Holy Wisdom Church
Matthew 14: 13-21
Our Gospel passage today
reveals our Lord at a time of physical exhaustion and emotional distress. It would be pushing it too far to say he was
depressed or despondent, but a lesser person might have had a sense of
hopelessness: The religious authorities
were dismissive of him, criticizing him and his followers for their petty
infractions of minor rules governing eating and religious observances. And just preceding today’s Gospel is the
account of King Herod having executed his cousin John the Baptist, the one who
baptized Jesus and had supported Jesus in many ways, and actually encouraging
people to switch their allegiance from him to Jesus.
It is in this context in which we see
Jesus seeking out a desert place for silence and solitude with his Father-to
replenish his intimacy with the Father and face the inevitable outcome of his
mission-his own coming death.
It did not work. The crowds pursued him. They traveled long distances from their homes
to be near Jesus and hear his words for them.
Upon arriving Jesus sees the sick, the poor ones, the needy ones. He knows that they are hungry, starving for
the Word of God. This calls to mind the first reading where the prophet Isaiah
uses the metaphor of food for God’s Word:
“Come, all of you..come without
money ..Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not
satisfy? Listen to me, and eat what is
good and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may
live”. (cf. Is. 55:11 ff)
Up to now, Jesus was not known to feed
people with bread or other food. In fact,
he rejected this possible ministry when he was tempted in the desert to see his
mission as resolving food shortage among his people. His response to the tempter was: “humans do not live on bread alone but every
word that comes from God. He saw this as
his mission.”
Seeing the crowd, Jesus’ heart was filled
with compassion for them. Jesus sees they are like harassed sheep without a
shepherd. The religious leaders have
failed them also. In the very Temple
itself, which Jesus referred to as a market place – money changers filling
their own pockets.
He begins by healing them many
them of their bodily afflictions. The
Word – no matter where it comes from –even God’s -is hard to hear when people
are in pain. He heals many and then preaches the Word.
Matthew indicates that they were so determined
to see Jesus and did not plan very well, for the day grew short and they were
far from their homes with no food to hold them until they returned. The disciples expressed a genuine concern to
Jesus that the people would need to leave in order to avoid the problem of
being stuck on the road, in the dark with no food. “Send the crowds away so
they may go into the village and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus too a different approach: They need not go away: He turns to his disciples and says; You
feed them. Have them sit down on the green* grass. Grass? Here we have here metaphor, a ‘code’
word alluding to Ps 23. “The Lord is my
shepherd I shall lack nothing; he makes me lie down in fields of green grass…he refreshes my soul. “ This is what this
story is first and foremost really pointing to: Soul nourishment.
The disciples are stunned out
of their wits, as we can readily imagine: We have only 5 loaves and 2 fishes here and
you are telling us to feed them? Jesus
says “bring them to me”. We know the story…Jesus takes the bread,
blesses it, breaks it and the disciples distribute it among the crowd and all
are satiated. As they are distributing
it, the bread does not run out, and not only does not run out there are a lot
of left overs.
I’d like to focus on one aspect of this
event and the importance of Jesus’ command for the early disciples and for us
today: “You Feed them”.
We
see this lived out in the early Christian community in the Acts of the
Apostles, the epistles and in all of the writings and lives of exemplary
Christians throughout the ages and right up to our own times.
How many times in our lives have we found
ourselves in situations where we feel pushed inwardly to help out, to be of
service, to take the initiative to go out to someone in distress? And yet we feel unequipped, or even helpless
ourselves. We may even feel overwhelmed
like Moses did in the desert when God spoke to him within the burning bush: ‘Go
to Pharaoh to save my people’. He said
“ask my brother”, he can speak better than me.” A Midrash says that Moses stuttered. God does not give up on him, and his
resistances. How plausible are his
common sense reasons for pleading his cause!
The Spirit of God frequently
chooses what is apparently poor and unequipped to step up to a task. In such times it is so obvious that the
service is not from one’s own ego efforts.
It is a question of willingness rather than willfulness.
Most often the call: ‘you feed’ them, is
in the small stuff of everyday. But still it is an embrace of what is a leap of
faith, into the unknown. Life as a
disciple of Jesus involves risk, and there is no proof ahead of time to give us
assurance that this is really what is asked of us. But we ourselves are stunned
when we do respond-there is a great sense of blessing and inner strength and peace
that come through it. Jesus,
himself, offers our lives, broken pieces and all, and brings us before the
Father. That's the grace and favor that He alone can bring into our lives in
the midst of dark places.
The call is the same: a metaphor for breaking our own selves for
others, the giving of our broken selves.
In this story we become more acutely aware that we cannot do anything totally
on our own: it is the life in Christ
Jesus that enables us to give beyond our awareness of our capacity to do. “Without me you can do nothing.” And as Jesus gave of himself for us we are
called to likewise give of ourselves for the Life of the World, this very one
desperate for healing, meaning and wholeness.
Christ is in our midst!
*Mark’s account-6:13- says “green”
