Isaiah 55:1-15
Saint Matthew 14:13–21
You can tell a great deal about a person by watching them react to a crisis.
Do they fly off the handle and yell at everybody for everything?
Do they try to deflect the blame? This is particularly unhealthy especially if they are in any position of leadership from being a parent to the most powerful person in the world.
Do they sit quietly and analyse like Sherlock Holmes closing their eyes and leaning back in a chair almost looking like they are asleep but going over every angle, every possible solution, in their mind?
Do they spring into action? The minute a problem confronts they are in a motion, going full throttle, to take it on and solve it.
Or, and we all know people like this, are they always in a constant crisis? It is almost as if anything, even something as small as low tire pressure can raise their blood pressure. No matter what is happening it is all cause for alarm.
During real crises, like the ones our nation is facing now, I worry about most about people like that, because their life on the edge always seems to be teetering just a little too much for my comfort level, and perhaps theirs.
Then there are people who are constantly creating crises. My tendency is to avoid these unhappy humans at all costs. They always remind me of how Sir Winston Churchill described John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, as ''the only bull I know who carries his china closet with him.”1
It may be hard for you to believe but this story, this old friend whose words we know by heart, came at a huge crisis point in Jesus life. It is there is the parenthetical words inserted into today’s reading: “Now when Jesus heard [about the beheading of John the Baptist], he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself."2
This must have been devastating news. Every death brings a moment of devastation. The deaths of monumental people like John Lewis, even though we knew it was coming, still bring us up short.
Surprise deaths, like that of Regis Philbin, who probably would be mortified if he knew that I mentioned him in the same breath as a social change icon, remind us how our lives can be touched even through the laughter evoked by a good story.
The 150,000 pandemic deaths in our nation remind us that government and leaders often fall short and miss the mark.
The death Jesus was morning was an act of pure cruelty combined with a little palace “hanky-panky.”
Herod had been sleeping with his brother’s wife. The Baptist called him on it and, “the tetrarch’s lavish birthday banquet [takes] a macabre turn with John the Baptist’s severed head served up on a platter.”3
This is what was going on in Jesus’ mind and heart and like any who was facing such a devastating and senseless loss his deepest desire was to be alone. A boat is a good place to do that but the only problem is that sooner or later you have to come ashore and when he did there was another crowd waiting for him.
Wouldn’t you just have hated that?
But instead of hate, or anger, or sadness, or disappointment or any other of the myriads of human emotions Jesus could have had we are told he had “compassion on them.”
Every bible, every paraphrase, every commentary I looked at this week used the same word for how Jesus felt toward that crowd who just would not leave him alone. He had compassion for them.
The Greek word used is even stronger than compassion but we don’t have an equivalent in English. It means he reacted with a “deep-seated, gut level sympathy for them, especially for the infirm who had walked or been carried all this way seeking healing.”4 So, throughout the day his compassion extended to them as he healed their sick.
When evening came something so important happened that all four gospel writers included it. I think it is there not so much to tell us about Jesus wonder-working power with loaves and fishes but to teach us how Jesus related to people in a crisis even when he was in a crisis.
He doesn’t order them around, nor does he judge them, he shows compassion toward them.
Jesus doesn't see the crowd as being an ignorant bunch of fools who need proper teaching about the Bible or about the church or about the kingdom. Jesus sees the crowd as people with problems, people with illnesses, people who are hungry.The disciples don't actually present to Jesus the need of the crowd, but their solution: "Send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." It seems like a reasonable request.5
While they may not be sure that the local restaurateurs in the surrounding villages will have enough space or supplies to accommodate such a large number of people they are positive that they do not.
This story may reveal to us that God is compassionate and has the ability to heal hungry people.
