It is a hungry time. That’s what I was thinking last week at worship during the prayer time, as the needs and hurts were bouncing around the room. It is a hungry time. It’s what I think every morning, as I sit with the paper and the news from Gaza, from the Ukraine, from Nigeria, from Central America, from our own border states, it is a hungry time. The breakfast program at St. Thomas is busy every morning, a hungry time. The women from the co-op fill our church throughout the week, a hungry time. Churches, not just Trinity but churches everywhere, struggle with decreased participation, decreased money, and increased need; it is a hungry time.
So there is tension in these miracle stories sometimes for me. Tension because I’m not sure how to reconcile a hungry world with a story that seems so distant, so detached from the reality that I know, that I experience. Yes, Jesus fed the five thousand with bread and fish, but that was a long time ago and it seems like Jesus doesn’t work that way anymore. Then Jesus was present physically. Now he is present, yes, but in a different way, a more ethereal way. And ethereality is nice, but it doesn’t pay the rent. So how do we make sense of these miracle stories in a concrete world?
It was a hungry time for the disciples that day too. Our Gospel reading opened: “Now when Jesus heard this…” And the “this” that Jesus heard was the news of the death of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was killed for speaking out against the immorality of Herod the Great. Speaking out against the abuses that Herod was inflicting on the people around him, the violence that Herod was causing. John the Baptist was killed because he was holding Herod accountable for the hunger he was causing, and Herod wasn’t having any of it. John was a friend of the Jesus movement, a prophet, a leader, even Jesus’ cousin or teacher, depending on the Gospel you’re reading, the disciples knew his message well. So they mourned their friend and colleague and they feared for their own lives. It was a hungry time.
That is where we enter this morning’s Gospel reading, with Jesus and his disciples withdrawing to a deserted place. To mourn, I thought at first. But then I looked further into this word “deserted.” It shows up a couple other times in Matthew’s Gospel, most commonly as a location for John the Baptist’s ministry. So, when Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been killed he went to the heart of John’s mission. He went to the place where the people who followed John had always gathered, in the wilderness.
And in the wilderness, in this desolate place, a crowd gathered. And Jesus “had compassion for them and cured their sick.” And then evening came, and it was a tired, beaten down, group of disciples who approached Jesus and implored him to send the crowds away “so that they may go into the villages and buy food.” You can’t blame the disciples for wanting to send the crowds away. They’re exhausted; they’ve been ministering all day to this group of needy people. And they’re afraid. John the Baptist, someone who had been associated very closely with the Jesus movement, has been killed by Roman authorities. The disciples don’t know who might be Herod’s next target. They’re afraid for Jesus, in this large group of needy people, afraid for themselves. If they could just get away from this crowd, just draw a little less attention to themselves, then maybe everything would be ok. And anyway, this is a large group in the middle of nowhere. It is in the people’s best interest for them to go away. They need things, food, for example, that the disciples cannot provide. Better for all involved if they just go away. Then the people can eat and Jesus can not be a threat to Herod, and everything can be good. Or as good as it can be in this new world the disciples find themselves in where everything is wrong.
But Jesus said something funny to the disciples here. He told them, “they don’t need to go away; you give them something to eat.”
“Well that’s cute,” I imagine the disciples thinking, “great idea Jesus, we’ll just give them something to eat. Yes, us and this abundance of food.” Even assuming they had the money to feed that many people, which they did not, it’s not like the disciples could run to the first century Meijer. They’re in the middle of nowhere, remember. So they quipped back, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” We can pass this around and everyone can lick either the fish or the bread, because that’s about how far this much food will spread around all these people. But Jesus said, “bring them here to me.” Then Jesus ordered the crowd to sit, and he blessed the food, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples to distribute, and you know what happened then. The reading tells us: “all ate and were filled; and they took what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”
We call this story “the feeding of the five-thousand,” but I wonder if it would be better named “the comforting of the disciples.” Because the more I wrestled with this story this week, the more I realized that the gift the crowd got was transitory, but the gift the disciples got was life-changing. The crowd got fed, no small gift in a subsistence culture, but still, it was just one meal. The crowd will wake up in the morning and they will be hungry again, and they will go back to their normal lives, find food, and move on. Feeding the crowd didn’t solve anything lasting.
But what this meal gave to the disciples was something so much more powerful. What this meal said to the disciples is the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing will happen, because I am with you. It’s a couple weeks before we here the famous line from Matthew, “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” but we see it lived out in this miracle feeding story. The disciples were at their lowest up to this point in the story. John was dead, the mission was at risk, they were tired, they were sad, they were afraid. The need was overwhelming, the resources tapped, they had nothing left to give. And Jesus showed them, in a real, tangible way, that there was always life after death, even in the midst of death, when they gathered together, because when they gathered together they experienced the risen Christ.
What Jesus gave the disciples was hope. It seems like a small gift when laid against a world of need, but for times when we are in the dark and cannot see the way through, it is the most powerful gif there is. And Jesus knew hope was the gift the disciples needed more than anything. Because the death of John the Baptist was not the worst death the disciples would experience. Jesus knew that his days were limited, that there would come a time when the disciples would have to muddle on without him. And by placing the distribution of this feast of the multitudes in their hands, Jesus is showing the disciples, look, you have among you everything you need to walk forward. Because when you gather together, there, in your hands, am I. And when you are together, you are never alone, you are never without me, and there will always be enough.
Like the disciples, we live in a hungry time. This is the tension of living in the time between death and life, between Christ is risen and Christ will come again. The need is great, the gifts are few, and what we have feels like not enough. But this morning, and every Sunday morning, we gather around this table for a feast that does not seem like enough. Just a crumb of bread and a sip of wine. It is a hungry feast for a hungry time. And what we find in this hungry feast is the food that satisfies. Because what we find in this feast is hope. And what we find in this feast is each other. At this table there is always bread to go around and wine to share. There is always some left over. And everyone gets what they need. This feast fills not our bellies but our souls. It promises that the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen, that we will never be alone, and that Christ meets us here, arms outstretched, heart open. What we find in this feast is a taste of the day when all the world will be full. So come to this hungry feast. Bring your empty hands, bring your broken hearts. Come and taste the promise of life. Amen.
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