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SERMONS

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 13A
August 3, 2008

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

Nehemiah 9:16-20
Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25
Romans 8:35-39
Matthew 14:13-21

After nine years of being married to me and many trips together, my husband John says he’s learned some simple rules for keeping me happy when we are traveling.

One rule is that he tells me when we are going somewhere, what time he wants me to be ready, and I can usually manage to be pressed and dressed by the appointed time, give or take five minutes.     

Another rule for successful traveling with me, John has learned, is even simpler.  I must be fed at regular intervals. As long as John keeps an eye on my feeding and watering, I am pretty happy and the trip runs pretty smoothly. So John is always planning ahead, thinking through logistics, with an eye to the practical -- being sure that I am fed and watered at regular intervals.

Now I don’t think revealing this casts me in a particularly good light -- it makes me sound like a person who only cares about her appetite -- but I bring this up, because I was thinking about the practical problem of getting travelers fed in today’s gospel.          

Because what happens to the crowds who follow Jesus
is that get stranded in a deserted place with nothing to eat. Remember how the crowds came to be in this deserted place -- they followed Jesus there.  Jesus has gone off by himself in a boat to a deserted place -- he’s just heard that John the Baptist has been executed, “at the whim of a dancing girl,” and that had to come as disturbing news, and perhaps reminded Jesus in its grim way of where he, himself, was headed. (Taylor 29)

So Jesus has gone off by himself in a boat, and the crowds have followed him on foot, waiting on the shore for him to return to  land.
                          
And there they all are, when he rows ashore. The very crowds he was trying to get away from, right there waiting for him on the shore. And I try to imagine what it must have felt like for him to row back to shore and to see all those needy people, just waiting for you to get back to work.

I can’t imagine after that little bit of time alone, he was ready to face the crowds all over again. Presumably, Jesus might have turned the boat around and rowed right back out onto the water! Jesus might have seen the crowds waiting for him on the shore, and said, “Not you people, again!” and rowed back out to sea.

But that is not what Jesus did. Matthew tells us that, when Jesus “saw a great crowd” waiting for him on the shore, he “had compassion for them and cured their sick.”  (Mt. 14:14)

So, “when the crowd pursues him, Jesus, moved by compassion, chooses their need over his own and heals the sick.”  (Hunter 18)

Jesus “may have needed” some more time alone, “but [the people] had needs of their own. They were sick, they were sad, they were hungry, and while anyone but the son of God might have ordered them to get lost, Jesus had compassion on them.

His heart went out to them and he spent the afternoon walking among them, laying his hands on them and saying the things they needed to hear.” (Taylor 29)

Think about that next time somebody needs something from you, and you aren’t necessarily in the mood to respond to that need -- WWJD -- What Would Jesus Do?
He’d put their needs first.  He’d be compassionate. That’s what Jesus would do.

When my husband and I visited Israel last fall, we went to the place on the Sea of Galilee where tradition holds
the miracle of the loaves and fishes took place. I can tell you that it is in fact a deserted place. There’s nothing there, really -- just a gentle slope to the Sea of Galilee.

Today, of course, there’s a church there, called “The Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes,”
(which is kind of a mouthful) but in Jesus’ time, there was nothing there.

So as evening begins to fall, it starts to dawn on the disciples that they have a problem. The disciples seem to be in charge of logistics and crowd control for Jesus, and as night draws near, they begin to realize the problem: They are in a deserted place, far from town, with no food for people.. Matthew tells us there were” about five thousand men,” not counting women and children. (Mt. 14:21)

I’m not sure why women and children didn’t count,
but there you are. At any rate,the disciples propose to Jesus a solution -- “[S]end the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 
And in its way, it’s not a bad suggestion -- it gets people fed and also disperses the crowd -- but it’s not the solution Jesus is interested in.

To the disciples, Jesus says, “They need not go away;
you give them something to eat.” (Mt. 14:16)(emphasis added) Can you imagine the look on the disciples’ faces
when Jesus said that?! You want us “to give them something to eat?You are in charge here, Jesus! Besides,
All we have between us is five loaves and two ...fish, which is hardly a snack for twelve men,never mind five thousand... ”(Taylor 29-30) And remember, we’re talking about a crown of well over five thousand men, counting women and children, so the disciples were well within their rights to be staggered by what Jesus suggests.