But that’s not all this story reveals. It also reminds us that Jesus did not act alone. Jesus did not gather the loaves, multiply the loaves, and distribute the food to all those people by himself. He asked his disciples to bring what they could find. He took what the disciples found and brought to him, and Jesus blessed, broke, and gave it back to them. Christ’s disciples gave the food to the crowds – enough to satisfy everyone, and even more. Perhaps Jesus could have done all of that by himself . . . but that isn’t what he wanted. Jesus chose to perform this miracle with his disciples’ help.6
He could have done everything by himself but he didn’t. He put the disciples to the tasks of . . . well . . . being disciples.
There certainly could have been other ways of feeding the hungry that didn't involve so much work by the disciples. Jesus could have miraculously made the people's hunger pains disappear but he wanted everyone in his entourage to help out.
Sometimes, for divine miracles to occur, disciples may have to do a lot of work. Perhaps that is a difference between disciples and the crowds. While all received the benefit of the miracle; the disciples were asked to work and work hard to make it happen -- and then to clean up the mess -- each had one of the twelve baskets to fill up.7
This miracle took more work, real work, on the part of the disciples than it did for Jesus. But you still got to love the expansiveness of Jesus who shouts with Isaiah long before him in The Living Bible paraphrase:
Say there! Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink—even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine and milk—it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that doesn’t give you strength? Why pay for groceries that do you no good? Listen and I’ll tell you where to get good food that fattens up the soul!8
You gotta love God who, Isaiah and Jesus tell us, “flings wide the doors to the banquet house, tops off the children’s milk glasses, splashes around the chardonnay, and extends the terms of [God’s] deal with humanity’ that everyone is included it its embrace.”9
And make no mistake about it, this compassion is for everyone.
Nowhere does either Jesus or his disciples’ question who the five thousand people were or might be. Nowhere does either Jesus or his disciple eliminate, segregate, or exclude. Jesus doesn’t ask the disciples to sort the five thousand by socioeconomic status or by test scores or by academic degree achieved or by strength of their individual faith—or by any faith, for that matter—or by culture or by ethnicity or by gender or by age. This table was open to all, not because of whom they were, but because of their intent in reaching to seek it.10
Jesus’ table is a table for everyone, yes everyone. That is our miracle for today!
Whenever there is a festival Sunday or an occasion when I know there will be visitors in church – baptisms or funerals – for as long as I can remember I always use this invitation to the Communion table which comes from the Iona Community in Scotland.
It could have been spoken to Isaiah’s people. It could have been spoken to that hungry crowd. It certainly is spoken to us with its all-inclusive compassion for our needs.
This is the table, not of the Church but of Jesus Christ.
It is made ready for those who love God and who want to love God more.
So come, you who have much faith and you who have little,
You who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time or ever before,
You who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because the Church invites you;
It is Christ who invites you to be known and fed here.11
Just as Isaiah and Jesus invited all to come and eat so we are invited to come and feel God’s compassion and grace. For it is here when we come and receive bread and wine freely given to us we discover that everyone is included in God’s eternal embrace.
Everybody? Yes, everybody. Even you. Even me. Everybody.
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1. Mark Russell, “Dull, Duller, Dulles,” The New York Times, July 13, 1986, https://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/13/books/dull-duller-dulles.html.
2. Saint Matthew 14:13. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
3. F. Scott Spencer, “Matthew 14:13-21. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 205-207.
4. Ibid.
5. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 14.13-21 Proper 13 - Year A,” Matthew 14.13-21 (Crossmarks), accessed July 31, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt14x13.html
6. Carla Pratt Keyes, “Enough for Everyone,” A Sermon for Every Sunday. July 28, 2020, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Carla-Pratt-Keyes-Feeding-5000.pdf.
7. Stoffregen, loc.cit.
8. Isaiah 55:1-2. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1971)
9. Jana Childers,"Matthew 13:13-21. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World. Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 194-19.
10. Mark Eldred, “God in My Pocket" Sermon 4 P.M. Worship, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. (July 26, 2015).
11. Steve Pankey, August 23, 2016, “The Invitation to the Table” at “Draughting Theology” blog. https://draughtingtheology.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/the-invitation-to-table-fellowship/.
