maundy Thursdays at UniLu
we had 60 kids vying to be first at the end of the pier, complete with blazing torches,
as the Dixie cup shields for the candles went up in flames.
Then there was the Chihuahua who was determined to steal the communion bread
so many times that we wound up having to hold the bread for the entire service.
There were enough mini-dramas going on
that I failed to see what was happening overall:
People who had begun the evening grieving the conclusion of their time together
were being fed through God’s bounty of Word and Sacrament,
and feeling Christ’s presence among them in each other
that they were being healed of their sadness and being filled with the Holy Spirit
and I was too stuck on what I expected the evening to be
that I couldn’t see what was happening,
the miracle occurring before my very eyes.
Just like the disciples in this gospel story.
Jesus builds a relationship with the crowd
he learns their needs, their hopes, their dreams
I speculated earlier that they may even try to care for him
the way he cares for them. “You must be thirsty. Here, Jesus, have a drink of water.
How about a piece of bread?”
Where the disciples see only 5 loaves of bread and a couple of fish
Jesus sees God’s abundance in the faith of the crowd,
he sees the hidden resources of the ones who go uncounted
whose stories are so seldom heard in these pages.
The disciples say only what they are willing to contribute,
Matthew tells us how many men were there besides the women and children.
Can you imagine what 20 to 35 thousand people must have sounded like?
Think of Franklin Field at homecoming and divide by 2,
or Feast Incarnate just before we start announcements, multiplied by 3,000.
Jesus brings order to what must have been chaos
by ordering the crowds to sit down on the grass.
Their anticipation must have been electric.
He takes what has been offered, five loaves and two fish,
he blesses and breaks them and gives them to the disciples
to distribute to the crowds,
and not only is there enough for everyone to take
what they need to overcome their hunger,
but there is more left over than before they started,
and the crowd, along with the disciples have become a new community.
How often do we concentrate on the obvious
and ignore the potential?
Instead of seeing more mouths to feed
we need to see the abundance God has given us.
We need to see the rightn-ess of food production in the hands of all who need it,
not just in the hands of corporate farming and government-subsidized monopolies.
We need to advocate for equal access to adequate health care, for effective education,
and for limitless opportunity for all of God’s children, not just our own.
We must do this because none of us are uncounted in God’s eye,
All of us are brought to the table, all of us are fed, and all of us will be filled.
There will be more left over than when we started,
more than enough for the uncounted ones
if we just open our eyes to the abundance of God’s love, grace, and mercy
and live our lives transformed by that abundance.
We are transformed by God’s abundant love each time we come to the Lord’s table
through the gifts of bread and wine we are given
we are transformed into the Body Of Christ made present in the world.
That worship service in Key West-
fortunately several people took photos that evening,
so that several days later I was able to look at the expressions of joy and amazement
on so many faces, as people shared the stories of how God entered into their lives
over those 11 days.
Then there were the stories they wrote on their Facebook pages,
telling their friends how the trip transformed their relationship with God
and with others, how they were less afraid of people they didn’t already know
and more secure in who they were as God’s children.
It made me realize how distracted I had been
from the miracle happening right in front of my eyes,
as God prepared a feast in the wilderness.
Amen
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