What if, when the disciples said to him “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish,” Jesus had said, you guys are right. There’s no way this food will go around.
Let’s not even try.  Let’s send them all to town and shut this operation down for the night. But that’s not what Jesus did. 

The rest of the story “unfolds in a few compact actions.”  (Hunter 18) Jesus has the crowds sit down on the grass, and has the disciples give the bread and fish to him.
“Jesus takes the food, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to the disciples, who then distribute it to the people.  All are fed and filled," (18) with plenty left over.

Now, just so you know, there are two broad ways that this miracle story has been understood. First, there are those who understand this story as literally true -- that Jesus performed a miracle where the amount of food somehow magically expanded to meet the needs of the crowds, with food to spare. -- that Jesus was “a charismatic figure from whose presence sick people went away healed and hungry people went away filled.” (Boring 325)

But there is a second line of interpretation that suggests
that what really happened on the shore that day was this: that among the crowd were a number of people, well, like me -- always planning for their next feeding -- always trying to avoid getting stranded in a lonely place with nothing to eat!

And, the story goes, the food basket starts going around
and the people see the disciples’ generosity at sharing what little they had, and the people also see Jesus’ “confidence that it would be enough,” and they brought out the food they had brought with them, and surreptitiously added it to the basket.

So, if I’m sitting there in the crowd and see the basket coming, I’m likely to pull out my little bit of food and add it to the basket, instead of walking off and eating it on my own. (Taylor 31)

So, the feeding of the five thousand for these folks is a story about the generosity of the crowd in sharing the bits they had brought with them with everybody else. So maybe it’s more of a lesson in unselfishness and in people’s willingness to share what they have once they see the disciples’ willingness to share what little they had. (Boring 325)

Leaving aside, for a moment, the logistics of how much food would have to have been brought, to make enough for everybody in the crowd, this explanation of what happened that day with that large crowd of people is a possibility.

But what’s the matter with this explanation? It doesn’t sound like a miracle anymore, does it? That’s “just human beings being generous, sharing what they have -- even when it is not much, even when it is not enough to  go around. That is not a miracle! That is just a whole crowd of people moving from a sense of scarcity to a sense of plenty -- overcoming their fear of going hungry, giving up their need to protect themselves -- that is just people refusing to play the age old game of what-is-mine-is-mine-and-what-is-your-is-yours, people turning their pockets inside out for one another  without worrying about what is in it for them.  That is not a miracle! Or is it?” (Taylor 31-2)

I guess what I’m trying to suggest is that, whatever you believe actually happened that evening by the sea, the fact remains that Jesus said to the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” And they did. They took what meager “bread” was at hand gave it to Jesus, who blessed it and broke it, and gave it back to them and says -- go on -- give it all out!

The one thing we can say for sure is that this miracle would not have happened if the disciples hadn’t been willing to obey Jesus. The disciples are the instruments
by which people are fed -- their human effort is a necessary part of the feeding miracle.

One way or another, Jesus takes what little they have and makes it plenty. (Boring 326) And isn’t that what Jesus asks of all of us, who profess to be his disciples? That we take what little we have of talents and skills and money, and that we offer it to Him, to be blessed and broken and given back to us, so that we, in turn, can give it to the hungry people sitting to our left and to our right?

We all wish we had more to give or better bread in hand,
but that is beside the point --all we have we offer to God.
We hand over trustingly to God what little we have, and ask him, by his grace, by his compassion, and by his miraculous power, to make it enough. (Claypool 18)  Amen.

Works Cited:

Boring, R. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Claypool, John R. The Preaching Event. Rev’d. Ed. New Orleans: Insight Press, 2000.

Hunter, Amy B. “Big story.”  Living by the Word. Christian Century July 26,2005. 18.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. “The Problem with Miracles.” The Seeds of Heaven. Cincinnati: Forward Movement Press, 1990. 27-32.